I HAVE read recent letters from both Chris Davies MEP and Greg Pope MP extolling the benefits of joining the single European currency and the virtues of being closer to Europe.

It is true that this would benefit businesses, particularly those which trade actively with continential countries, but it is the public who will decide our currency's future.

Yes, there is some sentimentality in keeping the pound and the independence it brings, but the public has long memories, too, longer than most of our elected representatives.

They remember 1971 and the introduction of the pound's decimalisation and the huge price increases that ensued and were the precursor to the rampant inflation that took 25 years to bring under control.

If Mr Davies and Mr Pope had talked to people in the streets of France, Germany and the Netherlands, as I have done over the past few weeks, they would find that the introduction of the common currency has gone down very smoothly and, on the whole, been widely accepted.

However, the huge price increases that have followed are becoming a very bitter pill to swallow and will, inevitably, bring upwardly spiralling inflation.

PETER SHAW, Claremont Road, Accrington.