Madam,

I’m responding to Sydney Jones’s letter which caught my eye with a very catchy headline: ‘EU waste includes £410,000 for dog fitness centre’.

That is a lot of money wasted indeed, and Mr Jones mentions other failed and wasteful projects.

The EU is not perfect, nothing is, it needs reforming and many of us are calling and campaigning for this from inside the European Union, in all 28 countries.

However, since Mr Jones mentions this waste, I’d like to put it in perspective with the following list which includes only a few examples of massive waste from our very own Westminster government:

Just compare £410,000 with: £53 million for the failed Garden Bridge in London. Never built, all wasted on planning; and £27 billion for the HS2 section between London and Birmingham to gain 15 minutes travel time, which if completed in its entirety, will cost £56 billion.

Then you remember local and regional railway lines are starved of funds, neglected… £440 million a week is the Bank of England’s estimate of the cost of Brexit so far.

Put that on a human scale, it means Brexit has already cost each one of us £1,500 so far each year since 2016. (Centre for European Reform source).

Waste of money? That’s a definite yes for me when I compare it with less than £20 a year I’ve been paying towards EU funds through my income tax, which gives me the right to automatic holiday health insurance in 27 countries; has helped fund the Ceredigion coastal path I enjoy; has helped build cycle tracks, clean up the sea and beaches, build infrastructure, fund youth clubs, sports venues and activities…I could go on.

I just wanted to balance the waste, nothing more, nothing less.

Waste is bad either way, but let’s not point to just one source of it and use it as a way to divide people more than they already are.

Let’s all work together to eliminate as much of it as possible, everywhere we see it.

Yours etc, Marie-Hélène Thomas, Aberystwyth.

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