BARRY VAUGHAN, of Townsend Close, West Alvington, writes:

Time now perhaps for a closer look and assessment at what can be expected from this hapless referendum dumped on an unprepared nation, unlike the Swiss, who are used to referendum procedures and tend not to gamble with their future.

Straight off, I have to express my delight and pride at the commitment this paper gave to such a nation-changing issue – three letters pages were ­devoted to the subject, Gazette, June 17. Unprecedented and not obvious in other local or national papers, just repeats of the same, week after week, needing an effort to concentrate on news through all the advertisements.

Compare the Gazette with others and you will find… not much! No free ads, no Village Voices and no tongue-in-cheek News of the Weird, with much-needed light humour lacking entirely for years in the rest of the depressing press.

Comforted by this, it was morose reading to see reported the feeble trivia as uttered by Sarah Wollaston MP, Gazette, July 1, who, not quite sure whether to leave or remain, played the apologist’s role instead by stating the obvious, that which the EU club was trying to organise anyway. The rest of the article reveals a vivid imagination based on wishful thinking and not Brussels’ ­current firm line: ‘Out you go arrogant ones and no thanks for slapping our face.’

Even more wimp-like whingeing issues from another of the many bewildered MPs, Gary Streeter, who fantasises about ‘negotiations’ with 27 other European nations. There will be no talks! Wake up MPs, we have voted to leave, and that’s that. Get used to it. The UK has told the EU to get stuffed. We are a rogue nation now. On page 9, Labour’s Gareth Derrick put out the other political ‘feelgood’ fabrication, that everything will turn out well with a ‘new beginning’ comfort theme. Er… yes?

This new beginning/opportunity will turn out to be a dreary return to a public school-­dominated, autocratic, one-way policy enforcement; as well as continuing with making justice too expensive to use; access to the European Court of Human Rights at Strassburg out of bounds – what happens to the 1,000-plus cases still to be heard against our Government?; ­funding for Cornwall stopped – formally European Economic Community-protected and looked after as a poverty area; a halt to meaningful beach and sea clean-ups. Previous English governments did nothing.

We have lost control of our coastal waters with regards to fishing: now any EU member country can enter our waters and fish to their heart’s content with impunity, for the UK is now not part of the Common Fisheries Policy, which was ­trying to control greedy catchers and to initiate conservation – a ‘cod wars’ repeat? Ivybridge railway station was built by EEC cash, as were many other large infrastructure works, including highways. The arts, too, have done well. I invite you to add to the growing list of disasters.

How soon are the teenage dead forgotten, their 300 years as fodder to perpetual wars. Shame our brains are activated by just a loss of current trivial, avaricious, grasping and Nimby-like exercises of ‘dog in manger’ jealousies.