With just one day to go until the EU referendum, the SNJ has this week published an extra special letters page focused entirely on the debate.

Here we publish a selection of the best letters sent to us last week.

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Here’s how the EU has benefited you

EVER wondered what being a member of the European Community has done for you?

Here are just a few things: 3.5 million jobs, 60 years of peace, consumer protection, tackling tax avoidance, stronger animal rights and improved standards for animals, clean beaches and cleaner bathing waters, lower prices in shops and mobile phone charges, improved food packaging displaying nutrition and allergen information, rules on working hours, free health care in Europe, opportunities for young people to study and train in Europe, cheaper flights, investment in arts and culture and science, funding for our regions including flood money, part-time workers rights, the single market – the largest in the world and stronger workers’ rights.

These are just some of the benefits.

It might not be perfect but far better for the UK to be an active member and part of influencing and shaping Europe.

I will be voting to Remain.

Lesley Williams. Labour Group Leader Gloucestershire County Council

Stroud News and Journal:

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Neither option is worth voting for

THE world has big increasing problems

And we’re being asked to vote again;

All we have is the paltry choice

Of whether we choose to leave or remain.

We need a different kind of Europe

With a flexible bureaucracy;

I’d rescue Greece from persecution

And bring in more democracy.

I’d vote for a confederation

Of self-governing separate nations;

I’d bring in Russia and its allies

And reduce the power of corporations.

The current options aren’t appealing.

Which mistake would be the greater?

Without some better things on offer

I might decide to spoil my paper.

Peter Adams. Edge

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We just want to take you for a ride

‘WON’T you join our Common Market?’ said the spider to the fly,

‘It really is a winner and the cost is not too high’

‘As to the rules, don’t worry friend, there’s really but a few

‘You’ll find that we ignore them – but they all apply to you.

‘Give and share between us, that’s what it’s all about,

'You do all the giving, and we all share it out.

‘So climb aboard the Market Gravy Train, don’t sit there on the side

‘Your continental cousins want to take you for a ride’

Lee Prescott. Stonehouse

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Stroud News and Journal:

What difference will Brexit make?

SEVENTY years ago Europe lay in ruins and the people and politicians who fought and lived through that horror of war wanted no more of it.

They saw that peace and prosperity were the only way to liberate our bloody continent from the chains of hatred and fear.

It was out of this that the European Union was born. Seventy years on, it is not a perfect project. But are all our problems actually because of the EU?

Is it not the neo-liberal ideology that has seduced our ruling political parties for the last 20 years that is the real problem?

Rising inequality, precarious jobs, the slow and insidious move from public to private services – and at the same time, the rise of an ever richer and more powerful elite that squirrels its money away in offshore tax havens.

Many ordinary people feel uneasy in this world. And along comes the EU referendum – a chance to make a protest, to kick the elite and the Establishment!

But if we vote to Leave – will it actually make a difference? Will it solve anything? I can’t see how.

Leave campaigners say the EU is done for and we’ll trade with the rest of the world instead. But UK businesses who already trade in the EU will still want to do so.

That will almost certainly mean paying to access the market and accepting free movement of labour. No change there then. Except now we’ll have no say over the rules.

“Take back control, get back our sovereignty”, say Leave campaigners. But on our own, we will never control the freedom of international finance to cross borders to where it pays the least taxes.

And our national government seems to have plenty of sovereignty when it slashes help for the disabled, raises tuition fees, forces councils to sell off social housing, takes away trade union rights and invades other countries.

The EU is not perfect. But if we try to walk away, we’ll find that all the problems you’d hoped voting Leave would solve are still there.

My Labour membership card states ‘by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone’.

I want our country to be more equal and more prosperous and to be a leader in Europe, not a leaver – to help make Europe, and the world, more equal and prosperous too. That is why I am voting to remain.

Doina Cornell. District councillor, Dursley, deputy leader of the Labour group

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UK’s problems are not because of EU

EARLIER this month, the Stroud News & Journal covered your EU debate at the Subscription Rooms.

One of the photographs in the report is captioned “Brexit supporter Chris Moore of Stroud Against the Cuts argued that the EU was a ‘rich man’s club’”.

We write as the elected committee of Stroud Against the Cuts to explain that though this is the view of some members, the organisation has not committed to either the Leave or Remain campaign.

Other members of Stroud Against the Cuts are not supporters of Brexit, and will vote for the UK to Remain in the EU.

We do not believe a vote either way will free us from rule by a ‘rich man’s club’ – a description as true of the UK Government as of the EU.

