IN the double helping of humbug from Oglesby and Feaster on your letters pages (April 14) we hear the same old miserable nonsense about Europe.

What does a British cod look like? Fish don't carry passports. Fish swim wherever they like which is why, as on many issues, the only way forward is to act with others to protect our common environment.

Left to their own devices our fishermen would simply over-fish the North Sea until there were no fish left, which is exactly what happened off the coast of Canada. Ten years later the cod have still not returned.

If our EU baiters had any real interest in fishermen, they would put forward ideas to replenish and protect fish stocks instead of carping on about Europe.

I say ban all fishing around the UK for three years and employ fishermen to skuttle disused fishing boats, letting them sink to the sea bed around our shores. The wrecks would then become nurseries for new fish.

Tests around the world have shown that sea life quickly colonises old wrecks and who better to decide where to sink the boats than our fishermen who have specialist knowledge of where fish live and breed? They would be using their skills to nurture their future.

As with almost all initiatives on the environment, successive British governments have failed us all. Without the EU this country would have dirtier beaches, next to no recycling, poorer waste management, and fewer initiatives on renewable energy.

It isn't a case of us and them. We are a part of them and the solutions to many of the challenges facing us today require us to work together.

Christian Vassie,

Blake Court,

Wheldrake,

York.

Updated: 11:14 Monday, April 18, 2005