n MAY I wish a particularly happy and successful New Year to your growing number of readers who want the UK to leave the EU and restore our right to govern ourselves.

It is probable 2004 will prove to be the watershed. In true Orwellian terms, worse will be better.

First, the worse.

On May 1, more than 73 million Eastern Europeans become members of the EU. They will increase membership by 33 per cent, but EU wealth will increase by only six per cent.

It does not take an economic Einstein to estimate what will happen next.

It is already known that countless thousands plan to move to Britain, as we are the only country in the present EU - apart from Ireland - to allow them in immediately.

They will be free to live and work here, use our benefits system and schools, and make unlimited use of our National Health Service.

As EU citizens, not one will be recorded as an immigrant.

The separate nightmare of continued, excessive immigration from other parts of the world will continue.

Now, the better. On June 10 we vote for the next crop of Members of the European Parliament.

They will have no power to change anything, and each one costs the British taxpayer more than £1.25m a year.

But - and it's a big "but" - we can send a massive protest to Brussels by electing MEPs who want to extract the UK altogether. Turkeys willing to vote for Christmas.

We already know similarly-minded MEPs are likely to be elected from Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Estonia, perhaps even from France and Germany.

Together with those from the UK, they will exert real pressure to consign this whole corrupt, wasteful, unaccountable, interfering nonsense known as the European Union to the rubbish bin of history.

I have the honour to be one of those turkeys.

RICHARD CHAMINGS,

Prospective UKIP Candidate in the West Midlands for the European

Parliamentary Elections,

Castlemorton, Malvern.