We reject the way migration is being blamed for problems in this country that are caused by government policy towards the economy and public services (funding cuts, privatisation), particularly but not exclusively by those pushing a vote to Leave.

Further, we reject claims by both sides to have the interests of the NHS at heart. We find it laughable that (in the same issue) Stroud’s Conservative MP Neil Carmichael claims to be interested in what is best for the NHS (‘NHS will be better off staying in the EU’).

He and his Conservative government colleagues are responsible for the current crisis in the service, which is due to billions of pounds of cuts to funding and their continued attempts to waste money on making the NHS more like the terrible American system.

On the other hand, the claims that the NHS will be saved by a vote to Leave are equally without merit – we cannot trust the leaders of the Vote Leave campaign who have in the past made clear their opposition to the principles of their NHS and their desire to privatise it. The argument that migration is to blame for the problems in the NHS is false and xenophobic.

What is needed to reclaim our NHS is determined campaigning by health workers, patients and the public – as shown by the successful campaign to save Stroud’s Maternity services 10 years ago, and our own battle to defend local community health services from privatisation in 2011/12.

We’ll keep campaigning for our NHS whatever the result in the EU Referendum.

James Beecher, Hannah Basson, Christine Stockwell and Helen Prynne. Elected committee of Stroud Against the Cuts

Stroud News and Journal:

True migrant crisis is still to happen

YOU report Baroness Featherstone, speaking of the migrant crisis as saying ‘...the waves of misery of migration that will come from climate change will put this as nothing’. (‘Minister gives warning’, June 8.) There are two items of news that give support to that.

UN demographers predict that by 2100 the Sahel’s population will grow from 125 million to 650 million, this increase being 25 per cent greater than the current population of the EU, whereas the IPCC project that the region’s temperature will rise between 4.5 and 6.5 degrees, making it virtually uninhabitable. These two predictions are obviously incompatible. The migrant crisis therefore has scarcely begun.

Roger Plenty. Rodborough Hill

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United in backing UK’s place in EU

THE decision on whether to remain in, or leave the EU will effect generations to come and is much bigger than party political differences.

We, as leading members of the main political parties in Gloucestershire urge voters to think positively about the sort of future we want to leave for our children and future generations.

We believe in a future in which the countries of Europe work together to overcome the challenges of refugees, climate change, economic and social development, war, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

We want a future in which our children can continue to travel, study and work in our neighbouring European countries.

We know the EU is far from perfect, but we believe the UK can work with our European neighbours to make it better – a force for peace, security and prosperity in our World.

When Europe faced terrible threats in the past, like the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, the UK did not turn its back; we should not turn our back now.

We believe that a vote to leave the EU will lead to years of destructive negotiation and continuing political arguments, diverting attention away from the positive steps needed to address the urgent challenges we all face.

We also believe that negotiating trade agreements from the outside – with the EU and other trading partners – will actually leave us less well-off and with less control than we currently have as members.

We therefore unite above any party differences, to urge the voters of Gloucestershire to think positively about building a better future, by voting to remain in the EU.

Neil Carmichael, MP for Stroud (Conservative) Doina Cornell, deputy leader of Stroud District Council (Labour) Martin Horwood, Ex MP for Cheltenham (Lib Dem) Sarah Lunnon, county councillor for Stroud (Green)

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Cost of staying will be austerity

WELCOME to the Last Chance Saloon.

The time to vote is coming soon,

Vote to leave or vote to stay,

Be wise, that’s all that I can say!

But consider, if you will,

The cost to stay, a bitter pill,

The figure will increase each year,

‘Austerity’ for us I fear!

How many more can we expect,

Our ‘open door’ must be select,

Reform was claimed by our PM,

But rest assure, it suited ‘them’!

The Eurocrats have just one aim,

A European state’s their game,

Three Stooges on the stage today,

It’s George and Vince and Ed at play!

Appearing together for us to see,

Just for once, they all agree,

Should we decide that we remain,

Then my advice is ‘think again’!

Don’t be mislead by what you hear,

Our country must not disappear,

I’m British and quite proud of that,

Serfdom in Europe – now under attack!

T G Bloodworth. Dursley

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Facts don’t back up chancellor

GEORGE Osborne, the chancellor, and his colleagues, assure us that we will be financially better off if we stay within, rather than out, of the EU.

It is prediction and an opinion. How are we to determine if they will be right or wrong? We can say with certainty what the past situation has been.

The IMF historical financial data shows that, over the past few decades, we were most unlikely to have been better off being within the EU.

