YOUR correspondent Antony Hook who wishes to stay in the EU has prompted me to put the alternative point of view.

Without plagiarising his letter I can look at each of his points from the opposite perspective, as follows.

Many people who want Hampshire to be free of EU control are pointing out the benefits of voting to leave (the EU – not Europe!).

There are wonderful opportunities for jobs when the UK can manage its own trade deals with the rest of the world. Without EU interference prices will almost certainly fall. Without an oversupply of immigrant labour wages will rise. We can continue co-ordinated action with the EU on environmental protection, international crime and conflict then, just as we do with the rest of the world now.

When we leave only the 10 per cent of British economic activity involved with our trade with the EU will have to observe the EU diktats (bear in mind 80 per cent of our economic activity is internal and has nothing to do with the EU and of the 20 per cent of the UK economic activity consisting of exports less than 50 per cent of it, or 10 per cent of the whole, is to the EU).

Medical research at our respected research centres will continue to respond to the needs of the medical requirements of the world – much of it driven by pharmaceutical companies who are themselves driven by profit regardless of the UK being in the EU or not. As the world’s most declining economy the EU will hold little influence worldwide in the future and even less in the matter of foreign policy. The UN will continue to hold nations to account in the matter of human rights and the UK’s influence there will be enhanced without the ball and chain of EU membership.

By working free from the shackles of EU regulation we can offer businesses golden opportunities, to trade, to innovate, to introduce and take advantages of technological advances both in the UK and throughout the world.

We should all bear in mind that the EU is not a club with a set of rules – it is a process (towards ever closer union) with an ever changing set of rules and a court made up of amateur judges whose guiding principle is not ‘right or wrong’ but ‘will our decision progress us towards ever closer union’. If we vote to stay in we shall not do so at the status quo – we will still be on the conveyor belt to ever closer union and still governed by a dictatorial caucus of EU leaders who meet in secret, publish no minutes and direct the commission to move in whatever direction they choose – without reference to us. The danger in voting to stay in is that the EU will take this as encouragement to drag us into the euro and whatever other schemes for ‘more EU’ they have up their sleeves (their answer to the problems of Greece, Portugal et al).

I shall vote for the UK to leave the EU, to return to a sane system of a Westminster government controlling our borders in a way sensible for the UK, governing the UK in the interests of the people of the UK, and answerable only to the electorate of the UK – to pass on to future generations a nation with a thousand years of independence behind us and hopefully many thousands more.

Stanley Oram, Bulbery, Abbotts Ann