THE French and Dutch rejections of a European constitution and reportedly more general concerns about too much enlargement too fast, open borders, unemployment, sovereignty strike me as what many eurosceptics have been banging on about for years on a common sense level.

Counter-arguments are that 10 states have ratified it already and two more may. In the case of many of those states, maybe it's a question of well, they would wouldn't they? Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia (possibly Bulgaria and Romania next year?) were probably falling over themselves to become new net gainers last year to this giant cross-subsidy scheme just as UK citizens increasingly spot that it wouldn't be a bad idea to fall over ourselves to cease to be net losers to it.

If it is essential that this Constitution be ratified, it is not simply a tidying-up exercise. It embodies one person as European president; it stimulates a militaristic stance by the EU. Not all visions are fit to be realised, however laudable.

It is not realistic to open up borders - not many of us leave open our front doors nowadays. It is not realistic to encourage an inflow of people to work where unemployment is high and quality of jobs poor. It is cynical and immoral for representatives of public services to travel to less developed countries to poach their professionals to fill vacancies here, trained at their expense, and their skills lost to those already disadvantaged countries.

We should be cancelling debt and encourage young and skilled people to contribute to their home countries, free of trading restrictions and the dominance of exclusive political blocs.

WENDY HANDS,

Upton-upon-Severn.