I HAVE been getting increasingly irritated by letters about the EU and can contain my impatience no longer.

Mr Micklewright, for example, seems to have no idea how the EU works in practice but is happy to criticise it from a position of almost total ignorance.

The EU does not, and never has, initiated or shovelled money at projects of its own in the UK or anywhere else. If a country wants EU help with a project, it applies for funds and has to present a credible case to get them eg the regeneration of Manchester and Liverpool.

When I moved to the north west in the mid-60s, both cities were, frankly, dumps. They are now, relatively speaking, buzzing, both economically and artistically, to a large extent helped by money from the EU Regional Development Fund, since we joined the then EEC.

Not because the EU thought it was a nice idea: because the cities themselves, supported by the UK government, put in innumerable applications to the EU, most of which were accepted.

Mr Micklewright and others might like to have a look at a forlorn plaque on a wall near the Bridgewater Hall, on the other side of the Metro tracks.

Anyone who has visited Manchester in the past year will be aware of the massive upgrade and extension of the Metro system that is going on.

The plaque says “This development has been part financed by the European Regional Development Fund”.

And is this sort of co-funding going to happen after Brexit?

No. And is this UK government going to replace such EU funding with funding of its own? Don’t make me laugh.

This government won’t even give Cheshire East enough funds to run a decent bus service.

The benighted and utterly discredited policy of ‘austerity’ started by the late and unlamented Chancellor, George Osborne, will ensure that, not only will the NHS not get anything like an extra £300m a week, we won’t even get enough to run our schools, universities, buses, children’s centres etc either.

Mr Micklewright and I may agree on the colossal waste of money that is the HS2 project, but blame George and others for pushing a vanity project, not the EU.

Geoff Holman Cheshire