On June 23, we will cast our vote on whether we should remain a member of the European Union.

I think it is not hyperbolic to suggest that this is perhaps the most important decision on which we shall be asked to vote since the end of the Second World War.

We are bombarded with propaganda from both sides with each claiming that our economy, our industry and our jobs will be safer within the EU/out of the EU.

There are acres of print on the subject and the government has chosen to spend £9 million to distribute an information leaflet to every household.

The value of a united Europe as a protection against conflict between the European nations is seldom to the fore as an argument but for those of us who remember the reality of a war in Europe this must surely be the most significant, and for the doubters the only, argument for being a partner with our fellow Europeans.

I can no longer feel wholeheartedly that there can be no other decision but to be a member of the EU despite the protagonists for Brexit being politicians who hold beliefs I often despise.

My tentative doubts were fuelled by President Obama’s entry into the field of the debate; I do not remember another American leader feeling free to give the UK such a downright instruction, verging somewhat on threat, that should we choose to vote to come out of the EU we would be punished.

Why does President Obama feel it necessary to act in this way?

I fear that, even he, in this world of lobbyists for big business, has to pay the piper.

Noam Chomsky, an American philosopher whose wisdom and integrity make him a beacon in this world of double speak, in his lecture Requiem for the American Dream identifies the major threat to democracy; it is the growth of government that is funded by big money; the EU TTIP negotiations’ aim is moving health and welfare services into the private sector.

Chomsky sees the loss of the millions of single voices, voices of the poor and powerless; the loss of democracy in exchange for big centralised money hungry control.

Parochially, I see what big Unitary Shropshire has done to little Ludlow and I wonder how I will vote.