FORGIVE me for failing to share the heady delight of Gary Titley, Labour MEP, at the prospect of "new countries from central and eastern Europe" joining the EU (Letters, January 4).

I can already feel my pocket being picked to subsidise their corrupt regimes and to finance maybe millions of their citizens gleefully entering our already overcrowded country quite legally, without any semblance of immigration controls, to enjoy our generous handouts without any intention to contribute to our economy.

His claims that "Britain got everything it wanted" from the Nice Summit and that "any lingering ideas of a European superstate were killed off for good" are preposterous, and typical of the propaganda relentlessly being drip-fed to a supposedly gullible public by self-seeking politicians.

KEITH ELLEL, Westwood Avenue, Rishton.