EU Referendum

Showing posts with label fish. Show all posts

Mail+fish+01[i-Mail+fish+01]Before we leave fishing, for the moment – clouded in our usual miasma of gloom and doom – we could not help but remark on the crass treatment of the issue by the Daily Mail today.

Under the by-line of Sean Poulter, Consumer Affairs Correspondent, we are told that the amount of cod that can be caught around Britain will be cut by between 14 and 20 percent next year. Most UK supplies come from around Iceland "where numbers are plentiful", burbles the egregious Poulter, but… "if fewer fish are trawled in the North Sea, prices will rise".

Now, let's see. According to this source, this one and especially this from the Frozen at Sea Fillets Association (FASFA), landings from British waters account for less than ten percent of cod consumed in the UK.

Reykjavik+harbour[i-Reykjavik+harbour]This was why the FASFA was set up - in September 2000 – representing trawler owners, importers and distributors of "Frozen at Sea Fillets" in the UK, Norway, Iceland, Faeroe Islands, UK, Russia, Germany, France and Spain. It works, "to actively counter current negative media coverage and reports about North Sea cod, which represents less than 10 percent of cod consumed in the UK."

In fact, according to the answer to a Parliamentary question posed by former shadow fisheries minister Owen Paterson:

Information available on landings of and trade in cod in 2002 indicates that landings by UK registered vessels accounted for 15 per cent. of total cod consumed in the UK during the year. However, most of the cod imported into the UK has been processed to some extent. As such on a standardised live weight equivalent basis, the landings by UK registered vessels accounted for 5 per cent. of total cod consumed in the UK in 2002.

This was publicised by the Booker column in February 2005 and, as far as we are aware, the situation has not changed.

Reykjavik+fishing[i-Reykjavik+fishing]So, if we lose 20 percent of five percent, that accounts for a one percent drop in cod landings – just supposing that the loss cannot be made up from the Faeroes, Norway and Iceland, "where numbers are plentiful".

But such does not percolate the dim little brain of Poulter, who continues to draw a handsome salary from the Mail. Of course, he could have earned it by asking why "numbers are plentiful" in Iceland, which has a healthy, expanding fishing industry (as the pictures show), while the British industry is falling apart.

However, this is the MSM we are talking about. To come up with a half-way intelligent explanation might actually require a little bit of work – and that would never do.

COMMENT THREAD

Fisheries+agenda[i-Fisheries+agenda]Every fibre of my body rebels at the thought of having to write a critique of the latest fisheries resolution to come out of Brussels. The illustration shows the sheer bulk of the crippling paperwork which no one fully understands and few read fully – with mistakes more common than not in the text.

And it is this paperwork which is killing the fishing industry. As I wrote last year, it is a cruel irony that the last formal EU ministers' meeting of the year is the fisheries council, at which the fate of fishermen throughout the EU – but especially in the UK – is decided for the coming year.

link[i-link]The cruelty comes, I wrote, because it is the time at which the crucial decisions on quotas for the coming year are made, under the Common Fisheries Policy – a policy which is not only morally but also technically bankrupt – invariably bringing woe to hard-pressed fishermen, just at a time when everyone else is preparing for the Christmas festivities

link[i-link]For as long as I can remember, each year I have been marking this ritual, the killing fields of the Brussels council chamber, where they participate in the slow, inexorable execution of the British fishing industry. And there comes a point where you simply cannot bear it any more.

One could, of course, prattle on like Charles Clover, who laments that "the fish always lose", a facile comment if ever there was. But then he gets paid to do it. In fact, it is all of us that lose, the whole nation, as we see an industry which could be worth £3 billion plus ground into oblivion, currently worth about half a billion and declining each year.

link[i-link]It says something at least that, as they take part in the destruction of an industry, two of the "colleagues" are cheerful. Shown here are Photis Photiou, minister of agriculture of Cyprus (left) and Hans-Christian Schmidt, Danish minister of agriculture. It says something that the agriculture minister of Cyprus has a say in the management of British waters, but the ultimate farce, or insult if you prefer, is below (left) – Joe Borg, the Maltese fisheries commissioner, the man in charge of British fishing.

Borg+003[i-Borg+003]You can pick your coverage – Google News has nearly 200 reports – from which this is a representative sample, here, here and here.

As the man from Scotland says, "it's another nail in the coffin", while that brainless fool Ross Finnie twitters - as he always does, every year – "I think it's the best deal there was available." If the "colleagues" stripped his shirt and underpants from him as he walked out of the Council chamber he would still say the same.

Of all the comments I have read, though, the one I prefer comes from the BBC website, citing Dr Bryce Beukers-Stewart, Fisheries Policy Officer for the Marine Conservation Society. He says:

It is astounding that the EU continues to persist with this doomed approach to fisheries management. These marginal adjustments to the quotas for cod around the UK have been going on for at least the last 20 years, but the fish stocks themselves are going down much faster. This is hardly surprising, as the quotas still allow for at least 60 percent of the fish to be removed each year - what chance does that give for recovery?

FISH+-+netted[i-FISH+-+netted]What is needed, he says, is a much more creative and proactive approach to improving the selectivity of fishing gear and practices to reduce the bycatch of unwanted or under-fire species such as cod.

Of course, there was such an approach proposed by the Conservative Party, which was gathering strength until the current leader junked the policy.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a huge express train, the letters “EU” emblazoned on it front, bearing down on us. There is no hope for the fishing industry, no hope at all. The picture above says it all: as the sun sets on the industry, the "Single European Fish" is now that much closer to reality.

Photos: Council of the European Communities.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]As some fish stocks in the British waters continue to decline, fisheries ministers are meeting in Brussels for the annual farce that goes under the name of quota allocation. They will emerge bleary-eyed this morning with another fudge that will drive stocks down further and fishermen closer to extinction.

The net result (no pun intended) really doesn't bear thinking about – it is so depressing. But three things can never be said too often. First, the preservation of stocks in a commercial fishery is a function of management. Second, the EU's Common Fisheries Policy is, primarily, a fisheries management system. Third, it has utterly and dismally failed. Even the EU's best friends will not deny that.

And, if the EU cannot get one of its longest-standing policies right, why should anyone have any confidence in anything else it does? That is the real significance of the CFP. Cameron was extremely unwise in ditching the Tory commitment to junk it. As the policy moves to the end game, with the almost total destruction of the British fishing industry, it will come back to haunt him, again and again.

Meanwhile, the picture shows two of the industry's executioners: Ben "dover" Bradshaw (with the pink scarf), the fisheries minister, and Ross Finnie, his useless Scottish clone. They are posing with idiots from the WWF, dressed as chefs for reasons best known to themselves, as they demand fishing ground closures and drastic catch cuts.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]If this wasn't a family blog, the title would be a lot, lot stronger believe me – although we always say that resorting to swear words simply displays a lack of vocabulary and imagination. Ripping someone to shreds without resorting to such low tactics, we say, is a refined art that takes considerable practice and skill.

That said, I am going to rip the throat out of that detestable, smug, self-satisfied little turd – unfortunately, only metaphorically. How dare he! That closed-minded, ignorant, fatuous little prat. He needs to take his head out of his backside once in a while and look around, once he's cleared his own shit out of his nostrils. Then he should turn round and crawl back in his little hole and pull the lid down over him and never, ever re-appear.

And the provoker of this invective? Need you guess? The Boy Wimp scores again, with an interview in The Telegraph, heralded by a front page piece entitled: "Cameron to Tories: Back me or we will lose again".

camerontotories[i-camerontotories]To that I say to Cameron, in the style of Tonto to the Lone Ranger in that famous joke: "Who's this 'we' white man?". "We" will not lose again – you will lose it for us, you tosser. You and the phalanx of dim, dismal sycophants around you who are so wrapped up in their own egos that they actually think they know something of this world and the people in it – ye preening, posturing creatures of less value than the low-life scum that inhabit the increasingly lawless streets.

