FRANK Leeming’s misinformed diatribe in last week’s News Telegraph cannot be left unanswered. It is all too typical of the inaccuracies peddled by the party he professes to support.
No ‘directive’ from the EU has declared England ‘non-existant’ It ceased to exist as a separate political entity on the passing of the Act of Union in 1707 (long before the founding of the EU, in case he had not realised) and then became part of the United Kingdom.
Ireland joined in 1800 to make us the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (no mention of England).
After the granting of Home Rule to Eire in 1921 we became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as we still are.
(No mention of England.) Some maps of the UK will show its constituent parts of England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland, but this is nothing to do with the EU.
He asks spurious questions about flags.
There are no directives from the EU about flags. Whether we fly the Union Flag, as is done officially by our government on public buildings, or privately fly flags of the various constituent parts, is up to us.
How he can suggest that there is no United Kingdom because England does not exist is beyond comprehension — see above.
Northern Ireland is still a Kingdom, and England and Scotland form the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
If Scotland goes independent then the remainder will be the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland, unless and until we decide on another name to recognise Wales’s part.
So, Mr Leeming, if you feel you have lost your country blame your parliament in 1707, your flag blame yourself for not flying it, and your heritage you cannot lose.
We haven’t given our country away.
Politicians decided the union of 1707 and the British public agreed to us joining the EU in a referendum in 1975. Was Mr Leeming too young to remember that, or is he now so old that he has forgotten? Now he urges us to support the UKIP. This is the party that disseminates lies about the EU.
The latest one was to suggest that we could no longer make and sell home preserves and if we did the EU could send us to jail. The EU has no powers to jail anyone.
Can I remind him too of the name of his party —the United Kingdom Independence Party? Where is England in that ? “Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation”. Indeed you have, Mr Leeming, and so have your party’s lies and deceits.
MALCOLM M. CAPORN
PREMIER AVENUE
