EUROPE or not?

That is the question. Professionally incited anti-European passions blame most of our home-grown problems on the European scapegoat. While we are losing our lands, we are made to squabble over the question of square miles as opposed to square kilometres, and while we defend the pound sterling against the euro, our life-savings are being plundered irrespective of the currency's name.

Then there are these pseudo left-wing bigots, on the other hand, who try to talk us into every new European legislation even when, at times, it is outright wicked -- like some of our own. MEPs are rather reserved about the unsavoury fact that scores of Europeans are imprisoned simply for daring to have a political or historical opinion different from that of officially-dictated versions. Yes, some historical "truths" are legally enforced in certain European countries! And some of our politicians can't wait to force every Briton, too, to wear such muzzle made in Europe.

In line with European legislation, the present British Government is planning: to ban religious and racial jokes, a move even a number of professional Asian and Jewish comedians find quite undesirable; monitor and record everything everyone does on the internet, by telephone or email etc; and to accept a "European Arrest Warrant" by means of which any British subject can be arrested and extradited at the request of European courts, even for something that is not (yet) an offence in this country.

Forget about pounds, pints and inches, because, if the above legislation is being put into effect, we have true fascism through the back door; and, in practice, there is no difference between left-wing and right-wing totalitarianism.

A government that can hardly cope with existing crime and has run out of prison space is intent on joining other governments in making free speech a crime, despite Article 19 of the General Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees that right, at least on paper.

Mrs B Stuart

Lord's Stile Lane

Bromley Cross, Bolton