THANK God the recent events of the Queen Mum's funeral, the Golden Jubilee, and England's football team have proved Great Britain - as a nation - is not yet dead.

Since the days of those lies about merely trading with the European Common Market, the advent of the Euro Tunnel and illegal immigration, our devolved United Kingdom and the New Labour and Lib-Dem intention of pushing us lock, stock and barrel into Europe, I feared the British people would lie down and be smothered.

Not so. The spark of life is still there.

On January 1, 1999, 11 European countries merged their economies under the control of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany.

This bank makes its decisions in secret and it is illegal to question their findings. EU directives made by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels always prevail over British or any other country's law.

Some people think that we, too, should scrap the pound and join the euro (worth about 63p) which, of course, means giving up democratic control of our own economy.

As part of the "euro zone" we'd immediately lose the right to set our own interest rates.

Consequently, mortgage repayments would escalate.

All this because Britain's gold and foreign currency reserves would then by owned by the European Central Bank in Germany. Didn't somebody try to do this 60 years ago?

Membership of the EU has cost this country more than £35,000m since we joined in 1973. How many doctors, nurse, hospitals and schools would that have funded?

The euro is a political project devised by those who want the independent nations of Europe to merge under a single government in Brussels.

And Tony Blair is touching his forelock to all and sundry because of his ambition to be a President.

JAMES H ALEXANDER,

Symonds Yat West,

Herefordshire.