MADAM — I want to thank you for printing the letter (SNJ: September 3) from Caroline Stephens, the Stroud Ukip candidate.

At least now we know where Ukip gets its policies from – The Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday – and I think most readers know what extreme views they promote.

As regards the letter itself, I’m not sure who it is written to but I think a bit of simple arithmetic should allay peoples fears but also underline what a comedic bunch Ukip supporters and Daily Mail readers must be.

Quoting from The Mail on Sunday she states that the EU has given Cuba £1.6 million, about the same as the monthly salary of a premier club footballer.

If there were just 160 million people in the EU, each one of us would have given precisely one penny to help alleviate the terrible poverty in Cuba.

However, there are more than 500 million people in the EU so even Ukip supporters will be able to see that at less than 0.3 pence each, we aren’t very generous at all, and looking at the other figure she quotes, we have each given Cuba less than 1.5p in six years.

I don’t know how much a copy of The Mail on Sunday costs but if it’s full of similar scaremongering twaddle like this, it’s a complete waste of money and the people that buy it should send the money to needy people in other countries like Cuba instead.

Howard Price

Nailsworth