Chateau Brexit We’re going west!

I HAVE just enjoyed a bottle of the perfect wine to toast Brexit: a Spanish rose of 11 per cent alcohol bought in a French supermarket for only 77p (83 cents).

Deducting VAT and duty leaves just 63p to cover growing and picking the grapes, making the wine, the glass bottles, labels and corks, transporting it from the vineyard and the shop’s profit.

Clearly this wine could only exist because of an EU subsidy, the sort of wild spending financed by Britain’s £50 million a day contribution.

D. WOOD, Castle Cary, Somerset. ONCE again we are hearing about how the North is suffering. This time, sub- standard public transport facilities and roads are mentioned. Complaints in the past have been about anything from failing hospitals and schools to a lack of employment. I am fed up of hearing about the Northern Powerhouse and HS2.

Try living in the South-West of England, and you will soon find it is the forgotten land.

When I visit friends in the Midlands and North, I drive on fantastic motorways and A-roads instead of being stuck in bottlenecks. Any national organisation not based in London will be found in the Midlands or the North.

In the past, schools in the SouthWest got less money per pupil than anywhere else in the country, and instead of expanding our local hospitals to cope with the growing population, one is being closed and the services of two others are to be amalgamated.

TV property programmes show you can buy a three-bedroom house in the North for less than £100,000. Where I live, a two-bedroom terrace with sea views is on sale for £475,000, and it will no doubt be snapped up as a holiday home as few locals earn enough to buy it.

Most large employers are up-country. The largest local employers are the councils, hotels and restaurants, and they all pay low wages.

The North-South divide is all about London and the South-East, not the South-West.

BRIAN SPARKS, Poole, Dorset.