The full text of his interview is here, the full horror of which emerges as you read and re-read it, pulling the meaning from it, revealing a vain, empty little man in a position far above his ability to sustain.

But what brings on the red mist is the blithe assumption of this poltroon that all that went on before his foetid little ego got on the scene was "outdated", simply a manifestation of "idle thinking" which the party must ditch. About some specifics, he says:

I think that was outdated thinking, sort of idle thinking, that needed to go. So there were things that needed to change and I think we have had the courage to change.

What this amorphous slime doesn't realise – is not even capable of realising – is that outside his Notting Hill love-fest, there are a lot of people who have been doing nothing else but thinking, people a lot more capable than he, people who put a great deal of effort into hard, detailed policies, the like of which are as far from "idle thinking" as the Boy is from having a brain.

FISH%20-%20boat%202[i-FISH%20-%20boat%202]I speak, of course – but far from exclusively – of the fishing policy devised by Owen Paterson, the skill and subtlety of which is such that it is still not recognised by the bulk of the Eurosceptic community, for whom it was devised. Based on the principle of reverse engrenage – as well as being a superb technical policy - it was our ticket out of the EU and a reversal of the devastating effect the policy is having on our fishermen and their dependants.

The EU dimension is, of course, why the flaccid Boy had to ditch the policy, which he did as one of his first acts on stealing the leadership of the Party. But such is his moral turpitude, he did not even have the guts to declare this, leaving the news to drip out through his aides, the slow-motion realisation reducing the impact of his betrayal.

But in other areas, we also worked on policies. On Bovine TB, for example, which is set to cost taxpayers £2 billion – YES, TWO BILLION POUNDS – for not eradicating the disease, we devised an incredibly advanced scheme based on cutting-edge science which would have squared the circle, satisfying the genuine animal welfare lobby and the farmers, bringing to an end a disease which is causing havoc in the countryside.

Of course, this is part of the real business of government, something on which the Notting Hill dick-heads are far too grand to soil what passes for their intellects. So into the dustbin labelled "idle thinking" went that policy too, to the despair of the dozens of very expert and dedicated people who worked countless hours to produce it – people who saw hope in a rejuvenated Conservative Party and who will never, ever vote Tory as long as Cameron is even a smear on the face of this planet.

The man is a total, absolute loser. "I don't go out to annoy...", he tells the Telegraph. Well, we have an answer to all your problems Dave. Stop breathing. You owe it to yourself - to everyone. And think of the carbon you will save.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]Over 400 articles on Google news repeat the same dire message that commercial fish stocks, world-wide, are in trouble. As The Independent puts it, all wild seafood will have disappeared from the world's menus within 50 years.

But, if there is a message that comes out loud and clear from the plethora of reports, it is summed up in one word, helpfully illustrated by The Times, amongst others… the word "overfishing". Says the Times caption, this "has caused a third of species to crash to less than 10 percent of natural numbers."

This sort of miss-reporting fills me with gloom, as it completely distorts the debate and thus obscures understanding of the problem – the first thing necessary in order to reach a solution. Overfishing, as we wrote in our report last year, is not the problem:

…we do not accept [the] assertion that "overfishing" per se is the central cause of the problem in British fisheries. Rather, as we have earlier discussed, it is the failure of management - which has allowed overfishing - that is the problem. The distinction is crucially important. The one is the cause, the other is the symptom.

If a fishery is depleted, this is a failure of management. It is then at the managers and the management system that one must look, in order to start sorting out the problem and seeking remedies.

Yes, this very simple principle seems to be beyond the ability of the bulk of the media to understand, an industry which all to often perpetuates the mantra, "too many fishermen chasing too few fish". One has to say that, if the fishing industry managed its affairs as well as the media industry, we would not be talking about running out of fish in 40 years. The seas would already be deserts.

COMMENT THREAD

cod_fish[i-cod_fish]Pity the poor innocent readers who, today, pick up copies of The Times and catch the story headed: "The end of cod".

Written by Anthony Browne, described as the paper's chief political correspondent, and Lewis Smith who gets the lowly title, "environment reporter", the strap informs us that, "Scientists demand ban on North Sea cod fishing" and that, "Years of tougher quotas have failed to revive stocks".

The story is garbage.

Its thrust is that people described by the paper as "scientists" are saying that a complete ban on cod fishing is the only way to prevent the species from dying out in the North Sea.

These are from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), a highly partisan group of official scientists who represent the orthodoxy of fishing science. They are telling us that the "much-trumpeted European rescue plan for cod" (devised by them – although we are not told this) is failing.

We always knew the plan would fail – it never had a hope in hell of success and the only commercial fisheries which have successful managed their stocks are those which have ignored ICES advice.

Nevertheless, always willing to reinforce failure with, er… more failure, ICES are now calling for a complete ban on cod exploitation AND – in the height of moronic fatuity – are telling EU member state governments that other species, such as haddock and plaice, will have to be severely curtailed if cod is to be protected.

This comes from Gerd Hubold, the general-secretary of ICES, who has told the uncritical Times that the main problem is that although cod catches have been cut to 26,500 tonnes a year, more than twice that amount is being caught in bycatches by fishermen chasing other species such as haddock, whiting, hake and plaice.

Fishermen, we are told, "accidentally" caught about 50,000 tonnes of cod last year, and have to throw the dead fish back in the sea because it is classed as an illegal catch.

This of course is a direct function of the mad quota system devised by the EU and supported by ICES but then we have Mr Anthony Browne, chief political correspondent, telling us that "the bycatches are difficult to avoid because cod are bigger than the other fish and no method has been devised to catch the other fish without scooping up cod in the process."

It is difficult to deal with this. Said as neutrally as possible, we can only say that this is not true. In fact, it is a total, absolute lie. And so is the following from The Times:

However, Mireille Thom, the European Commission spokeswoman for fisheries, said: "If we want to avoid all catches of cod, all these fisheries will have to be stopped. We have not discovered the fishing gear that can catch haddock or whiting but not cod. It is not for lack of trying — it is a very tough assignment."

separator%20panel[i-separator%20panel]What does the commission think it is playing at? More to the point, what does the The Times think it is doing publishing these lies? At a time when haddock have never been so plentiful, there are well-established, highly effective and totally reliable ways of fishing for these species without touching the cod (such as illustrated here, using nets with separator panels). And, by banning the so-called discards, implementing a regime where everything that is caught is landed, it is very easy to ensure that cod are protected, simply by setting limits on allowable bycatch.

But such measures are beyond the wit of the EU, which then spouts lies to the likes of The Times, from which it gains aid and comfort as their gullible hacks print the garbage they are told.

Then, to add insult to injury, the paper finishes up its report by citing a spokeswoman for the Marine Stewardship Council, "which encourages sustainable fisheries", saying that the ICES warning should be heeded: "It's the best scientific advice people can get."

As we wrote though, pity the poor readers. How are they supposed to know this is the garbage it is? Perhaps Mr Montgomerie might do a piece on it tonight?

COMMENT THREAD

British fishing boats being scrapped under the CFP fleet reduction programme[i-British fishing boats being scrapped under the CFP fleet reduction programme]For all that so many people talk glibly about the "power of big business", the more normal experience when it comes to political issues is how cravenly neutral businesses often are. Many a time, on quite contentious issues, we have looked to them for leadership and support, only to find that they go for the easy, safe option and support the status quo – for fear of offending some of their customers.

It is quite remarkable, therefore, that yesterday, the Adsa supermarket chain came out with a press release calling for Britain's withdrawal from the EU's Common Fisheries Policy – which has destroyed our fisheries and wrecked the fishing fleet.

