Several letters on the euro in the past week, such as Donald Creighton's (January 9), have been long on scary rhetoric about dark eras, treason, gloating superstates and loving the pound, but short on facts.

Here are just a few.

It costs British businesses £12 million every day to stay out of the euro, charges their continental competitors do not now have to pay.

This, in turn, is costing jobs. For every month we stay out, 3,500 people in this country are laid off. Three-and-a-half million of us depend directly or indirectly on trade with Europe for our employment.

It is costing every family in Britain money to stay out of the euro.

Prices in shops and car showrooms in the euro-zone are, on average, 16 per cent cheaper than in Britain.

Mortgages have been consistently cheaper as well and families going to France, Spain and Greece on holiday could save, on average, £48 in currency charges if we had the euro.

In today's global market economy, the idea that any one nation can stand alone and have total control over its own economy is well past its sell-by date.

That's why our neighbours have joined together for the common good, not given themselves up to some Brussels-based foreign dictatorship.

The euro is now a fact for millions of people in 12 of the EU nations, with two of the other three likely to vote on joining next year.

Are we really going to be left behind? Are the French any less French, the Italians any less Italian, the Dutch any less Dutch than they were on December 31?

Being part of the euro guarantees jobs, promotes inward investment by US and Japanese companies and would cushion the effects of global recession.

This is why the Government favours us joining.

When it comes to the euro vote here, it won't be the Magna Carta or the Queen's Coronation oath that will be in people's minds at the ballot box.

It will be their jobs, the cost of living and how much money - whatever it is called - they have in their pockets.

-Warren Morgan, Freshfield Street, Brighton