I MUST admit that Chris Moncrieff is my least favourite of the regular contributors to the pages of The Press, but on October 23 he excelled himself.

He described the outgoing president of the European Union as one of “these stubborn and intractable European grandees” and the whole European system (including our own elected representatives I assume) as “the Brussels mob”.

These comments seem as unsuitable as David Cameron’s description of Ukip – which he has now hastily had to swallow – as “ignorant fruitcakes”.

Later, Chris Moncrieff accused president José Manuel Barroso of his “unequivocal slamming of the door in the face of the Prime Minister” when all he did was to remind him of one of the basic principles of the union which Britain, belatedly, asked to join.

One might ask Mr Moncrieff about his facts and numbers when he referred to “swarms of eastern Europeans... flooding the jobs market and demanding housing...”

I wonder when space will be given to the majority of level-headed people who would see a policy of leaving the EU as short-sighted and negative, irreparably harming our trade and reducing Britain to a small, quarrelsome and unimportant offshore island?

Why do the British media so seldom report all the good news about the United Nations and the European Union?

Perhaps, like the NHS, we take good things for granted, and only need to be told crimes and tragedies which are the exceptions to the norm.

Joyce Pickard, Hansom Place, York.