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The Consequences of Brexit [part 4]

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I take it from that reply you do not work on the high seas for your crust. Sometimes I just despair at some of the posts on this forum.

 

Angel1.

 

I think the point is it is insignificant, compared to other industries (which are from from insignificant) likely to be damaged by brexit. If so it makes little sense to try and help fishing, if it damages the overall health of the country.

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"The UK’s share of the overall EU fishing catch grew between 2004 and 2014. In 2004 the UK had the fourth largest catch of any EU country at 652,000 tonnes, by 2014 this had grown to 752,000 tonnes and the second largest catch of any country in the EU."

 

from here

 

https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-pinching-our-fish/

 

If fullfact told me it was raining I'd have to look out the back door,

 

file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/SN02788%20(3).pdf

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I take it from that reply you do not work on the high seas for your crust. Sometimes I just despair at some of the posts on this forum.

 

Angel1.

 

You cannot please everyone. No one can.

 

I despair at the uneducated, but I still respect everyone, even if they don't measure up.

 

Lets put the facts on the table.

 

UK Fishing and associated businesses accounts for:

Employment - 24,000

GVA (similar to GDP) - 0.12% or £1.4 billion

 

UK Financial sector:

Employment - 1,100,000

GVA (similar to GDP) - 7.2% or £124.2 billion

 

I'll ask again, why are you so hung up on fishing?

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If fullfact told me it was raining I'd have to look out the back door,

 

file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/SN02788%20(3).pdf

 

Why is that?

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The EU Common Fisheries Policy:

 

Benefits EU fishermen more than UK fishermen by giving them access to UK waters.

 

Is massively beauracratic and overcentralised, giving very well paid jobs to Brussels at the expense of British fishermen.

 

Has failed to protect fish stocks and favours big industrial trawlers over small, sustainable fishing vessels and communities.

 

Damages developing countries, and ruins the livelihoods of small fishermen in places such as West Africa.

 

No to the EU! No to the Common Fisheries Policy!

 

 

 

http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/selling-silver-enclosure-uks-fisheries

 

 

Selling the Silver: the enclosure of the UK's fisheries

 

 

Fishing quotas result in concentration rather than conservation, writes Emma Cardwell.

 

The UK’s fisheries quota system, introduced in 1999 and comprising the creation of a private market for the right to catch fish, has been called “the biggest property grab since the Norman invasion”.1 The UK government use the quota system to control how many fish can be taken from the sea. It does this by dividing up the right to catch fish between a limited number of companies, and then allowing this right to be bought and sold. This privatisation of the produce of the sea has many parallels with the parliamentary enclosure of land in the 18th and 19th centuries.

 

 

The quota system, which was implemented gradually between 1980 and 2000, has led to widespread dispossession. This is in part because of what is widely considered a calculative error on the part of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA – previously MAFF) that led to the small boat fleet (made up of vessels under ten metres long, and the vast majority of British fishermen) being allocated less than five per cent of the right to fish.2

 

It is also because of the ‘grandfathering’ nature of rights allocation to larger boats, which implicitly favoured high-catching vessels. Larger vessel owners were given property rights over fish based on their historic catches. The proportion they took of the total recorded catch then remained stable as the overall amount fluctuated, meaning the same amount of quota would allow the right to (as an example) 3% of 100 tonnes of cod in 2003, and 3% of 25 tonnes of cod in 2005. Applying Hardin’s tragedy of the commons analogy, this system is akin to tackling overgrazing by allocating property rights based on the number of cattle someone owns: it rewards overexploitation, and penalises restraint.

 

 

 

 

SUPER TRAWLERS AND MILLIONAIRES

 

This allocation method led to many low-catching fishermen being forced out of the industry as quota levels fell and they found themselves unable to survive during lean periods. Larger companies could then use their holdings as leverage for loans to buy up this quota, and ownership of the right to fish was consolidated. A stark example of this is the fishery for herring and mackerel. At one time made up of thousands of boats around the coast, over 99 per cent of this valuable fishery – which accounts for almost half of total landings by UK registered vessels — is now caught by only 33 trawlers.3 The value of these boats, and more importantly their share of UK fishing rights, runs to hundreds of millions of pounds.

