Sir – I have been publishing books now for some years, but not being well established (yet) sales are limited and consequently unit costs high.

So what blessing the advent of Kindle books, levelling the playing field between small-timers and larger enterprises.

That was until the levying of VAT on ebooks (not on paper books – note) by the EU in January this year.

Also, causing considerable inconvenience this same year, was the UK being compelled to harmonise maximum bank account protection limits downward from £85,000 to £75,000, with continental EU.

I wonder whether the ‘British Model’ outer-ring membership (of the EU) proposed by PM David Cameron recently will make life any easier for small businesses and ordinary people when we have all sorts of unnecessary niggles, such as I have described, imposed by the unelected oligarchs over the water?

In 1975 Britain had its first and only referendum on the EU (then Common Market) when Harold Wilson promised that he had repatriated all sorts of powers, yet the juggernaut rolled on regardless.

Any gains (and they were trivial) were soon swallowed up with endless treaties choking us and removing democratic power from the British electorate.

Will it be any better this time round with the referendum (before the end of 2017)?

I cannot see it. Being in the ‘outer ring’ will effectively mean less say than the seven per cent we currently have, yet being incessantly bullied to comply with whatever those be-suited men in Brussels decide.

I want to get on with publishing, not handicapped by petti-fogging rules and regs. Cameron would do better to lead on a resurgent Commonwealth with opportunities for growth instead of sclerosis.

David Barnby
New Yatt Road
Witney