IN response to Dr Hirst’s letter (“Brexit may hit us in the pocket” January 20), we are all finding that the EU is already hitting us in the pocket, to the tune of £55 million per day, which is the amount Westminster sends to Brussels every morning.

While we are going to work, and struggling to pay our ever-increasing taxes, the EU is siphoning that out of our pockets – and it chooses to charge us more and more, as our economy gains pace over the EU economy, which is in serious decline.

Their latest wheeze is to put higher taxes on fuel, to pay for their inability to control their own borders.

And we have just been “fined” £642 million for poor accounting – that from the EU whose accounts have not been signed off for nearly 20 years.

And don’t try to tell me about the EU transferring development funds to us – that is some of our own money, which we have already sent to the EU.

Why should this great nation, the fifth largest trading nation in the world, have to see families queuing at food banks?

Why should we struggle to fund our NHS, to provide drugs to our cancer patients and look after our elderly, while spending billions every year on this unnecessary European ‘club’?

Why should we send £6 billion every year to the EU so that they can send us back just £3 billion for our farmers? Why should our freedom under the law be over-ruled by the European justice system?

Why should we be subject to arrest and imprisonment, without charge, under the European Arrest Warrant, which overrules 800 years of protection under Magna Carta?

Why should we be bailing out other EU countries (yet another £1 billion to Greece, in July, on top of everything else we pay), who cannot manage their own affairs, and who are struggling under the burden of the Euro?  Watching the Euro car crash in the making reminds me of all those “wise” pundits who kept telling us that we should join the Euro, some years ago – what a disaster that would have been.

But, beware, the Lisbon Treaty which has been signed by our government, commits us to joining the Euro in 2020.

None of the EU supporters are reminding us of that.

Dr Hirst tells us that Scotland will pitch for independence when we separate ourselves from all the burdens of the EU, but he fails to notice that they will be just shackling themselves with the same EU burdens (and huge costs) that we would be escaping from.

Meanwhile their dream of an independent Scotland surviving on oil revenues has just disappeared into the clouds, with the price of oil diving some 70 per cent since they thought that independence was a good idea.

I guess the Scottish assessment of their financial situation, and their known careful sense of financial management, would lead them to decide to stay with the “family” support that they have always enjoyed.

Chris Watkin Chairman of UKIP Cheshire West Cuddington