 

This increase in costs – the manifestation of the ‘resource rent’ promised by economic theorists – is turning fishing into a millionaires’ club4 and means that the traditionally widespread small business structure of the fishing industry, in which a boat owner/skipper employs a crew on a share (or ‘lay’) system, is gradually shifting to a model of large company ownership with significant involvement from financial institutions. Of the 33 mackerel and herring boats mentioned above, 14 are owned by just five large companies, a share that increases with every boat sale. Two of these companies (and their associated rights to fish) are owned by non-UK multinationals.5

 

COMMUNITIES AND MULTINATIONALS

 

It is hard to know the extent of quota consolidation and foreign ownership in the fleet as a whole, as the government keeps no public register of fishing rights, although one has been promised since 2011. (See Stop Press below.) It is known that foreign ownership of fishing rights is widespread – at a conservative estimate, around 20 per cent of English and Welsh fishing rights are owned by a handful of Spanish, Dutch and Icelandic companies, although this number could be higher.6 Within the UK, much quota ownership is now consolidated in a small number of industrial ports (such as Peterhead, Lerwick and Brixham) from which large, high-powered vessels travel many miles to fish.

 

This shift towards the concentrated, private ownership of fishing rights, which has taken place only over the last two decades, has decimated fishing communities around the country. As one small-scale fisherman based in Scarborough put it to me:

 

“We can’t catch a mackerel now because all the mackerel that swim past our front door are owned by 12 Scotchmen. It’s killed the community. There’s no community left”.

 

This destruction of communities is particularly marked in remote areas. The Hebrides was once home to a vibrant fishing industry, but has now lost the vast majority of the right to fish and is entirely dependent on shellfish. Alarmed by these developments and afraid of losing their traditional livelihood and a lynchpin of local culture, in the late 1990s the Shetland Islands Council invested £17 million to form a community-based whitefish quota scheme and retain fishing rights in the islands. In 2003, the European Commission declared this action illegal under European competition law.7

 

SEALORDS AND TENANTS

 

The promised ‘rent’ of quota has manifested itself in the practice of investors leasing the right to fish to working fishers, creating a situation akin to landlords and tenants. This is particularly the case for those in the small-scale, under ten metre fleet. These boats fish against a small government allocated pool and, due to the vagaries of the law, are not allowed to supplement this allocation by purchasing extra fishing rights, but can only take these on loan from larger vessels or quota investors. Again, the lack of public data on ownership means that the exact extent of this practice is unclear, but it is recognised as endemic throughout the industry. As a fisherman I interviewed on what was once the fish docks at Whitby, and is now a coach and car park, remarked:

 

“It’s all investors now. I’m fifth generation. My eldest son, who takes the boat out, is sixth generation, and we’re having to go to these people cap in hand. It makes a mockery of the entire system.”

 

Currently, the law is muddy as to whether the right to fish has been truly privatised, or if quota holdings simply represent a temporary allocation of a public resource. An extensive political battle between small-scale fishers and quota owners (centred around the diminutive government allocations of fishing rights to smaller boats) culminated in the High Court of Justice of England in summer 2013, but the verdict remained inconclusive as to whether the legal standing of the right to fish was as a private possession or a common good.8 Regardless of intention, attempts to bring quotas, which have been the subject of multi-million pound investments and used as collateral for bank loans, back into public ownership would prove highly problematic.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-13682451

 

Report suggests football club 'sells UK fishing quotas':hihi:

Edited by chalga

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If fullfact told me it was raining I'd have to look out the back door,

 

file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/SN02788%20(3).pdf

 

Are you an idiot? Those numbers are published by the government as well.

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Are you an idiot? Those numbers are published by the government as well.

 

"The study estimates that an average of 58%

of fish and shellfish caught in the UK’s water was landed by fishing

boats from other EU countries each year between 2012 and 2014. This

is said to represent about 650,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish worth

over £400 million each year."

