Sir, - Many of the voices against the euro are a generation of people who remember a different era of the United Kingdom. The generation who had their houses paid for by inflation, who benefited handsomely from the mutual societies windfall bonanza, jobs for life and generous pensions allowing early retirement, and have a semblance of a state pension.

The current working generation has a less rosy future; low inflation will not pay off the huge mortgages taken out to get into the property market, most of the mutuals have gone so there are no prospects of lump sum payments, and due to the demographic changes there is little chance of early retirement.

There will be no state pension and with the demise of the final salary schemes there is an uncertain outlook for pensions as current pension funds are subject to wildly volatile markets.

The adoption of the euro will reduce exchange rate fluctuations that have made a roller coaster of farm incomes, and has all but killed off manufacturing. It will open up more business opportunities as pricing will be more transparent across the EU. Is this not overdue in "rip-off Britain"?

Irresponsible media reports circulate that the adoption of the euro will lead to higher taxes; there are no grounds for such mischief making. I have never met a German or Italian insisting on paying more tax, they play the game like us of using every allowance to keep the individual tax burden to a minimum.

One of the greatest fears in the euro debate seems to be that faceless Brussels bureaucrats will run our country. Firstly this will only happen if we let them by standing on the sidelines, and secondly could they do a worse job on transport, schools and hospitals than "Westminster bureaucrats"?

The question of Euro participation should be decided for the benefit of future generations and not by sticking with what we know or not wanting a new set of notes and coins.

It is patronising of anti-euro campaigners to think that it is difficult to change currencies, most of us manage it by day two on foreign holidays.

Above all in considering Euro participation, it is not a simple issue of "saving the shilling", there are capital markets, economic, and political considerations

MARTIN WORNER

East House,

Kirby Hill,

Richmond.

Euro nonsense

Sir, - There are often conflicting claims made about how much of Britain's trade is with the Eurozone. Those who want Britain to replace the pound with the euro regularly assert that the Eurozone is Britain's most important trading partner.

But a new, comprehensive study of Britain's pattern of trade published by the no campaign has finally established the facts.

Although the Eurozone accounts for 54pc of goods exports it represents just 32pc of exports in the service sector and only 36pc of income from overseas investments. Overall, our trade with the Eurozone accounts for just 43pc of the total.

The study has also revealed that the euro, and old EU currencies such as the franc and deutschmark, are not widely used by British exporters.

The majority of exports (51pc) are invoiced in sterling. Even the dollar is a more important currency than the euro with 27pc of exports to the Eurozone invoiced in dollars compared with just 19pc invoiced in the euro (or in old euro currencies).

Because Britain does more trade outside the Eurozone than our EU partners, the one-size-fits-all interest rate set by the European Central Bank would be wrong for our economy.

Economic developments in the rest of the world have a greater impact here than in the Eurozone and we must maintain the ability to set an independent economic policy so that we can deliver the right response to these changes. Failure to do this would lead to a re-run of our disastrous experiment in the ERM, which caused unemployment to double.

Finally, the fact that British exporters use pounds and dollars in preference to the euro demolishes one of the main arguments used by the euro lobby.

The pound has been relatively stable against the dollar and other world currencies while the euro has been volatile. If we had locked into the euro from the outset, we would have suffered greater exchange rate variability for the majority of our trade.

Replacing the pound with the euro would be the quickest way to undermine our economic success and put jobs at risk.

JOHN ELLIOTT

Chairman, Business For Sterling North-East

Victoria Road,

Darlington