YP Letters: Pound in decline as markets brace themselves for Brexit

Will the EU referendum leave holiday-makers out of pocket?

SO the pound’s falling value will hit holiday makers in the pocket? Unfortunately it is not only holidaymakers who suffer. Since November 30, the pound has declined 13 per cent against a weak euro.

How can this be, given the UK’s stronger recovery compared with a weak Eurozone? The answer is that foreign exchange markets are factoring in a possible Brexit. Many investors see leaving the EU as bad for sterling and the UK economy. If the pound falls as low as US$1.22 (as predicted by the Swedish Handelsbanken) then UK businesses are facing an extremely rough year end.

Barely out of recession, the risk of Brexit is hammering cash flows and foreign direct investment, and raising the cost of imported raw materials. While a falling pound should benefit UK exports, it won’t if companies hoping to export are stuck with a cash flow crisis as rising costs destroy profit margins.

From: Graham Turner, Burnleys Mill Road, Gomersal.

OVER the last few weeks, I have lost count the number of times MPs have said “We want to stay in a reformed European Union” so who is going to reform it?

What the Prime Minister achieved was really no more than cosmetic changes, and even these may not be legally enforceable. They do not provide any long-term solution to the cost of the EU to the taxpayers, it’s lack of democracy, control of our borders. We have voted 70 times against the introduction of laws, we didn’t agree with, but to no avail. So who will be able to reform the EU?

From: JG Riseley, Harrogate.

PAUL Morley (The Yorkshire Post, April 9) points out the excessive cost of having a peripatetic European Parliament, rotating as it does between Brussels and Strasbourg. I would suggest a solution which, as well as addressing this, also serves the role claimed by the EU in averting a further round of fratricide among the nations of Europe. The parliament would stay permanently in Strasbourg. This by itself would of course tilt the balance of privileges too much in favour of France. But that would be offset by making Alsace-Loraine (including Strasbourg) an independent state within the EU. Such a fundamental and historic compromise between France and Germany would provide a more secure basis for peace than all the rest of us being obliged to form some kind of safety harness to keep them from fighting.