SIR,

As the euro crisis unfolds, any neutral observer can only come to the conclusion that the UK's role in the drama is to be routinely humiliated, while at the same time being asked to fund a large chunk of the repair bill.

Not only was our Prime Minister rather publicly told to shut up by the French President recently, but he was also firmly informed that the EU wishes to impose a tax on all financial transactions in order to help fund the bailouts of Greece and Italy.

That 80 per cent of the revenue raised from this tax will come from London must not have been lost on the desperate eurocrats in Brussels.

This blatant attempt to bleed London in order to shore up the failing Euro has even prompted John Major, our most Europhile ex-prime minister, to suggest that this was akin to directing a "heat-seeking missile" at the City of London and that it was a "hostile act".

Furthermore the Franco-German negotiators also wish to make Lisbon treaty amendments so they can impose closer fiscal union on Euro countries and, in essence, allow them to take control, if any more were needed, of the errant, supposedly democratic club-med nations who have suffered so much and now owe more than they can ever repay.

In return for conceding this step towards a federal Europe our government may claw back a few morsels of power, such as the 48-hour rule in the working time directive.

Any attempt to potray that as some sort of victory should be treated with contempt. Voters who confirmed our EEC membership in 1975 would have found it incomprehensible that just 36 years later a British government would have to seek permission from a higher authority in order to govern its own workers within its own borders.

If any evidence were needed that UK democracy has been severely eroded that is it.

And as we suffer cuts of all kinds and people begin to take to the streets it is worth considering that we have now broken the £50 million barrier in our daily EU contribution, contributions that go to an organisation that has not had its accounts signed off 17 straight years; probably the most under-reported scandal in history.

We now wave goodbye to nearly £7 billion a year. Or to put it another way, we afford 44 new hospitals, 268 new schools, build a new high speed rail link every five years, employ 172,000 more police officers, repeal inheritance tax or launch four state-of-the-art probes to Mars every year.

Think about that the next time you regard your shrinking pension or you hear about a pensioner freezing to death in their own home.

At the next general election I hope the British people will take the time to investigate for themselves just how much control the UK government really has left in the UK and whether the loss of soveriegnty, the financial cost of membership and the tsunami of often barmy regulations are prices worth paying for us to trade more efficiently with just 26 out of the 196 countries on this earth.

I am sure in Italy and Greece there are many who feel they have no voice and wish they had a few eurosceptic MPs or a party like UKIP to vote for. Luckily for us in the UK we have both. Evidence suggests that it's about time we started putting out trust in them.

Gareth Dunn

(Monmouth)