Staged outrage

Alex Orr (Letters, 27 October) is perfectly correct when he says that Prime Minister David Cameron has known for months of the accounting rule which means that the UK has received an additional bill for £1.7 billion from the EU.

Therefore Mr Cameron’s fake tantrum simply served to
humiliate himself and the United Kingdom.

Mr Orr is also correct when he says that the rebate given to the UK in 2008 passed virtually
unremarked and it follows that the outrage expressed by Clark Cross and Gordon Kennedy
(Letters, same day) is either ill-informed or hypocritical.

In any case, Mr Cameron has been fairly and squarely hoisted by his own petard.

For months he and his Chancellor, George Osborne, have been smugly talking up the UK’s recovery, a recovery which remains extremely fragile and has done nothing to improve the lives of ordinary working 
people.

The scale of the government’s desperation to put the best 
possible gloss on this recovery can be measured by the 
Office for National Statistics’ 
inclusion of contributions to the economy totalling £10 billion from illegal drug use and 
prostitution.

Douglas Turner

Derby Street

Edinburgh

The EU demand for £1.7 billion should show the people of the UK what a corrupt and inefficient outfit it is.

The UK has made some
difficult decisions to bring the deficit under control but this has not been matched by our Continental neighbours.

This means that we are being punished for our prudence by being asked to pay for their profligacy.

William W Scott

St Baldred’s Road

North Berwick