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"The study estimates that an average of 58%

of fish and shellfish caught in the UK’s water was landed by fishing

boats from other EU countries each year between 2012 and 2014. This

is said to represent about 650,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish worth

over £400 million each year."

 

A fraction of 1% of GDP

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"The study estimates that an average of 58%

of fish and shellfish caught in the UK’s water was landed by fishing

boats from other EU countries each year between 2012 and 2014. This

is said to represent about 650,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish worth

over £400 million each year."

 

Okay you’re a confirmed idiot. A country’s fishing quota isn’t determined by where it is caught. A country’s allocation is split among its vessels by their own respective government. So our boats can catch fish wherever they want as long as they keep within their allocated quotas.

 

We are not going to suddenly going have a £400m expansion in our fishing industry because other EU countries suddenly stop fishing in our waters because the same will be reciprocated.

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Okay you’re a confirmed idiot. A country’s fishing quota isn’t determined by where it is caught. A country’s allocation is split among its vessels by their own respective government. So our boats can catch fish wherever they want as long as they keep within their allocated quotas.

 

We are not going to suddenly going have a £400m expansion in our fishing industry because other EU countries suddenly stop fishing in our waters because the same will be reciprocated.

 

No it's catch is determined where it's landed idiot.

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I'll ask again, why are you so hung up on fishing?

 

Unfortunately fishing is one of the knee jerk issues for Brextremists, like immigration, selling fruit & veg by the lb, bent bananas and sovereignty (or 'make Britain back British' as once so eloquently put by an EDL supporter.)

 

EU 'stay or go', is ultimately an economic argument. Very few people on either side of the debate have even a basic grasp of economics. What should trouble everyone is that people and organisations who actually do understand economics are all with one voice saying that the UK leaving the EU is a) going to be very bad and b) is going to hit the poorest of us hardest.

 

No one in the leave camp is saying anything about the prospects for the UK fishing industry other than a vague hope that leaving the EU will be a good thing for our fishermen. And sometimes I think that a lot of the more passionate leavers don't actually care as long as their dream of an EU free Britain comes true.

 

The most likely outcome for UK fishing is that the cost of that extra freedom to fish when and where it pleases will be more than offset by no longer being in a customs union so will have a smaller market reduced further by whatever tariffs end up being levied on British fish sales. So I get a distinct whiff of hypocrisy when I hear Brextremists getting all angsty when people say that fishing is a side issue when looking at the whole picture, because I suspect they don't know and care even less about the future of our fishing industry as long as they get to stick two fingers up to the rest of Europe.

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Unfortunately fishing is one of the knee jerk issues for Brextremists, like immigration, selling fruit & veg by the lb, bent bananas and sovereignty (or 'make Britain back British' as once so eloquently put by an EDL supporter.)

 

EU 'stay or go', is ultimately an economic argument. Very few people on either side of the debate have even a basic grasp of economics. What should trouble everyone is that people and organisations who actually do understand economics are all with one voice saying that the UK leaving the EU is a) going to be very bad and b) is going to hit the poorest of us hardest.

 

No one in the leave camp is saying anything about the prospects for the UK fishing industry other than a vague hope that leaving the EU will be a good thing for our fishermen. And sometimes I think that a lot of the more passionate leavers don't actually care as long as their dream of an EU free Britain comes true.

 

The most likely outcome for UK fishing is that the cost of that extra freedom to fish when and where it pleases will be more than offset by no longer being in a customs union so will have a smaller market reduced further by whatever tariffs end up being levied on British fish sales. So I get a distinct whiff of hypocrisy when I hear Brextremists getting all angsty when people say that fishing is a side issue when looking at the whole picture, because I suspect they don't know and care even less about the future of our fishing industry as long as they get to stick two fingers up to the rest of Europe.

 

If fishing is a side issue why is the EU so desperate to hang on to it, apparently the only ones sticking fingers up are such as yourself, only in your case it's towards the UK.

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