The real issues in Southend are not the Boris airport in the estuary – that won’t happen – and it’s not the silly bistros in Leigh Broadway where the posy types pay £10.95 for a plate of bangers and mash.

No, the real issue is Essex fishermen who are having their testicles removed by EU directives making their families suffer.

This fishing quota system is all the fault of the British Government which is as weak as fresh water when it comes to standing up to the grey suits in Brussels.

So yet more of our fishermen are being fined for landing perfectly edible yet disallowed cod and herring.

Remember when our fishing grounds belonged to us?

We trawled and netted and our coast was British.

We dealt with and took from the sea what our nets allowed.

Today we have the EU muppets of the fishing industry, ever clipboard in hand, seemingly obsessed in making life difficult for the little man of Essex for catching a couple of stone of white fish and selling it for consumption rather than chucking it back dead to rot in the sea bed.

Who remembers when those same coastal fishing grounds belonged to us?

It was our very own coastal waters packed with herring and cod and all sorts until the idiots in our Government gave it all away to the Spanish and the French along with the rest of those foreign fishermen who fish illegally for undersize species just for soup.

It is they who spit on the directives from Brussels that us Brits adhere to!

Those who reside on Leigh pavement cafes, the trendy and the worthless, get your shoulders behind our local boys and their battle against these EU directives.

Trevor Murdin
Flemmingh Drive
Leigh