BLAMING Europe for things it does not administer reveals ignorance or cynicism and a profound inability to face Britain's relative comedown in the world.

Eighty per cent of transnational companies are USA owned. The recent banana squabble shows it is the US, not the EU, that is in their pockets.

Interest and exchange rates are about general economic policy. We have plenty of customs and health inspectors to keep out GM foods and BSE if we wish to. The last two governments were nutty about deregulation and we still have not taken the cattle feed makers to court. This is purely a matter for Britain.

Privatisation has been nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with the "maddest cow" of all bribing voters with their own family silver - fraudulent conversion if ever there was.

Trident, Eurofighter and arms sales are defence policy, not EU. Why can Europhobes pool sovereignty for NATO to the point of tinkering with the oath of allegiance but cannot accept pooling sovereignty in the EU?

Jim Homewood (Your Letters, March 12) poses as a defender of the poor with regard to the world debt problem but cannot twig that the biggest obstruction is the US. We can only get results if we sort out our own patch and go to the World Trade Organisation as an organised team. Next century China, and maybe India, will re-assert their muscle and, unless the world is pegged down to some UN legal rules and practical block tactics, things could revert to violence.

We can withdraw from the EU but where to? If you are on a ship, and it is floating, you do not take to the lifeboats!

Those who want to find someone to blame for the collapse of British manufacturing should look closer to home, to the classics educated - or totally uneducated - management of the first half of this century.

Those worried about what being British means should read a bit more of our science and poetry and avoid dwelling on the Victorian primary school map of Empire.

FRANK ADAM,

Hartley Avenue,

Prestwich.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.