MANY leading politicians and other civic leaders, including Kevin Hollinrake MP and the Archbishop of York, seem to think that the EU referendum debate revolves solely around the social/economic benefits.

While we need to continue to earn a living, the conditions or rules under which we live our lives are paramount.

So, we have an unseen battle between two legal systems - our Common Law based on Magna Carta, with presumption of innocence, right to trial by jury, individual freedom, versus the Napoleonic Inquisitorial system with arbitrary arrest and detention without trial in some cases for up to a year.

The tentacles of the psychopaths in Brussels reach down into our society so that a foreign judge may issue an arrest warrant against a British resident (like Julian Assange) but no Common Law test of truth is allowed before extradition.

Outrageously he has become a fugitive from the British police state in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Even our local bobby has become a man in armour; we can be arrested on some allegation, DNA and fingerprints taken, and released on bail for months (only marginally better than an EU prison cell), while the CPS/police dig for evidence.

Many MPs like Mr Hollinrake may not understand. The Archbishop, a lawyer trained in Common Law, has no excuse.

In 1970, we were told we had to be in the EC as a “bulwark against Communism”. Mr Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, asked why Western leaders wanted to recreate the Soviet Union in Western Europe. By that he means a totalitarian system. Under these conditions does the reader still want to remain?

Martin Cruttwell, Scrayingham

Reality of fracking

“IT starts with just one well”

In less than one month, North Yorkshire County Council planning committee will decide on the first application in the UK to frack for gas at Kirby Misperton since the earthquakes in Lancashire five years ago.

The application is being described as an exploration/test frack, but one that comes with up to nine years of production.

The reality is, and what the companies and the Government do not want you to know, that tests and exploration will inevitably lead to full production, which will have a devastating industrialisation impact upon the region.

The technological limitations of extracting gas from shale by fracking means that hundreds, then thousands of wells will be needed, each taking around 90 days to drill, so if the precedent is set by granting permission for the exploration well, the consequences of full scale production must be understood.

The companies do have a medium/long term plan, but has anyone been made aware of that, other than those who will profit from it?

If our MP, Kevin Hollinrake, has had meetings in Westminster with the “industry” to determine what fracking would look like in his constituency, is it not about time he shared that information with his constituents before it is too late?

Edith Tucker, Hovingham

Correct decision?

MS Allanson asserts (Gazette & Herald, April 6) that in arriving at their decision not to recommend to NYCC acceptance of the current fracking application, Ryedale councillors failed in their duty in considering “future development” as relevant, rather than confining their deliberations to “material facts” (sic).

And yet the Government Planning Portal explicitly states that the (non-exhaustive) list of material considerations for planners (Factors: Material considerations) includes “precedent” as well as “public opinion”, “need”, “natural justice”, and “issues affecting human rights” as well, of course, as “the planning policy context”.

Explicit in these guidelines is the need for planning judgement to discern “the weight to be given to the various considerations”.

David Cragg-James, Stonegrave