I REFER to the Review of May 11 in which Ruth Purcell states that Britain's entry into the Common Market was determined by "experts" and involved a great deal of money. That discredited organisation still does cost us a lot of money: £40m a day.

Who were those 'experts' and what were they expert at? Advising on the future prosperity of Britain? Perhaps it was the same 'experts' who advised the European Union to create the Euro. A single currency would be one of the steps involved in creating a single country.?Several member states were then stupid enough to join it, although the Euro is appropriate to Germany, not the others. The others are unable to control their own taxation and interest rates, and some of them are now going down the drain as a result.

Ruth Purcell says that should Britain quit membership of the European Union we would not be able to cope on our own. But Greece,?Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland and Italy can't even cope together.

In any case, it is wrong for Ruth Purcell to say that, for two reasons. First, in the past when were on our own we created the British Empire, proving we can cope on our own. Second, thanks to the British Empire we now have a potential ready-made trading-block of our own known as The Commonwealth, so there is no need to be on our own.

Far better to have a partnership of 54 free-trading partners who already speak our language, and already cover the globe, than getting involved with a bunch of 25 countries all of whom are foreign to each other, all huddled together in Little Europe, and whose member states are collapsing into financial ruin.

We should quit membership of the European Union anyway, for various reasons including the economic disadvantages, and the sooner we quit the better. – Anthony Reeve, Littledean.