In US equivalent terms, this is something rather like Wal-Mart (which just happens to own Asda) calling for the abolition of hand guns. Getting directly involved in politics like this is something supermarkets simply do not do.

Anyhow, says Gordon Maddan, regulatory affairs manager at ASDA: "We want all the fish we sell to be sustainable. It's very clear however that the Common Fisheries Policy has failed to deliver this so we are now supporting calls for a radical change in approach."

As for Maddan's recipe, you need not waste your time on it – he provides the classic illustration of why shopkeepers should stick to selling their goods and not meddle in things they do not understand. But his heart is in the right place – he and his employer recognise that the CFP is fundamentally flawed and that we should withdraw from it.

But, if we are now seeing a supermarket chain taking an overtly political line, we are also seeing politicians taking an overtly non-political line – a complete reversal of the normal scheme of things. Enter Struan Stevenson MEP, formerly chairman of the EU parliament's fisheries committee and currently Conservative European spokesman on fisheries policy.

Asked by BBC Today programme's Sarah Montague why this was no longer Conservative Party policy, he simply blustered, saying: "It's not the easiest thing in the world to withdraw from the CFP". When Montague persisted as to what the current policy line was, Stevenson responded that, "If the CFP is not reformed substantially, then we retain the possibility of withdrawal".

It says something for quite how fatuous this response was that even Sarah Montague noted that reform "isn't going to happen…", leaving Stevenson stranded, high and dry.

Camereun[i-Camereun]Yet, since the Conservatives produced their green paper of fisheries in December last, written by then shadow fisheries minister Owen Paterson. this is as near to the first definitive statement on fisheries that we have had from the Cameron camp.

This is from a man who has never had the guts to stand up and declare openly that he has abandoned the withdrawal policy agreed by all three of his predecessors. Instead, we are going to seek "reform" – something even the BBC recognises is not going to happen.

Nevertheless, the two-faced Stevenson is going along with the fiction. This is the man who tells the BBC that the CFP is "a treaty obligation… something you can't simply unravel overnight."

Yet when he was asked – pre-Cameron - to respond to the Owen Paterson's green paper on withdrawal from the CFP, he wrote: "It is brilliant. My smile got broader and broader as I read through it! You've done a startling piece of work which will be widely applauded by the fishing communities in the UK and beyond."

It said of politicians that some are born great while others have greatness thrust upon them. Others, it would seem, are born shits and remain that way all their lives.

COMMENT THREAD

Canaries%20migrants[i-Canaries%20migrants]If the mistakes governments make are not publicised and analysed, there is no accountability. Nor then will there be any popular pressure to put matters right. The result, in this case, is that people are dying.

That is the measure of the failure of the media as it records, yet again, the surge in illegal immigration from West Africa to the Canaries in small boats across the perilous Atlantic, the Guardian, amongst others, reporting, "15 Bodies Found on Mauritanian Beach", believed to be would-be immigrants washed ashore after a failed attempt to reach the Canaries.

As we detailed in May, here and again here, the forced migration is almost entirely due to the collapse of the artisan fishing industries in Mauritania and Senegal.

This is in very large part due to the predatory EU third country fishing agreements exacerbated by the EU's failure to assist in developing effective conservation systems and enforcement measures to deal with non-EU fishing vessels which are also raiding the fishing stocks.

To be fair, on 27 May, The Daily Telegraph did point this out but that was just one article of hundreds – yesterday's fish and chip wrapping, long gone.

Dealing with the current crisis, with numbers having exceeded 19,000, an article from UPI today records the disaster in terms: "EU steps in to stem flow of migrants", the BBC headlines: "EU promises help with migrants" and Reuters (of Adnan Hajj fame) proclaims: "EU states urged to help Spain stop African migrants".

Now, you might say, the coverage cited – and much more – is perfectly neutral, recording simple fact. But that is precisely the point. Imagine, for instance, that the Canaries crisis was due to the action of Israel, or some other non-favoured entity. Do you think that the headlines would be so studiedly neutral? But, because the EU is involved, we get strictly factual reporting.

link[i-link]It would be just as accurate, for instance, to write a headline declaring, "EU fails to stem migrants". Equally, the copy could just as easily make reference to the "crisis caused by the EU's fishing policies in Africa", and it would be entirely factual to state that Spain – which is so voluble in appealing for help, and on whose behalf the EU is calling for help - is the main beneficiary of the fishing policy.

But, while pejorative references are prevalent in virtually every report about Israel's actions, you will not find a hint of censure directed at the EU in any of the copy produced on the Canaries issue. It is in that way, mainly, that bias operates. In the case of the EU, it is not what the media say – it is what they leave out that makes the difference.

So, the betting is that, after reading the story in whatever media outlet they prefer, the bulk of ordinary, intelligent people will conclude that the EU is a beneficial organisation, struggling to assist a member state deal with a sudden and unavoidable humanitarian crisis. And if they do, they will be wrong.

But the reason will be the misinformation – and the lack of information – that dogs this issue. Thus do we aver that the single most important obstacle we confront in trying to deal with the EU – and so many other issues – is the media.

COMMENT THREAD

davidcameron[i-davidcameron]Despite the rather pathetic attempts of the Tory Boy Blog to backtrack on the dumping of the fishing policy, confirmation of Helm’s story comes in the South-West regional newspaper, the Western Morning News.

The core part of the story reads:

…a spokesman for Mr Cameron confirmed the Tory leader had decided to scrap the policy. He said: "The CFP and Common Agricultural Policy are both unsatisfactory and we want to improve things by having greater national and regional control. But we will not now extend that to include unilateral withdrawal. "David Cameron thinks it is very important that we have strategic priorities and he is very clear that the big things are economic competitiveness, employment and social policy."

Rear Admiral Ben Bradshaw, the Labour minister presiding over the current phase of the destruction of British fisheries is, as you might expect, crowing with delight, declaring, "I welcome this latest flip-flop from David Cameron…. The Tories seem finally to have accepted Labour's argument that withdrawing from the CFP would be impossible without leaving the EU altogether."

An illustration from the Conservative Party campaign manual[i-An illustration from the Conservative Party campaign manual]He adds, in a pointed sneer at former shadow fisheries minister, Owen Paterson, "This is highly embarrassing for senior Conservative politicians who have been banging on about CFP withdrawal for years. We can hopefully now have a more sensible debate in this country about how best to conserve fish stocks and make the CFP work better."

With that, it is fair to say that there is not a smidgin of difference between New Labour and the Boy King's "modern compassionate conservatism", especially in terms of tactics when dealing with the EU (See illustration for details).

Needless to say, we saw it all coming, and so did most of the fishermen. In meeting after meeting, when the new fishing policy was being presented, fishermen said they liked what they saw but did not trust the Tories to see it through. Their scepticism was, of course, well-founded, confirming the first law of modern politics: Never trust a Tory.

COMMENT THREAD

A treasured symbol - the 'Red Duster'[i-A treasured symbol - the 'Red Duster']It looks like the story initiated by Justine Stares on 21 May on EU plans to create an "EU navy" were spot on.

Announced three days ago by commissioner Joe Borg in a speech to the EU parliament – which thereby ensured minimal publicity – was the commission’s "green paper", entitled "Towards a future maritime policy for the union", setting out ideas which, as Stares suggested, could lead to an EU navy.

You would not, however, have gleaned anything of this from Borg's speech and it is only in the detail of the white paper that you begin to see how they are joining up the dots. Pages 39-41 refer, culminating in the innocent – but effectively rhetorical – questions: "Should an EU coastguard be set up? What might be its aims and functions?"

For sure this is a "consultative" document so it cannot be said that the EU is definitely proposing to set up an EU coastguard. That will have to wait until the end of the consultation period in June 2007, when a formal white paper will be published, setting out firm proposals. Nonetheless, we are told that, "work is underway in the EU military committee on the maritime dimension of the European Security and Defence Policy".

