Madam,

I write with reference to the letter in last week’s Cambrian News by Quentin Deakin which referred to “a majority of people in Gwynedd knowing which way their bread is buttered” (‘High court ruling has put the cat among the pigeons’). It really made me realise that your writer and many residents now living in this area have no idea how poor the area was and is. Merioneth/Gwynedd has always been known as the lowest-paid area of Britain with good cause. It’s rural, very few factories (except explosives) so no real chance to earn money with which to buy butter, so for most of the children, unless they were farmer’s children (who had cows), margarine was the order of the day, or dripping.

I was shocked when I was posted from Germany/BAOR to Tonfannau, to discover that the civilians working in the army camp had to have two or three other jobs to enable them to take home a living wage to keep their families. Why do we need food banks today? Perhaps the writer can explain this away as he does the referendum on ‘In’ or ‘Out’ of Europe.We all understood what it was about but Mr Deakin now says that that was not what David Cameron meant!

Nothing is going to happen overnight. We all understood that. Sorry that it didn’t fit in with his plans, but progress is sometimes slow. Leaving Europe was very necessary as we were being dragged down the road of the United States of Europe with an army, navy and airforce that would not only cost the earth but maybe our lives as well! Whose finger on the trigger then?

Perhaps he doesn’t like Mr Trump either. Democracy is a funny word too. It doesn’t mean proportional representation. Your Parliament has to vote on that. Perhaps we should have a vote on that after we have left Europe.

Yours etc

Ronald Bott

Abergynolwyn.