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Why every vote counts on June 4
• ON June 4 we are faced with the prospect of the European parliamentary elections where turn-out is historically very low and, again, we face the threat of the far right gaining seats and representing us in Europe.
HOPE not hate understands every vote counts as these elections, too, are run on a system of proportional representation giving minority parties the opportunity to take seats.
I hope that in Camden we will all turn out to vote, and will not let the far right exploit the real difficulties that we are all facing in this economic crisis.
People are disillusioned with our politicians but don’t let us sleepwalk into allowing those that seek to divide our communities to take seats in Brussels because we did not think that it mattered if we ignored the European elections !
Cathy Pound
Camden HOPE not hate
camdenhopenothate@googlemail.com
Grown up parliament
• THE issue of parliamentarians’ expenses has dominated the political agenda.
I welcome the prospect of change towards a more accountable and reasonable system that Liberal Democrats have championed for several years to make our democracy function better.
The European Parliament has a tighter regime coming into force in July that we pushed for.
But with elections to the European Parliament taking place on June 4 it’s important not to ignore the great challenges that we face. We need to get out of Labour’s recession and create more jobs through the European Union’s huge free-trade single market.
I have worked extensively and successfully as your London Liberal Democrat Euro MP in the European Parliament to uphold human rights, our traditional liberties and equal treatment for all, co-operating with MEPs of other parties and nationalities to get common agreement.
For all its faults, the European Parliament is more grown up than Westminster.
In this election the field is crowded with parties opposed to Britain’s membership of the EU.
They blame all our problems on Europe when they run out of other scapegoats but they don’t even start to address the real problems we face. International crime, climate change and a global recession can only be tackled by countries working together and finding shared solutions.
I will continue to argue forcefully that all Europeans including Londoners are stronger together, poorer apart.
Baroness Ludford MEP
St Peter’s Street, N1
Rules of the game?
• AN old Italian saying – Il Buongiorno si vede dal mattino – translates roughly as you can tell how the rest of the day looks like from the morning.
Bringing this saying into Camden politics, I was quite perplexed upon receiving the Lib Dems’ communications about the upcoming European elections because this literature dealt overwhelmingly with the campaign of their parliamentary candidate, who isn’t standing to be MEP, last I heard.
Each party gets a communications allowance funded by the taxpayers, you and me, to campaign for the European elections, funds restricted for a specific use.
This explains the opening proverb.
Bending the spirit of election rules?
Is this the “morning” showing how the rest of the “day” would look?
Giovanni Spinella
West End Lane, NW6
EU help for Israel
• SO Skip Murphy (Letters May 7) has flushed them out of the undergrowth in time for the mating season, the coming election of MEPs on June 4.
We know of the existence of our MP Glenda Jackson because she puts herself about in her surgeries and through the media and she will answer your letters of concern.
But does the average punter in Camden know who their MEP is?
I was given the email of two of them at a demonstration against the blitzkrieg on Gaza by Israel.
I asked them to bring up this matter in Brussels. No reply. Later I learnt EU policy on the Palestinians is built on European guilt about the Holocaust. That means the EU is indirectly helping the Israelis to destroy Gaza and attack Palestinians at will in the West Bank.
If MEPs are ignoring this inhumanity then I can easily ignore them.
Wilson John Haire
Lulot Gardens, N19
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