Neither can it be said of another major issue raised that there is anything definitive – a tentative suggestion that the EU should set up a register of shipping. This was came up last November when the hare was raised that this would lead to the demise of the Red Duster, only to be hotly denied, not least by the Lib-Dims.

Conscious of the political sensitivities of this issue, the commission is asking, in carefully neutral terms, whether an "optional" EU register should be "made available", and then asks "what conditions and incentives should be contemplated for such a register".

Again, you only have to join up the dots. It is only a matter of time before we see EU-flagged ships on the high seas. This will be voluntary, of course, but you can already see the game. It will be made progressively more difficult to flag ships on the national register, and all sorts of bribes will be offered to encourage ship-owners to run up the ring of stars until entirely voluntarily of course, the Red Duster finally disappears.

All this is predicated towards establishing a "Common European Maritime Space", a Single European Sea by any other name – to include, by the time the Boy King has let the Common Fisheries Policy finally run its course, the single European fish.

COMMENT THREAD

Senegal%20immigrants[i-Senegal%20immigrants]Reuters is telling us that the EU has announced a 35 percent rise in development aid to poor countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific (ACP), "as part of efforts to stem migration into the wealthy bloc". Thus, the "aid package" to be shared among the 77 ACP countries over the 2008-13 period will total €22 billion ($28.1 billion).

The announcement was made as EU and ACP ministers met in Papua New Guinea to discuss migration together for the first time. "Managing migration for the benefit of development is a new priority of EU development assistance," says a commission statement.

But, as we have pointed out, here and here, the current wave of migration to the Canaries, which has triggered this sudden "generosity", is entirely due to the effect of the predatory third country fishing agreements, which are depriving Africans of their livelihoods.

The immediate answer, therefore, is to stop stealing African fish. Scrap these deals and help these countries develop their own fishing industries, complete with processing facilities which give the added value.

Instead, having created the mess – with the use of a not inconsequential sum of taxpayers' money – the EU is now proposing to spend even more taxpayers’ money, much of which will go nowhere near the people who really need assistance, and which will do nothing to tackle the underlying problem which was largely created by the EU.

Nevertheless, the EU will be able to bask in a warm glow of smug, self-congratulation as it parades its largesse as evidence of its social conscience, while the media and politicos avert their gaze to the growing crisis as still more thousands of Africans brave the perilous sea journey, and many more thousands die.

COMMENT THREAD

Mauritanian fishing boats[i-Mauritanian fishing boats]Last Tuesday, we posted a piece on the illegal immigration crisis on the Canary Islands, retailing how more than 1,400 immigrant had arrived in Tenerife and Gran Canaria in the previous week, making 2,000 landing in the month, mostly from Senegal and Mali. We also conveyed the plea from the Spanish authorities, who call for help from other EU countries, declaring that it was "Europe's problem too".

What we should also have said, though, was that this problem was largely created by "Europe" in the first place, not least through the inadequacies of its trade policies and, in this particular instance, through the depredations of its third-country fishing agreements, the main beneficiary of which is Spain.

Our deficiency, however, is made up by Mike Pflanz in today's Daily Telegraph, who gets behind the headlines of the great exodus from Africa and describes how thousands are putting their lives at risk, seeking work in Europe as their own fishing industries have been devastated by EU (and other) fishing vessels.

Pflanz records that more than 8,200 West Africans have arrived in the Canaries already this year, but an estimated 1,500 have died attempting the crossing. But, he writes, for many young men in the village of Thiaroye, a poor seafront suburb six miles east of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, the lure of Europe is irresistible. Their plight is summaried by Abdou Ndoye Mbaye, 25, who says he had no choice but to attempt the crossing. "You people talk of these boats being dangerous, but for us, we would rather risk death to find a good job in Spain than stay here doing nothing."

Yet, it is hardly as if there was no warning of this problem. In November 2001, Kim Willsher fronted a graphic report on Channel 4, entitled. "Selling the Future", earlier trailed in The Guardian, when she recorded first-hand evidence of how EU fishing vessels were stripping the waters off Mauritania and running down local fishermen who got in their way. A list was produced of over 200 men who had been killed, either in this way or because they had been forced out into deeper, unsafe waters in their frail boats.

At the time, I recall writing a brief on the problem, to circulate to MEP in the EU parliament. Using then available statistics, I recorded that third country fishing deals with the EU were big business. Between 1993 and 1997 they had accounted for €1053 million from Community funds and in 1998 had accounted for five percent of the total Community external budget.

European fishing boats in Mauritanian waters[i-European fishing boats in Mauritanian waters]In December 2001 there had been a study from the United Nations Environment Programme which found that, "Developing countries which open up their waters to foreign fishing fleets may lose far more than they gain". It noted that over-exploitation resulting from such deal is "driving people into ever greater poverty" as well as "robbing the marine environment of a key link in the food chain".

Argentina was cited as an example of how devastating could be the economic impact, the report assessing that the then current EU agreement had actually cost the country $500 million whereas, had they developed their own fisheries, they could have made $5 billion. This had been reinforced by the Namibian experience, where the country refused to enter an agreement with the EU and had developed from scratch an industry worth $10 billion.

The UNEP report described the impact of the fisheries agreement on Argentina as "stark" and, of another agreement in Senegal, noted that it had had "a serious impact on local food supplies".

An illustration of the risks to which the artisan fishermen are exposed[i-An illustration of the risks to which the artisan fishermen are exposed]Yet all of this seems to have passed by the Commission. It sponsored its own report in 1999, which concentrated on the economic benefits to Community countries. This was a strange slant, considering that much of the funding came from the external (i.e. development) budget, but even then conceded that there were problems with the agreements. It noted that countries "did not always have sufficient means to enforce inspection arrangements" - something of an under-statement – and also recorded that, as regards the funds paid to third countries, "the destination of the funds paid into national budgets is not traceable".

In fact, this was (and remains) the biggest scandal of all. Most of the money paid from Community funds went (and still goes) goes to the political élites of the countries concerned. Very little of it reached the indigenous fishermen who were effectively robbed of their livelihoods. Essentially, money from EU taxpayers - including the poor - were being paid to the rich of third world countries - robbing the poor to feed the rich.

Despite this, the EU's third country fishing agreements continue, alongside periodic media reports, such as here, here and here.

Then, only last week we heard of the scandalous Morocco-EU fisheries agreement, whereby the EU is to pay €114 million to the Moroccan government to allow 119 European boats - mostly Spanish and Portuguese – to exploit the coastal waters. What made this particularly scandalous, though, is that the deal included the waters off Western Sahara, a land whose sovereignty is disputed, where the UN has refused to acknowledge Moroccan sovereignty over the land.

Now, the displaced fishing fleet is used for illegal immigration[i-Now, the displaced fishing fleet is used for illegal immigration]Not for nothing did Carl Mortished in The Times call this a "new rape of Africa", making the very obvious point that if the EU stopped taking the Africans' fish and assisted them to develop the resource, there would be considerably less of a migrant problem.

Instead of dealing with this, however, we – and that includes the British government – kowtow to the Spanish, plus the Portuguese and to a lesser extent the French, and cough up ever-increasing amounts of money for them to rape and pillage the African seas. Now, as increasing numbers of dead Africans are washed ashore, it is to our eternal shame that we have allowed this to happen.

COMMENT THREAD

A River Class patrol vessel - ideal equipment for an EU Navy[i-A River Class patrol vessel - ideal equipment for an EU Navy]Justin Stares has come up with a good story in The Sunday Telegraph this morning, claiming that Brussels is drawing up a plan for an "EU navy".

This is the EU commission planning to set up a European coastguard, giving rise to fears of a back-door attempt to create an EU navy with its own powers to stop and search shipping.

