I AM not an xenophobic nationalist but I still think that we would be much better out of the EU.

It is not democratic. Every time the European people have the chance to vote they vote "No" – Denmark, France, Holland and now Ireland, twice. But the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels just ignore the vote and carry on under the mistaken belief that "We know best".

It is corrupt. For 11 consecutive years the auditors have refused to sign off the EU accounts. Yet nobody seems prepared to take any action to stop the corruption that must be involved.

The EU is still using single-entry book-keeping. Even the French cannot lay the blame for double entry book-keeping at our door as it was introduced by the traders in Venice several centuries ago.

Most of the commissioners are politicians who have failed in their own countries: France's Edith Cresson, Italy's Romano Prodi (Italy) and Neil Kinnock and Peter Mandelson from this country, to name but a few.

For heaven's sake, Mandelson was thrown out of the cabinet twice for breaking rules yet is still made a commissioner with all the benefits that entails.

I could go on. The stupidity of the Common Agricultural Policy, the unending tide of rules and regulations that floods out of Brussels, burying business in red tape...

Most of the rules and regulations are dreamed up by unelected officials who have never done a day's work in the "real" world, where that nasty word, "profit", is so important.

But I think that I have made my point.

S. F. Brown