IMAGINE: a chap comes to your door a few years ago with a proposition.

He empties his purse to produce a mere one pound. He invites you to do the same. You can show a fiver. I have a good idea, he says, let's pool the money and share it..........that is European union.

Today his eastern European cousin turns up (he's been given your address, word of a soft touch soon gets round !). Due to your earnest endeavours and frugality and fearing you might need to have something tucked away for your pensionable years, you can show a twenty pound note. We'll put that together with my fifty pence and share it between us, shall we?....and that is European enlargement. More people dipping into our diminishing coffers.

Perhaps the only ones entitled to feel more worried about the cost of this than the UK as a disproportionate net contributor of billions to the EU budget is Germany who have already seen their standards of living diminish to pay for reunification with their poorer east German neighbours.

One doesn't need a maths O-level to work out that we aren't going to be better off by a long way. As a wealthy country we could afford to help out around the world through foreign aid. We won't be able to help very much as we get dragged into the same poor house. And who'll help us?

P FARNWORTH

Howard St

Radcliffe