According to Stares, the plan involves upgrading the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) into a fully-fledged coastguard, and is "buried" in a document revising European Union (EU) transport policy that is due to be published next month.

Apparently, the commission is says that a European coastguard would help to enforce maritime legislation. It would have the authority to intercept shipping across all of Europe's traditional maritime borders, which could require that crews be armed - and raises questions of national sovereignty over coastal waters.

The issue was raised last week in Lloyd's List (for which Stares works), which accused the commission of attempting to build up a navy by stealth in a leading article. "The concept of a European coastguard has a federalist charm about it that causes eyes to brighten instantly among gatherings of Europhiles, tired of endless discussions about fish or agriculture," Lloyds List said. "In a way, it is a European navy, by the back door."

Oddly enough, we raised precisely this spectre way back in October 2004 when we retailed the comments of an official from commission’s enterprise DG, Ronal Vopel, declaring:

We've established the EU's right to define territorial waters for the purposes of ship pollution control, ship safety and fisheries policy. The next step is littoral security and that points to coastguard and naval issues.

Even then we were remarking that the eventual destination might be the creation of a EuroNavy, and we followed this up with a story December 2004, reporting that the fledgling European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) was to charter its own emergency oil spill vessels, covering most of Europe's sensitive coastline.

But, while the commission has been beavering away in the background, the most strident calls for an EU coastguard have in fact been coming from the member states themselves, as in last March, when EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini was calling for an EU coastguard service in the Mediterranean, "to fight human trafficking and rising numbers of illegal migrants".

Although Frattini is a member of the commission, he was speaking very much as an Italian politician, his agenda being to obtain EU financing to help towards the cost of policing Italian waters in order to control illegal immigration. And that agenda goes way way, with a report in January 2003 of the launch of an “EU fleet” to patrol the southern shores of Europe and head off the pirate flotillas that ship illegal immigrants from North Africa.

The scheme, called Operation Ulysses, involved five European nations, including Britain, which contributed a Customs cutter, Seeke, and was viewed as the first step towards a common EU border guard. The "fleet" was made up of vessels belonging to Spain's Guardia Civil, with Italy, France and Portugal also sending vessels.

One could now say that the issue is coming back onto the agenda, except that it has never been taken off it – just that no one has been taking any notice. Sure enough, though, it will disappear from the media after the brief attention from The Telegraph, representing yet another classic example of the slow, incremental progression of European integration.

In the fullness of time, we will be seeing armed patrol vessels sporting EU flags and the proto-EuroNavy will be there – by which time it will be too late to protest. In the meantime, of course, any suggestion that the EU is planning to create its own navy will be strenuously denied.

COMMENT THREAD

fish01[i-fish01]It is a cruel irony that the last formal EU ministers' meeting of the year is the fisheries council, at which the fate of fishermen throughout the EU – but especially in the UK – is decided for the coming year.

The cruelty comes because it is the time at which the crucial decisions on quotas for the coming year are made, under the Common Fisheries Policy – a policy which is not only morally but also technically bankrupt – invariably bringing woe to hard-pressed fishermen, just at a time when everyone else is preparing for the Christmas festivities.

And, as has so often been the case, there is no Christmas cheer this year for those brave men who harvest our seas. The Council, for the last two days has been haggling over the proposals put by Malta commissioner Joe Borg which yet again will cut the amount of fish they can catch and make their livelihoods that much more difficult and perilous.

Nevertheless, reports of the Brussels bean-fest vary, the relatively neutral and dispassionate (in this case) Reuters, telling us that the “EU fisheries ministers2 have struck a "compromise deal" on the quota, but nevertheless conveying the Brussels' spin that this is to "prevent overfished species like cod disappearing from European waters."

They report, factually enough, that despite advice from scientists for a blanket ban on cod fishing in areas like the North Sea and western Scottish waters, the ministers have agreed to average cuts of 15 percent, retailing that the commission "was forced to offer slight increases in its initial catch proposals" along with a few seasonal closures of waters.

Behind what passes for neutral reporting, however, lies not only the scandal of a bankrupt policy but the fruits of an obsession with protecting one species in a mixed fishery, cod – which means, as Reuters puts it, target species like haddock and monkfish will also be limited in the days they may spend at sea. This is supposedly to "stop them picking up too much cod by accident", with reductions ranging from 5 to 10 percent in the number of permitted days per year.

Most of the papers also retail this news, typically the Financial Times, although it too conveys some good news that there is to be a 30 percent increase in North Sea prawn quotas, although the fishery could almost certainly take a bigger catch without harm.

Our own fisheries minister, Ben Bradshaw, chaired the meeting and, we are told, "fiercely opposed the plans for cuts," arguing that the British fishing fleet has undergone much more stringent cuts in the past several years than the fleets of other nations. But, like the good boy he is, after the ritual protests, he knuckled down to the compromise on which those great fishing nations like Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg had a vote.

Thus, the British white fish trawler fleet (most of it Scottish), which has already reduced its catching effort by 62 percent since 2000, has taken another hit, leaving Bradshaw to bleat helplessly that "a balance had been struck between the needs of conservation and the survival of traditional fishing communities."

fish04[i-fish04]Scotland's equally powerless fisheries minister, Ross Finnie, went even further, deciding that it was a "successful package", saying that a 13 percent cut in the haddock quota was a "significant improvement" on earlier proposals for a 41 percent cut. And by such "success" in Brussels measured – when your industry is dying on its feet, the "colleagues" decide to kill it off slightly more slowly than they had at first proposed.

Where the obscenity comes in of course is that the commission, guided by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, totally obsessed with declining stocks of cod and convinced that all ills stem from overfishing, heedless of the fact that haddock stocks, which share the same habitat, are plentiful and increasing.

And, caught up in that obsession, when it comes to controls, they are a one trick horse, imposing over the years, cuts more cuts, even more cuts and then more cuts on top of those. Yet this is all to protect a species that an increasing number of scientists are arguing have been affected by changes in water temperature and plankton distribution – the two being closely related – and entirely unrelated to fishing effort.

Thus, not only is cod fishing cut back, but all the other species that inhabit the same waters, ostensibly to avoid bycatch – fish caught that were not the intended targets. In the North Sea, says the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, vessels fishing prawns, plaice and sole are estimated to account for as much as 40 percent of the total catch of cod in these waters.

But that is no longer true. The prawn catches, with specialised separator panels, are virtually clean and fishing technology has developed to the extent that it is easily possible to target haddock without materially affecting the cod stocks. And, with the larger mesh sizes that are used in other fisheries, and carefully selected closures during spawning – such as New England – immature catches can be minimised. But none of these options have been taken up by the commission.

For that, the commission should be cursed but, according to the Guardian, "fishing leaders" have accepted that the deal struck on fishing quotas was "as good as they were likely to get". This is Mike Park, chairman of the Scottish White Fish Producers' Association, who plays a political game and does not want to upset his political masters.

fish02[i-fish02]Working fishermen, however, told The Scotsman a different tale. John Buchan, skipper of the Peterhead trawler Fairline, who led the Scottish white-fish fleet's historic tie-up protest against the cod-recovery plan four years ago, was "disgusted". He claimed that British fisheries ministers had delivered the worst possible deal for the industry - and for the conservation of fish stocks. He forecasts that the cuts in haddock quotas would leave Scottish fishermen with no choice next year but to dump haddock and even cod overboard to stay within the law.

We now have a situation, he added, where the haddock stock is at a 30-year high, while we have an all-time low in the haddock quota. That is a huge imbalance which is going to result in a huge amount of haddock, and even cod, being dumped at sea.
Independent

Predictably, The Independent homes in on the anger of the environmentalists, who are accusing fisheries ministers of “pronouncing a death sentence on North Sea cod”, by failing to demand total closures of the fishery.

