EWAN Simpson may have spent time in Europe in the 1950s, but that was long before we joined the EEC.

However, by the time I lived for five years in Germany, in the 1990s, the EU was firmly established, and maybe my experiences led me to refer to the UK as being peripheral to Europe.

Mr Simpson rightly reminded me of our shared European history, but he then went on to say we had to rely on our empire to help liberate Europe. Therefore he does seem to intimate that the history of the UK is far from limited to any ties and associations we may have with Europe.

So when Winston Churchill was promoting closer ties with Europe did he envisage that in order to do so, as a consequence our ties with the Commonwealth would be loosened?

For following our entry in to the EEC our trading relations with our former allies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand changed dramatically overnight.

While I see no harm in foreign companies buying British companies and vice versa I am far from convinced that is in our best interests to allow such essential services as railways, water, electricity, airports, banks etc to be owned and run by European companies.

Indeed as a recent television programme revealed since privatisation public expenditure on our railways has more than doubled, and now cost the taxpayer £4 billion per year.

As 70 per cent of our railways are now owned by foreign companies, £3.5billion in profits has gone over the past decade to shareholders instead of being reinvested.

HS2 may have been forced upon us by a lobby group, but the proposals for the EU`s Trans- European Network, of which HS2 is an integral part, were first proposed by Jacques Delors in 1993, and to-day the network throughout the rest of Europe is almost completed.

In summation I feel that while in the short term, Britain may incur adverse economic effects as a result of the Brexit decision in the long run it is in our best interests to once again broaden our horizons and look out to the wider world beyond Europe.

Mabel Taylor