SIR - It has recently been announced that the Government can no longer afford to fund two large telescopes used by our astral physicists in deep space exploration.

The NHS is closing wards because it can't fund nurse's wages.

The police have had their pay increase, agreed by an independent arbitration board, put back for months without any back pay in an effort to cut inflation, so the Government say.

Care for the elderly and infirm is being reduced because local government cannot find the money to pay for it, in spite of increasing council tax, because the Government is steadily reducing its grant system.

The armed forces are being put under intolerable pressure, with regard to manning and equipment, so that they cannot fight an efficient war against their opponents, because of lack of funding.

And yet, year in, year out, the Government pays in excess of £30 billion to the EU, of which much disappears without trace, and for which we receive no benefit whatsoever.

I can't be the only one who can see the easy way out of the fiscal problem, can I?

Stewart Hanson, Collier Lane, Baildon, Shipley