The environmental group WWF said: "EU Fisheries Ministers have effectively written off cod in the North Sea," with Charlotte Mogensen, a fisheries policy officer with the WWF, saying: "It makes no sense to allow fishing on a stock which has collapsed. It is clear that cod has no chance of recovering and this is just the first of many fish stocks we are losing because of the mismanagement of European fisheries." This woman’s grasp of fisheries management is about as good as that of the commission – i.e., abysmal – especially as they too are locked into the myth of “overfishing”.

Charles Clover in The Telegraph to repeats the refrain under a headline, “Cuts to cod quotas 'avoiding reality'”, adding that fishermen also face a five percent reduction in the current maximum 180 days a year EU vessels can go to sea.

But then he sort of makes up for it in an opinion piece which goes some way towards redressing the omissions of his earlier story, when he somehow forgot to acknowledge his sources.

Clover, having learnt something about fishing, argues that the core problem of the CFP is the way that the policy is set up to "balance the needs of the fishing industry and the marine environment". It is an impossible task, he writes, as the health of one depends on the health of the other. To look after the fishermen, you must look after the fish - not gamble further with biology.

The ministers playing around with quota figures he calls "irresponsible" and reminds us that, outside the world of EU fisheries councils, things are changing. In the United States, where New England's waters are just as overfished as ours, the Americans appear, after 10 years of effort, finally to be doing things right.

A combination of closed areas - 8,000 square miles in size - and the use of 6.5in mesh (compared with about 4in in Europe) has led to a strong revival of haddock, scallops, redfish and yellowtail flounder - but not yet the cod.

fish03[i-fish03]We in Europe, he adds, should be doing what the Americans have done, and quickly - as Owen Paterson, the former Tory fisheries spokesman, said in an excellent Green Paper on fisheries, then concluding that he hopes that aim will remain the Tories' campaigning position now Paterson has moved on. David Cameron, he declares, should grasp that fisheries are one of his big chances to connect with food-buying Tory voters - not the fishing lobby, who seldom vote Tory anyway.

And there we are. Forget the BBC as a rational contributor, which constantly churns out the same irrelevant drivel. Just latch on to the single fact that the troubles in EU member state waters are down to one thing and one thing alone – bad management. And the managers are the EU commission, advised by scientists who do not know which way is up.

Let the environmentalists bleat – and ignore them. This is a political problem, and only politics are going to solve it – or continue the destruction.

COMMENT THREAD

fisheries%20pic3sm.0[i-fisheries%20pic3sm.0]I always feel just a smidgin of guilt nicking other people's copy for this blog, although we try to be fairly responsible about acknowledging our sources. But not so, it seems, the great Charles Clover of The Daily Telegraph who, today, writes an "exclusive story" about how the "US provides lesson in building fish stocks".

Datelined, "Gloucester, Massachusetts", Clover writes in the context of "European fisheries ministers" convening to set quotas this week, reporting that fishermen in New England are celebrating an increase of a third in their fish stocks over the past decade, achieved using conservation methods the EU has rejected.

According to the great Clover, the size of cod and haddock on the auction market in Gloucester, the capital of New England's fishing industry, is more than twice what you will see in Peterhead, north-east Scotland, or other North Sea ports. This, he tells us, is because the New England Fishery Management Council has set the minimum mesh size of the nets fishermen may use at 6.5in, which ensures that the cod and haddock have bred at least twice before they are caught.

And so the story continues, giving the glad tidings that, under a more scientifically-based and intelligent fisheries management system, it is quite possible to restore health to previously depleted commercial fisheries – in contrast with the Common Fisheries Policy, which goes from bad to worse.

But before congratulating the great Clover on his "scoop", it is as well to ask where he got most of his information. In fact, the idea for the story and the contacts came from former shadow fisheries minister Owen Paterson, who also sent Clover a detailed report of his own experiences when he visited New England in October last year.

And so detailed and comprehensive was the report that Clover – having failed to pick up anything like as much detail on his visit – lifted great slugs of the report and quoted them verbatim, without any acknowledgement of the source.

We are well used to complaining about the lack of activity by opposition spokesmen, wondering at times where all the money goes that we pay towards their expenses. Yet here we have a case of a politician doing the business and getting shafted by the media as a reward. To the great Clover, though, this is just "another day, another story". What it is to be so important.

COMMENT THREAD

One of the stories that would have appeared in the Booker column this week, had not the new Sunday Telegraph editor, Sarah Sands, lost her marbles and junked the column in favour of the Live8 crap is one that is quite horrific in its own right, and makes us wonder how much of a police state this once proud and free nation has become.

Featured on the front page of Fishing News this week, the headline only hints at the real story: "Skipper held at gunpoint". This is skipper Andrew Leadley of the Whitby trawler Success III but the gang of desperados who held him at gunpoint were no ordinary criminals or even terrorists. They were in fact members of the Royal Navy from the fisheries protection vessel HMS Mersey, a River Class offshore patrol vessel acting under the orders of our own Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), enforcing the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.

The incident happened last week when skipper Leadley was fishing on the Dogger Bank, alongside a fleet of German and Dutch trawlers, when he was stopped by the Mersey and boarded by an inspection team from the vessel. After being asked to haul, the boarding officer found everything to be in order with the gear and the fish room. He signed the log book, indicating his satisfaction with what had been found, and gave Leadley his permission to shoot the gear.

Then, while waiting on deck to be picked up, the officer, without warning returned to the wheelhouse and demanded, without giving any explanation, that Leadley haul immediately. Skipper Leadley at first refused, at which point, he says, "all hell broke lose".

He was warned that if he did not haul immediately, the Mersey – armed with a 20 mm cannon and two machine guns – would fire a shot 200 yards ahead of the boat. If that brought no response, it would be followed by one 100 yards ahead; the third would go through the funnel and the fourth through the wheelhouse.

When the gear was hauled, and again without any explanation, Leadley was ordered to steam his vessel to Grimsby. While steaming, which took 48 hours, three armed guards were placed in his wheelhouse and Leadley and his crew were placed under arrest and forbidden to communicate with anyone via the satellite phone.

The captain of the Mersey who, throughout, had refused to give his name, ordered Leadley to follow a set course, and refused thereafter to speak to him over the RT, even when Leadley pointed out that the course set would have grounded him ashore at Withernsea. He even refused him permission to hold off at the entrance to the estuary of the Humber, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world – which was at the time cloaked in dense fog – until Grimsby lock gates were opened, thus forcing Leadley to dodge shipping for several hours while he waited.

On landing, Leadley had his gear confiscated and has been refused permission to return to sea. He has been interviewed at length by Defra officials, but no charges have been laid and no explanation has been given to the vessel owners as to why the unprecedented action had been taken.

Interestingly, Leadley had two Russian crewmen on board and, during the arrest, they said this was worse than anything they had experienced during the worst days of the Soviet dictatorship, it was so threatening.

In the same week that the Royal Navy was celebrating the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar, with the review in Portsmouth – this is what it has come down to. No longer faced with any real enemy, the Navy is turning its guns on its own people, acting in a manner that not even the Soviet dictatorship countenanced, all at the behest of a foreign power in Brussels which has become our government.

Nelson must be turning in his grave.

In the column this morning, Booker takes apart Malcolm Wicks, our new energy minister, who last week launched his crusade to build "2000 more wind turbines" across the UK.

Writes Booker, "he was guilty of such a stunning act of disinformation we can only believe he did so from ignorance." The story is accompanied by a stunning photgraph, which really brings home the impact of the renewables policy. Unfortunately, it has not been reproduced online so, to see it, you will have to go out and buy a copy of The Sunday Telegraph.

