I have just read Mike Wagstaff’s diatribe (‘Blame it all on the EU’, July 19). His half-page article was riddled with mistakes.

Why did I mention I was a submariner? Well, in the 1970s I had to travel to the Clyde Submarine Base from Derby by public transport and, being a Polaris submariner and having spent 20 years offshore around the globe in seabed research, I was out of the country from the age of 16 and a half until I retired two years ago. So this gave me a handle on the changes taking place in Derbyshire.

I come from Matlock, that has the misfortune to be the HQ of Derbyshire county council and all its ‘planners’, which, to be brutally truthful, couldn’t plan a Christmas party.

Immigration is not linked to the millennium. My father worked for British Rail as a train driver at Derby. He was friends with a Jamaican immigrant.

As for mosques, they do not have to be church-like structures with minarets. Houses can (and are) turned into places of worship. This has been common practice since council tax came into being as a means of not paying it.

I do not know (or care) when Wagstaff was last in Derby but I am willing to wager a large amount of my vast income that if he walked down the streets of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Bradford etc. on Friday at lunchtime he would be concerned.

As for the EU, I do not want to prattle on as much as him but it is the best thing to happen to England since Wembley 1966.