Rubbish from the black country

Derek Bennet's EU Membership Fallout (August 28) set my mind back to the acid rain that was caused by dirty British heavy industry and coal burning power stations, spewing out sulphur laden smoke which was wafting over the North Sea, creating havoc in Sweden, in the form of acid rain.

Europe's most recent ecological and political action to combat acid rain problems began in 1966 when a Swedish scientist published a study suggesting a cause-effect relationship between fossil fuel emissions and the damaging levels of acid particulates in Sweden's freshwater environments.

He additionally identified both foreign and local emissions sources as the primary causal agents, with neighbouring European states as the primary source. The prevailing north-west wind patterns on the continent meant that Sweden and other northern states were at the receiving end for most of Europe's acid based emissions prior to their falling back to the ground.

The trans-boundary nature of the issue required regional cooperation, only recently receiving attention from the European Union.

The first instance where environmental issues received an international environmental forum was the Stockholm Conference on the Environment (1972) and it was during this conference that the Swedish government initiated their request for a negotiated solution to the problem.

If it were left to people like Mr Bennett, who hails from Walsall, in the heart of the black country, Britain would still be dragging its feet to comply, with the pressure brought to bear by the EU to tidy up its filthy and deadly emissions, which were destroying large forests in Sweden.

With Britain's cavalier neglect of the observation of common sense practices, which resulted in the dreaded spread of foot and mouth disease, and the alarming mad cow disease, Mr Bennett ought to be thankful to the EU for ensuring that wayward countries like Britain, which has been the source of pandemic infections, are made to comply with the standards demanded by the EU.

The sort of parochial mentality that Mr Bennett would like to impose, in the name of national sovereignty, has no place in a world so interdependent in every aspect one cares to consider, not least in the field of global warming and the poisoning of the air we breath.

One last word, were Britain to leave the EU tomorrow and tariff walls be re-erected against its exports of goods and services, the standard of living of all UK citizens would fall so much that fellows like Mr Bennett would probably be lynched by his compatriots for misguiding them into such a mess.

Mr Bennett has been writing letters to the local press because it is the only section of the media democratic enough to allow him to vent his extremist views. In the UK he is totally and absolutely ignored. Readers should then be compassionate towards his antics.

By the way he may still harbour illusions that we are in the hey day of the empire when the word of any British sucker who travelled to the colonies to lord it over - as a reaction to being lorded over himself in his own country - was treated as the word of the Almighty.

Keep it up Mr Bennett. It really gives us great pleasure to hear you moan that Britain is just like us now, part of Europe. Keep moaning. Some local suckers will suck up to you.