Let’s buy British – and stop falling for posh foreign food

From: John Poulter, Dale Park Close, Cookridge, Leeds.

I WAS sad to read the letter from Richard Hopwood (The Yorkshire Post, March 29) who seems to misunderstand both passports and supporting British goods.

John Redwood (next page in the same issue) tells us that we are the world’s fifth-largest economy, but what he fails to point out is that our economy is based on debt – we are not the world’s fifth-richest country.

Anyone who has just received their new tax coding letter will now be aware that out of 15 items where the Government spends our tax, the fifth-largest is for repayment of national debt.

And that is because we have a huge trade imbalance – we spend much more on buying from abroad than we gain from our exports.

Many of these imports are not needed, except people think that it’s posh to buy foreign food. The richest countries are those who sell more than they buy, like Germany, France and China.

It doesn’t matter if we leave the EU or not, we have to buy more British goods. Passports are a good example. Note that Germany, France and several other countries state that making passports is a matter of state security, so don’t go through the tendering process at all, as EU rules allow.

Why don’t we?

From: David H Rhodes, Keble Park North, Bishopthorpe, York.

I RESPECT the media in their search for facts which are informative to us the reader.

I was, however, unnerved by an article in a national paper which gave a detailed state of the Royal Navy, the number of frigates and destroyers available for operations, the location of some of them, and revealed that there is inadequate manpower to crew all our vessels.

Surely some limit on the divulgence of such sensitive information should be imposed?

If problems are being experienced, they are best kept under wraps to keep other nations guessing as to our preparedness and capabilities.

Theresa May could expel all the Russian diplomats with no detrimental effect to the Russians.

Based on the current exposure of delicate information, we could send out such state secrets in booklet form to keep them up to date.

From: Andrew Mercer, Guiseley.

THERESA May’s handling of the Russia’s crisis shows why it is in the interests of the EU to maintain security co-operation with the UK after Brexit.