For his second story, Booker reminds us that, according to President Chirac, speaking to journalists in Paris on 28 April 2004, any country voting "no" to the constitution must leave the EU. He may not wish to be reminded of it today, but this was what just after Tony Blair announced that he was to hold a British referendum. Chirac, already under pressure to follow suit, was angry with Blair and said, as the Financial Times reported two days later, it was a matter of "ratify or quit". Booker continues:

As the unthinkable possibility now looms that it might be the people of France who face the "European project" with its most embarrassing setback in 50 years, the one thing certain is that every kind of pressure will be mounted to ensure that the "project" and its constitution remain on course. So single-minded are those behind it that they have long since jumped the gun by implementing various provisions of the constitution even before it is ratified.

These range from setting up the EU’s own worldwide diplomatic service and its police college in Hampshire, to co-ordinate EU-wide police training and procedures, to launching the EU's Galileo space programme and the European Defence Agency, to co-ordinate the ‘Union’s’ defence forces. At present all these are being pushed forward on an "intergovernmental" basis, because it is only when the constitution is ratified that they can become fully-fledged "Union’ institutions", paid for from the "Union" budget.

The project Brussels is particularly keen to see brought under its wing is the European Space Agency. This is because its Galileo satellite programme, unlike its US equivalent, will charge for its services, including a "tax" on all aircraft entering the "single European sky" and an EU-wide system of congestion charging and road tolls.

There is much the EU can get on with without the constitution. But without the ability to raise cash through Galileo, the ‘Union’ stands to lose billions of euros a year. Meanwhile we look forward to hearing President Chirac announce that France, which itself stands to earn billions from Galileo, largely a French project, is now obeying his own injunction to "ratify or quit".

The third story is yet another account of the baleful effect of the implementation (and lack) of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. The story needs no elaboration:

Two items in Fishing News bring home the ongoing tragedy of Britain’s fisheries. In Yorkshire, two Bridlington fishermen, Peter and Bob Ibbotson, announced they are giving up fishing, after a lifetime in the industry, after Whitby magistrates imposed on them more than £5,000 in fines and costs for breaching EC fisheries regulations. Their crime, after 36 hours at sea with only two hours sleep, had been to enter Scarborough harbour without giving advance warning to ministry inspectors.

Under EU rules, if a boat is carrying a ton of cod, a phone warning must be given, so it can be inspected. In fact the inspectors were already waiting when the Wayfarer arrived. They also found that, although the catch itself was wholly legal, the two men had not yet completed their extensive ministry paperwork. Peter Ibbotson, leaving court, said that "unworkable bureaucracy" now made it impossible for small fishermen to earn a living.

Elsewhere was reported the recent devastating onslaught of 10 large Russian trawlers on haddock stocks around Rockall. When Scottish fisheries inspectors boarded the Russian boats, they found each was carrying between 200 and 400 tons of haddock, whereas Brussels allows Scottish boats to catch only 562 tons in a year. The Russians were also using minute 50 millimetre mesh nets, allowing nothing to escape, whereas the Scottish boats use much larger mesh nets, allowing small fish to go free. It is good to know that European Commission officials later spent a "full day discussing the problem" with their Russian counterparts.

Booker's fourth story has a go at that great doyen of science, Sir David King, appointed by Mr Blair as the government's chief scientist during the foot-and-mouth crisis. As it is not directly related to the EU, I will leave you to read it online, via the link provided.

It is not precisely a secret that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the supposed discreditation of all Communist and Socialist ideas (I say supposed because they are, as it happens, alive and well in most of the western academia) drove many of the erstwhile supporters into the green environmentalist movement.

When you think about it, many of the political arguments and the methodology are quite similar. The two groups seem different because the true environmentalist is against industrialization and any kind of progress, the twin dogmas of the Marxist religion.

This is not a particularly important distinction. For one thing, the industrialization they are arguing about is completely out of date, both Marxists and green environmentalists still seeing smoking chimney stacks everywhere and being unable to understand that it is industrial progress that can actually clean up the environment.

The most important common factor, however, is the political thinking. For one reason or another both groups remain convinced that the only way to achieve whatever aim they have in mind is through state control, either actual ownership or regulation. And both are completely wrong.

Not only they are wrong, they harm their own aims. Socialists have promised greater welfare for all and faster economic development. They failed miserably.

Green environmentalists have promised a better, cleaner environment and they are failing. Most of the regulations brought in under the influence of green environmentalist thinking actually make things worse.

There is no getting away from the fact that the environment is cleaned up more efficiently in richer societies. But the green environmentalists want to keep the poor societies in poverty and make the rich ones poorer.

European regulations, whether they are to do with the Common Fisheries Policy or hazardous waste inevitably result in greater environmental problems, sometimes a catastrophe.

It is also reasonably clear to all that people look after what is their own and ignore or destroy what does not belong to anybody. Therefore, a true environmentalist ought to advocate private property and light regulation just as a true lover of peace is always against unilateral disarmament.

I was interested to read a column by one of America’s best journalists, Jonah Goldberg. In it he explains that conservatives and free-marketeers have finally started saying that they, too, are environmentalists. They have always been that, but the so-called moral high ground had been hijacked by the regulatory freaks, who had managed to convince everyone that they alone were in favour of the environment.

(I plead guilty to snarling at a particularly irritating Swedish environmentalist eurosceptic, when he stated smugly that nobody could be against the environment and, therefore, they could not be against his proposals of making sustainability and green regulations part of the European eurosceptic platform.)

Of course, these people are irritating but just as we had to argue it through with the self-righteous unilateralists, many of whom were Marxists and communist sympathizers, but many simply misguided, so we have to argue our case over the environment.

Luckily for us, as Mr Goldberg points out, some of the more serious environmentalists are beginning to see that their movement has reached a dead end.

“In other words, all of the serious arguments are about means, not ends. For decades, greens have insisted their means — heavy-handed government command and control — were the only way to those ends. Obviously, there are some exceptions:Some organizations have raised money to buy land and then manage it themselves.But at the national level, where impressions are formed, the enviros have become indistinguishable from any other special interest group that wants the government to do their bidding.

Don’t take my word for it — google “The Death of Environmentalism” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. “We believe,” write these two respected veteran liberal greens, “that the environmental movement’s foundational concepts, its method for framing legislative proposals, and its very institutions are outmoded. Today environmentalism is just another special interest. Evidence for this can be found in its concepts, its proposals, and its reasoning.””

Well, there may be a slow movement away from the disastrous, regulatory environmentalism in America, but in the EU it is flourishing and is in power.

The Common Fisheries Policy remains a key part of the EU system with every disastrous regulation producing a new one. It takes sheer genius to reduce cod stocks to the point when the fish becomes an endangered specie (though that is based on faulty and inadequate research). Of course, the CFP is, in the first place a political decision imposed on the fishermen and fishing communities but many of the attempts to improve it are imbued with green regulatory environmentalism.

The combination of the Hazardous Waste Directive, the Landfill Directive and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive has created enormous environmental problems through dumping, it being no longer possible to dispose of waste legally.

Small food businesses find that every year brings more “environmentally friendly” regulations about their own waste disposal, which either makes it too expensive for them to carry on, their closure contributing to the environmentally unsightly boarded up shops in various high streets or forces them into illegal dumping.

One can carry on indefinitely. Naturally, nothing much will change while environment remains an EU competence, in the hands of environmentalists, regulators and people, who know like to have their snouts in the environmentally friendly trough.

The Times today has a story about the scourge of the fishing industry, "black" fish.

It retails how details emerging from the trial in Glasgow of fisherman John Duncan suggests that the extent of the "black" fish trade in the Shetlands means that there is a 50 percent of fish are illegally caught.

Duncan, described as "a burly millionaire fisherman with a passion for collecting vintage motorbikes", and his neighbour Jerry Ramsay have admitted a £3.4 million scam in which they illegally landed more than 7,600 tons of mackerel and herring over a two-year period.

