The Government’s policies for higher education have focused almost exclusively on young people – that is school students

The Government’s policies for higher education have focused almost exclusively on young people – that is, school students. After this disastrous presidency, do we now represent the national equivalent of a blood clot pushing through the European Union’s arteries and causing the heart attack that will kill the Union off?DR RUSSELL DEACONCAERPHILLY Prescott’s personal view on education Sir: There is more to John Prescott’s approach to the Education Bill than Steve Richards thinks (Opinion, 20 December). The key fact here is that Prescott is a former Ruskin College student.When Prescott discusses education, the personal is the political. The EU offers us political and economic synergies essential for survival in the era of relentless globalisation.

Both CAP and our retaliatory rebate are anomalies which must and will be corrected.JOHN ROMERLONDON W5Sir: Tony Blair once described his vision as being of Britain “at the heart” of Europe. However, Tony Blair’s retort when addressing the European Parliament was masterly. While much of British public opinion undoubtedly falls into this category – and even the supposedly pro-Europeans in Britain would be called sceptics elsewhere in the EU – the oft-quoted political and media mouthpieces are overwhelmingly anti-European in tooth and claw.So either amend your stylebook and have the courage and honesty to call them anti-Europeans or, start referring to hunt saboteurs as “hunt sceptics”, vegans as “meat sceptics” and atheists as “God sceptics”.ROD CHAPMANSARLAT, FRANCESir: I wonder how many people in Germany and France wrote to their MP equivalents in the 1980s onwards, indignant about the money spent on the regeneration of the areas in England destroyed by the too-abrupt cessation of coal-mining in those areas.Not too many, I suspect, yet as usual we have the shire-folk from Shropshire, Sussex, Hertfordshire, Devon and Dorset up in arms at the cost to us of helping the regeneration of poorer countries in eastern Europe – where, no doubt, the companies who hold the shares of “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” will be vying to grab a part in reconstruction; not to mention the small cost of being part of a safer Europe than the one into which they and their fathers were born.PETE DAYDENABY, SOUTH YORKSHIRESir: It is sad that there has been no response to the antediluvian views of UKIP MEP Nigel Farage (letter, 20 December). “Having a go” wins great headlines in the British press and, indeed, nothing will justify a system that pays people for little more than being landowners whilst contributing to the starvation of too many parts of the developing world.

But European politics is about compromise and attempting a hand bagging over this policy just won’t work.VIKKI MILLSYOUNG EUROPEAN MOVEMENT LONDON SE1Sir: Thank goodness Adrian Hamilton dared to refer to the prevalent “anti-Europeanism” (Opinion, 16 December). Much of the debate in Britain has been falsified by the media’s mealy-mouthed use of the term “Eurosceptic”. Those with long enough memories will recall that it was Gerhard Schr? who helped the French kick further CAP reform into the long grass back in 2002. They will also recall that Britain did not put up much of a fight at the timeAnd, in truth, we have got ourselves into something of a mess over CAP. But, crucially, this review will take place in 2008 – five years earlier than previously agreed – and it has German backing. The important thing was to agree a budget that would secure the rapid development of new markets in the enlarged Europe: and, at the cost of a little, but not much, financial pain, our Prime Minister had done just that.The Common Agricultural Policy remains an obscenity and a non-binding review is certainly not the outcome the UK would have wished for. So why does The Independent (leading article, 20 December) believe that the abject surrender by Tony Blair in Brussels was “a reasonable compromise”?The French “promise” is meaningless.

A genuine compromise could have been reached if Mr Blair had had the savvy to not try and cut back spending (thereby alienating the new members of the community who are his natural allies) but instead offered to match every euro transferred from the CAP budget with a reduction in the rebate.PETER MOYESBRIGHTLINGSEA, ESSEXSir: Compromisers are never likely to excite positive passion and so Tony Blair should not be too worried about the press reaction to the European summit. There is no evidence that the EU, with its recycling regulations imposed across the continent, has asked this question. Instead the exercise, with its quantity targets, looks like the outcome of a Stalinist mode of thought.Recycling is not a virtue in itself and a reasonable assessment of the environmental problems the planet faces is that more attention to greenhouse-gas emissions and less focus on recycling would be desirable.M R WEALENATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH LONDON SW1 Blair’s abject EU ‘compromise’ Sir: Despite the “agreement” to review the Common Agricultural Policy there is not a cat in hell’s chance of the French agreeing to any changes in the CAP before 2013, when they will doubtless want a costly five- to 10-year transition period. However, our level of ostentatious consumption has, because of our species’ technological brilliance, lately gone well beyond the easily sustainable tribal potlatch, and become actively dangerous. But it hampers us if we talk exclusively in terms “waste” and “unsustainability” because no one wants to be thought ungenerous or poor. Environmental action has to be aware of psychological reality.
MARTIN PARKINSONLONDON NW5Sir: You may lament the failure to recycle rubbish (leading article, 23 December) but a more rational question is how the economic benefits compare with the economic costs. Or, since we know more about the costs than the benefits, how large the benefits need to be for the exercise to be worthwhile.