INGEBORG Graessle, German MEP, member of Chancellor Merkel's CDU party and current Chair of the Budgetary Control Committee of the European Parliament, has said that the UK must pay 57 billion euros to exit the EU (THE figure is after UK assets in the EU have been taken into account) and that this European club is not like a golf club that one can leave whenever one wishes. Would any sane individual ever subscribe to a club whose rules are to inflict enormous financial burdens on an exiting member as punishment and also subject that person to menacing threats and intimidation from the club's board and fellow members as a deterrent to leaving?

Yet, this is precisely what our politicians subscribed to on our behalf. Would the electorate, who were told in the 1973 referendum on EU entry that they would be voting for a Common Market for trading, have voted yes if they had known about the contents of successive treaties which were signed, that Brussels would become their future lawmaker and that their own government's task would be to merely implement EU legislation?

Only now is the magnitude of our politicians' duplicity and incompetence beginning to unravel. No wonder Tony Blair and John Major want us to remain in the EU, for it is only in the process of leaving that it will become painfully clear to UK citizens just how much was surrendered of their national sovereignty by both Conservative and Labour leaders.

Morag Black,

3 Leeburn Avenue, Johnstone.

I AM profoundly ashamed of my country for attempting to abandon Europe. For very selfish reasons we are putting at risk a union of countries which has been by far the most successful union since the creation of the United States of America. Not only that but we have undermined the efforts of the Eastern European countries who are working desperately to make a success of the democracies they have formed since being released from the orbit of the Soviet Union.

The action of the UK could lead to the break-up of the EU and this would certainly be against our national interests and damage our ability to co-operate in a whole range of important issues. The UK has a vital role to play in providing stability in Europe and continuing to put pressure for reform in the EU. It should continue its historic ability to provide leadership in Europe.

John J Blanche,

Delting, Boquhan, Balfron.