The case, says The Times, has exposed Britain's black fish trade, where fishermen land more fish than allowed under EU quota restrictions, and threatens to make a mockery of the fishing industry’s claims of hardship.

The paper then goes on to quote "industry sources", saying that the black fish trade is worth up to £100 million a year in Britain, with up to £80 million of this in Scotland, home to two thirds of the fleet. Up to 50 percent of fish caught in Britain are landed illegally, according to those same industry sources.

However, it seems the "industry sources" are in fact one fisherman, saying that that up to 50 percent of all pelagic fish - mainly mackerel and herring - was landed illegally in Shetland and up to 70 per cent elsewhere in Britain.

Therein give the clue to the illiteracy of the piece as Duncan and his colleague are pelagic fishermen – the "princes" of the industry who number no more than a dozen or so wealthy men who own a handful of multi-million pound boats

Duncan himself owns the Altaire, built in Turkey and fitted out by the Norwegian Solstrand shipyard in Tomrefjord (Norway) at a cost of £14 million in October 2004. At 249ft (76 metres) long, it is the largest and fastest of its kind in Britain. The pelagic fleet is in no way representative of the larger – and relatively impoverished – demersal fleet (which has much less opportunity for landing "black" fish).

Fishing in mid- to distant-waters, pelagic boats are very hard to monitor, especially as they travel long distances in search of herring and mackerel shoals, with catches often landed in Norway, Iceland or the Faeroes where there are few controls in the import of foreign-caught fish.

The fact that Duncan and his like have got away with it for so long represents a singular failure of the enforcement effort, where the sea area of England, Wales and Northern Ireland are patrolled by just three fisheries vessels, with two more allocated to the Scottish fisheries agency.

Furthermore, many studies have demonstrated that the quota system is an extremely inadequate way of managing fisheries, not least because quota are so hard to police, with more successful systems being based on "days at sea" allocations, which are much easier to enforce.

This was the basis of the Conservative fishing policy launched last January, based on successful systems observed elsewhere in the world, where "black" fish landings are considerably less of a problem.

Furthermore, all the Atlantic fishery countries have expressed a preference to work more closely with Britain, which would allow for better co-ordination of data and monitoring of fish landings. But, as long as Britain links in with the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, this is not possible – again a point made in the Conservative fishing policy.

The Times story, therefore – which seems so gleefully to focus on errant fishermen – has missed the point. The issue is as much a failure of the fishing policy and its enforcement as it one of criminal enterprise. Had a more effective system, been in place, the likes of Duncan would never have been able to get away with what they did.

The first story in the column today illustrates that which we knew already – that we do not need the EU to create a total bureaucratic shambles. Zanu-Labour Party ministers and their tame civil servants are well capable of doing this all by themselves.

This time, the Zanu-LP minister is Tessa Jowell who, with her officials at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are doing their best to bring an end to one of the West Country's most spectacular traditions - the vast processions of brightly-lit carnival floats which parade each autumn through the streets of many Somerset towns, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity.

We cannot blame the EU for this and, knowing the carnival tradition in France, Spain, Malta and elsewhere, any commissioner who tried it would probably get lynched.

Nor indeed can we blame the EU for the next outrage which Booker report, although this has an EU dimension and left even Europhile peers shocked.

The cause of their distress was the apparent contempt with which a government minister, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, told them that, in relation to the EU, they are no longer considered part of the UK Parliament.

This arose when Tory peer Lord Marlesford questioned an obscure passage of the Government's European Union Bill, relating to the EU constitution. The issue was the so-called "passerelle" clauses which permit the European Council to abolish the few surviving national vetoes, on issues such as taxation and defence, and allow them to be decided by qualified majority voting.

However, any such decision can be vetoed by national parliaments within six months of being notified (for example Art 444) and, in relation to this, came the revelation that the Bill puts this veto into the hands of the Commons alone.

Then came an extraordinary declaration by Baroness Ashton, a junior minister in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, who explained that "since 25 nations are involved in the European Union, it is important that, if decisions are to be made on the voting system, 25 parliaments should make the decision, but not 25 parliaments plus 12 second houses".

The Lords, in other words, being only a "second house" - and "wholly unelected", as Lady Ashton emphasised - is no longer part of our Parliament. Or at least, not in the eyes of our own Government - which added this disqualification of our Upper House to the legislation of its own accord.

Writes Booker, if this weird constitutional innovation in itself undermines the prime minister's insistence that taxation is one of his few remaining "red lines", it was further eroded last week when the European Court of Justice prepared to declare illegal a Treasury rule that companies cannot offsets losses in one EU country against their profits in another for tax purposes.

The tax repayments that companies such as Marks & Spencer, BT and Vodafone will be able to claim are so huge that, according to some tax experts, Gordon Brown could have to hand back up to £20 billion within a year or two - equivalent to 8p on income tax - blowing a further massive hole in the nation's finances.

But have no fear, he adds, in a sideswipe at the Conservatives. Knowing how reluctant the Tories are to mention "Europe", and following the Howard Flight debacle, it is most unlikely that any Tory spokesman would dare raise such explosive issues in this election. Unfortunately, he may be right.

This brings Booker to his third story and again we have a situation where Zanu-NL is using EU law as a basis for causing chaos to British enterprise.

There has, writes Booker, been a further twist to the bizarre "war" being waged by local officials of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) against the Hastings fishermen who operate the largest surviving beach-launched fishing fleet in Europe.

This time it is fisherman Richard Adams. Last December, his small fishing boat broke its propeller shaft when returning to shore. When this stopped Adams going back to collect his nets - worth thousands of pounds - he called on the assistance of his son Michael, who owns an even smaller boat used by sea anglers.

After recovering two sets of nets, containing five fish which they gave to a helper on shore, they were told by a Defra official, Andrew Newlands, that they had committed a criminal offence by fishing from "an unlicensed vessel".

In vain did they protest, in somewhat vivid language, that the law only applies when fish are caught to be sold. Forbidden to fetch his remaining nets, Richard Adams lost them when a storm blew up. The two men were charged with four offences, including "harassing a fisheries officer" by using strong language.

This case follows one Booker reported in January when two other Hastings fishermen, Paul Joy and Graham Bossom, were fined £10,000 with £5,000 costs for catching more cod than they were allowed by their "monthly quota allocation", despite producing a letter from Franz Fischler, then the Brussels fisheries commissioner, confirming that "under 10 metre boats" such as theirs are not covered by quota rules.

So totally irrational is this current case that, next Thursday Michael Foster, a local solicitor, will take time off from campaigning to hold the seat he won in 1997 as Hastings's first-ever Labour MP, to appear in court, free of charge, defending the latest fishermen to face prosecution.

Foster had argued in vain with the fisheries minister Ben Bradshaw that his officials appeared to be prosecuting the two men for an offence which did not exist.

But when he tried to get Mr Bradshaw to persuade his officials to take a more reasonable line over Richard and Michael Adams, the minister refused to intervene. Mr Foster is so concerned by Defra's conduct towards the Hastings fishermen that he has offered, whether or not he is re-elected, to represent the two men until their case is concluded.

That really does tell you something about the state of Zanu-LP.

To conclude, Booker adds a contrasting piece which, in the context, was irresistible. Defra may seem to be doing all it can to destroy our fishing and farming industries, he writes, but at least it has at heart the interests of one group in the countryside.

Hundreds of posters have been sent out by Prof Ian Rivers, of Leeds University's social inclusion unit, appealing for participants in "a research project focusing on the needs and experiences of lesbians, gay men and bisexual men and women living in rural communities". The "Rural LGB Project," Prof Rivers proudly explains, "is supported by Defra".

Frankly, at times, it really is quite hard working out which is worse – the EU or our own government. The only thing in favour of the latter is that we can get rid of it. Let us hope enough people agree that it is time that we did so.