Vocal Voices

A big issue in the Brexit talks, even though it's a tiny part of our economy.
I don't want to make this into a fall out Brexit thread, but one thing has just struck me, late in the day.

I read that the UK's "take" of fish is 7% under the EU fisheries policy, and there is considerable toing and froing over our post EU take.

But, if we were to get 100% of the fish - we couldn't actually catch them because we don't have the number of trawlers to actually do it?
(Plus most of our catch is sold abroad).
There must be some percentage point at which we're OK and they are OK?

Logically if we put a stick in the sand, see how it goes and review the findings in a year or two, this shouldn't really be a problem?

It's not the % that is the major stumbling block crommers. It is the fact that the UK wants an annually negotiated quota, just as the EU do with Norway, but the EU wants whatever is signed now to be there in perpetuity. The press has persistent myopia on that fact unless it is of use to them.

Whilst we can't fish much now, we can build our fleets up over time. During that time the fish stocks would be able to recover a bit and give our boats something to catch.

In the end, this comes down to the mandate handed to the EU negotiating team. Their mandate was, essentially, UK gets the crumbs of what they want to give us whilst they get everything from the UK that they ever had without the interference. Look it up, it is not difficult.

If there is any agreement, fishing or otherwise, in the next few weeks, it will take a minor miracle and then France will probably veto it anyway.

France's part of the "the EU gets everything they ever had" was heavily fishing centric. Not surprising because Macron and any potential French president, needs the fishing lobby to get elected. If French boats are tied up in French ports in 2021, Le Pen might actually win in 2022.

Never a good thing to just try and look at one thing when talking relations between the EU and the UK. Fishing is real, but the driver for fishing is normally in the background.

There was a discussion on the television recently about the fish quota. Apparently it was suggested that the UK could give a bigger percentage of fish to the EU of the types of fish the UK doesn't eat but is eaten in Europe. The bigger picture in my own mind is that the UK needs to have complete control over its own waters. The EU has a trading agreement with Canada and I don't recall that it is dependent on Canadian sovereign waters to fish in.

I hope Boris Johnson sticks his guns - certainly the red wall he was fortunate to attract at the last election was not entirely because Jeremy Corbyn was an unacceptable Leader to many Labour voters - many of these voters want to leave the EU and they will be sorely disappointed if we end up at the behest of the EU.

Just tell them to "do one "

Yes. That would work! Because it is not as though we will ever be trading with our nearest neighbours and one of the world's largest trading blocs (by any definition) ever again - is it?

But back to fishing.

The quota aspect is only one of many and it has been hijacked and misrepresented as being the only thing - the sticking point.

Behind the scenes thare are other things such as the 1958 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the1902 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the move from the old inshore (12 nm limits) to the 200nm Exclusive Economic Zones in 1982, a Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for each stock, now part of the CFP.

These all happened long before the EEC / EU which the UK joined. Then there is the privatisation of UK fishing quotas of the UK's distant water fleet (see: Cod Wars) and changing them into a commodity able to be traded between producer organisations (POs). A lot of these commodities were sold to and are now owned / partly owned by companies based in countries that are members of the EU, but not exclusively - the EU does not own them.

Quotas might be one thing, but they are far from being the whole story.

victor wrote:Just tell them to "do one "

Fully agree! The EU still wants to exercise control over us; they need to understand we are no longer a vassal state.

Fishing is not as cut and dried as all that. The Norwegian deal shows that.

Fish do not just stay in one part of the sea, however the areas in which they mature to a siz they can be caught might be.

If, for instance, one country was to allow the catch of immature fish, another country may lose all the mature fish.


So far so good, common sense.

What has been going on with the CFP, however, is not common sense. There are probably Zero common stock between baltic and med states and the UK fishing grounds.

It is really easy under the CFP, just parcel out all the fish and its job done. The fact that 90% of our fish are caught by others is not a concern of the EU.

The problem, today, is that the EU is totally determined to continue fishing UK waters after we leave the EU.

The UK wants to set up a sensible situation where we calculate how much of other countries fish we may find in our waters and allow those countries to fish them under a quota basis.

The fact that the EU is determined to keep the totally lop sided deal is only one of the reasons people voted to leave. The longer this idiocy continues, the more justified that viewpoint becomes.

Telling the EU to "do one" may be satisfying, but it is not sensible, not up to the very high standards of integrity the world expects of the UK.

Telling the EU that they have refused to recognise reality and have, as a result, lost access to UK fishing grounds until they come to the table and talk sense on fishing, is entirely the way the UK works.

If the EU continues to carry on in this way, they may find, come January, that the Only thing we are willing to talk to them about is fish.

Thinking about fish and fish alone, it is worth dissecting what the EU is saying about it.

The EU is saying that they won't do a deal if they don't get to catch the same amount of fish.

OK, so they don't want a deal.

But then they are saying that if we don't have a deal, then we won't be able to sell them our fish.

But if they don't want our fish and don't need our fish, why are they blocking a deal when we remove access to our waters?

Now let's go back and remember the schoolyard. What is it the bully alway says?

As we see more and more of the "intense" negotiations, we hear that we offered 50% of their current catch (45% of our fishing rights), with a 3 year phase out.

The EU offered twice our catch, 18%, with a review after 10 years, take it or no deal. Leaving them with 82% of our catch and no incentive not to destroy stocks.

Back to the school yard. You don't give in to a bully, you punch him on the nose, hard enough to draw blood. You might take a beating, but the bully will be the one going to class with blood running down his nose.

Exactly Suff. I never bought into the idea right from the beginning that the EU were our friends and wanted a mutually satisfactory deal, as if that were the case we wouldn't be here over four years down the line. We have committed the ultimate sin of choosing to walk away from them. As for giving the bullies a punch in the nose - Macron is a case in point. He has openly admitted he will veto any deal if he does not get all the fish he wants.