To conclude that we were better off “in” would be to conclude that we are less capable than countries such as Canada and Australia.

The EU economies have grown significantly more slowly than their counterparts outside the EU and their current, 2015, standards of living, on a financial basis, are significantly lower.

The values being: growth, since 1980, 30.6 per cent lower and standard of living, 12.4 per cent lower.

Also it is telling that not once has the chancellor referred to past performance in support of predictions.

If you wish to verify these facts, the best place to start is the Knoema website where the bare data is presented, without comment, for the 200-plus countries of the world.

Look at GDP PPP values to determine growth and GDP per capita PPP for standard of living.

Why the chancellor and his colleagues predict that the next 35 years or more – that’s what we’re voting for – will be so different to the past 35 years, they have yet to explain.

Ron Crumpler. Upper Leazes

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Stroud News and Journal:

Better uses for our EU money

ON JUNE 2, I attended the meeting in the Sub Rooms in the hope of learning more about the EU.

I was very disappointed as there seemed to be no point in having four people on the panel as the two who were supposed to be in favour of remaining in the EU did a good job of making a case to come out.

Our MP Mr Carmichael did his usual trick of having a set of answers irrespective of the question.

When a question was asked of him he would come out with one of these set answers, the best of which was about Polish business and beef farming, if they are so good why are there so many Polish workers over here?

My aim was to try and find out why so many tax exiles and people with their money in tax havens want to stay in the EU as they don’t contribute to it.

So my questions are:

1. Why is it good to be in an organisation that lost £500 million in fraud last year and has never had its accounts audited?

2. Why send hundreds of millions of pounds a week to it and at the same time condemn small children and young mothers to death because we are told we cannot afford to pay their medical needs at a cost of less than 0.1 per cent of what we send to the EU every day?

On the point about wars is it not possible that a dozen or so nuclear armed submarines circling the Seven Seas, each with the capacity to annihilate any country, might be a bigger deterrent than all the nonsense coming out of the EU?

M Wiggins. Bisley

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Three reasons we should stay

I HAVE just read Neil Carmichael’s latest newsletter, and although I find it very difficult, I have to admit that I actually agree with him that we should stay in the EU.

Having said that, I would like to know where he gets his information from to claim that “we are stronger, safer and better off in the EU.”

He may well be correct; only time will tell, but he doesn’t know that any more than we do.

Personally I think there are several very good reasons for staying in the EU and they are all verifiable.

Space prevents listing them all so I would just list the top three: 1. Boris Johnson.

A very wealthy clown who just happens to be the former mayor of London.

Ex member of the Bullingdon club and has designs on getting into government.

2. Nigel Farage.

A sadly very misguided individual who seems to spend most of his time in pubs and who has very worrying views about people not born in this country except those he decides are OK.

3. Iain Duncan Smith with Michael Gove very close on his heels.

He was of course the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions until he dramatically resigned, supposedly about cuts to his budget but more likely so that he could campaign to leave the EU without such a conflict of interest.

Looking at Wikipedia he doesn’t seem to have any useful qualifications to be part of a government at all.

Presumably, if we do leave the EU all of the above will want to be part of the government.

That would surely be worse than the one we have at the moment, although it’s difficult to imagine.

All of the “Leavers” keep saying we want our sovereignty back, to be able to make our own decisions.

We currently have a government that less than one quarter of the electorate voted for and a House of Lords that no one voted for, so it doesn’t seem likely that, whatever happens in the referendum, decisions in Westminster will be taken with the majority of us in mind any time soon.

I think it’s very clear that those advocating a vote to leave are without doubt the best reason for us to stay.

Howard Price. Nailsworth

Stroud News and Journal:

Shrouded in too much secrecy

THE reason I am voting Leave is because I do not wish the UK to belong to an organisation controlled by an unelected European Commission, whose meetings have no published minutes and who make laws that are placed before an elected parliament, which either has to rubber-stamp them or just be ignored.

This elected European parliament has no opportunity to debate (as opposed to “speak” – members must book ahead for a slot, for a maximum of one minute).

This elected European parliament is not allowed to make any laws of its own.

I am willing to suffer any financial hardship in the short term, because such an invisible dictatorship dressed in the clothing of democracy, corrupts our democracy and makes current UK foreign policy a hypocrisy.

The long-term social and financial repercussions of dictatorship are well-documented and will be much more severe than any short-term rollercoasters in the foreign exchange and stock market.

Why are the media saying absolutely nothing about this issue, although it is a clear and deeply principled reason to vote Leave?

Graham Kennish. Brookthorpe