RE: ‘Government was right to use its EU veto’, (January 13).

MIGHT I seek to correct one or two errors in Mrs McCullough’s letter in your letters page? Yes we do pay about £20billion a year into the EU coffers but we also receive far, far more back in received subsidies of our own.

Now fishing. When the licensing system came into being, participating countries were allocated licences based on territorial waters, coastline and the indigenous fishing industries.

This was to regulate the exploitation of what is catching, for consumption a wild animal, in an effort to prevent over-fishing. Essentially what we did to the herring, fished it out of existence.

The licenses where allocated country by country and then devolved down to the ship owners. Taking Cornwall, the fishing fleet was largely owned at that time by one large extended family, who realising the value of these licences promptly sold 90% of them. This was repeated elsewhere. So please do not blame the EU – this was pure English folly.

Now bullied into the Euro? Another myth, look at the failing Euro bloc nations, one familiar thread runs though all of them. It is those countries who never actively had or participated in the so called “industrial revolution” and thus had no home-grown tax paying manufacturing and trading middle class.

Thus there was no grounding to the understanding of production and commerce. To put it crudely; they maintained the hierarchy, peasants and landowners.

Move forward in time, the failing countries promptly over borrowed with little or no forward planning as to how they were to achieve repayment. Money which was lent, was spent on grandiose projects, embezzled, purloined by corruption or just lost. With no industrial or manufacturing infrastructure there was no personal responsibility to the state and ultimately the payment of tax. In essence this is one of the reasons why is there such a high rate of youth unemployment. So much like running one’s personal budget, you only borrow what you know you can reasonably afford to repay. And through an efficient (if somewhat penal) tax collection system we have all learnt there are only two certainties in life, payment of tax and death!

May I also remind your writer, our trade with the EU, our largest trading partner is much higher than 50%, and if it is not to the EU, it goes through the EU.

Anthony Mealing, Totteridge Road, High Wycombe