I AM an English woman who has seen her country taken over and ruled by Brussels, by people who have no idea where Gloucestershire is let alone the Forest of Dean.

Looking into the Forest of Dean District Council’s plan 2020 it looks like the EU all over again.

Will people in North Oxford care about wandering sheep? The only sheep they see are in fields, or would they care that my bin had not been emptied on the correct day?

Brussels cannot understand our country’s problems? They can’t. They are too far away.

The counties that we are proposing to merge our resources with in the 2020 plan are too far away from the Forest to understand our problems and likewise we could not be expected to understand theirs.

At a meeting of the district council I learned that this was decided within a closed cabinet and 2020 was put to the electorate on the Forest of Dean website.

I really do feel that this, like the EU, should be put to a referendum; after all it is our money they are spending and our lives that they are playing with. Oh for democracy.

– Averil Sumners, Bream