I’M a hundred percent behind our Mayor, Cllr Charles Nicholls, when he says we must get out of the EU, (readers' times, May 5). In fact, I’m amazed that the opinion polls show there is any normal person at all who is still thinking of voting in favour of us staying in.

The EU document number PE 569.777v02-00 makes it quite clear that if we stay in the EU, the relentless absorption of our hard-won democracy will continue at an accelerated pace. The document states that we will lose control of our economy, be forced to adopt the disastrous Euro currency and dismantle what little border controls we still have. Westminster will degenerate further into a powerless petty provincial assembly.

Perhaps even more serious, the ‘Common Defences Policy’ is already laying the organizational foundations for an EU military headed by Germany, into which our own forces would be ‘absorbed’ thus removing our own national defence capability and shifting the balance of military power away from a cooperative NATO to what many of us consider to be an unelected, corrupt and fanatical European dictatorship.

The trade agreement currently under negotiation between the United States and the EU (we are now not allowed to negotiate our own beneficial deals), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, contains the provision for EU and US representatives to interfere directly in the running of our NHS and may well be its death knell (source: Greenpeace Netherlands).

The same negotiations involve the removal of our food standards thus allowing GM food- plus other food which would currently be classed as ‘unsafe, contaminated, poisonous and toxic’ – into our food chain (source War on Want). Plus, our educational standards may become further undermined by allowing unqualified teachers to teach in our schools.

The EU has long been using the UK as a ‘cash cow’. Our minimal ‘rebate’ on EU fees (by which we give away a mere £55 million a day to the EU) will either be removed or swamped by projected new rises in ‘membership fees’ and the EU’s stated plans to raise taxes directly from our citizens.

David Cameron’s so-called ‘veto’ before all this is meaningless because it only operates if a two-thirds majority of Euro MEPS also agree with him (source UKIP MEPs).

MRS SUSAN CUTLER

Burghill

Hereford