There's been a lot of sh*t happening recently - quite hard to keep up, really. Regular visitors may have been wondering when we were going to cover major issues like the new American president ("He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"), or the Israelis having the nerve to think they should do something about the people who keep lobbing rockets over their borders and claim proudly that they want to destroy the Israeli state? Is it Israel's fault that they have a properly equipped army instead of a bunch of thugs sheltering behind women and children?
You can imagine the conversation at Israeli High Command, can't you?
"Yes, hallo, this is the Commander in Chief here. What's that? Hamas have fired a rocket into a housing estate? One house destroyed and two civilians dead? Right, get me the Air Force … hallo, is that the Air Force? Just launch an F16, would you, and tell the pilot to take out one house in Gaza? What's that? What size house? Oh, about three bedrooms, I should think. Preferably detached, with a jacuzzi. Now, where are the Commandos? Captain, I want you to go to the border and shoot two innocent civilians, please. Just two, mark you. Our response must be proportionate …."
And then there's that ridiculous proposal to give £12,000 to the families of anyone killed in the Irish troubles. Whatever next? How about cash grants to the families of the 7th July bombers? Perhaps the money could come from the National Lottery. How bloody absurd - if you had a family-member killed because they were engaged in an act of crime or terrorism, you ought to be ashamed to take the money, and if they were killed because they were innocent bystanders it'd be an insult to suggest that £12,000 is the going rate. And if we're going to "manage history" in this way, where does it stop? How about compensating Jews for the Holocaust? Or ginger people because of the Anglo-Saxon invasion?
And as for Prince Harry having a normal sense of humour ...
Incidentally, that word Harry used about one of his friends, "Paki". Exactly how is that offensive? Did you know that one of the best-known websites for the Pakistani community calls itself "paki.com"? - it looks rather good, actually. What's the difference between calling someone from Pakistan a "Paki", and calling someone from Scotland a "Scot"? Is the word "Brit" offensive? Actually, to many English, Welsh and Scottish people, it is - but we don't hear them bothering to complain, do we? Perhaps we should ban the word "Yank" or "Yankee" to describe Americans? - although there's a baseball team that might find that a bit awkward.
No, we feel that enough's been said already about all these. We prefer to concentrate on more domestic, but equally outrageous, issues.
Here's Christopher Booker writing in the Telegraph …
Until recently, Newlyn in Cornwall was the largest fishing port left in England. Last week a banner headline over two pages of Fishing News read "Newlyn reels under £188,000 penalties - port's netting fleet decimated". What has left the town stunned, wondering how long its fishing industry can survive, is the latest step in a court case which has left 14 local residents, several in their 70s and 80s, facing heavy fines and the threat of imprisonment, forcing most to sever family links with fishing that go back generations. When the final step comes in May, involving the trawler firm Stevenson's, the town's largest employer, it is feared this could wipe out Newlyn as a fishing port, Nothing better summed up the poignancy of this case than the sight of 82-year old Doreen Hicks weeping in the dock after being given a criminal record, fines and costs of £3,500, on threat of imprisonment, just because she was named as a part-owner of her family's fishing boat.
As much as any episode I have come across in 20 years of reporting on the destruction of Britain's fishing industry, this case has shown how there are two different ways of looking at this long-drawn-out tragedy. From one point of view, the facts were clearcut. The 14 defendants, fishermen and their families who happened to have a part-share in six elderly fishing boats, were accused of selling £140,000-worth of hake and other fish back in 2002 which they had illegally mis-recorded as other species because they didn't have the required EU quota. After a six year investigation by officials of the Marine Fisheries Agency (MFA) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the 14 last year pleaded guilty.
Having delayed sentencing for nearly a year, with a ban on press reporting of the case, Judge Phillip Wassell, claiming that plenty of hake quota had been available at the time, showed no sympathy for what he called "a deliberate, complex and well-organised series of deceptions". He imposed fines and costs on the defendants totalling £188,000, with prison sentences for non-payment.
An MFA spokesman, echoing the judge's claim that plenty of quota was available, exulted at the punishment of this "environmental and financial crime". Also supporting the judge and officials was Charles Clover in The Daily Telegraph who, under the headline "Fishing pirates of Newlyn caught in law's net", described the defendants as "the self-serving fiddlers of Newlyn who conspired to wipe out our marine resources for private gain".
Among those facing fines and possible imprisonment were 83-year old Mrs Hicks, Donald Turtle, 82, and his wife Joan, 71, as part-owners of boats skippered by their sons. Judge Wassell conceded they might not have known about the "conspiracy", but they deserved punishment for having "benefited" from the crime.
From the fishermen's point of view the story looks rather different. Hake were abundant around Cornwall in 2002, but EU quotas were so tiny that the fishermen could catch their entire month's allowance in a single haul, making it virtually impossible to earn a living. This was why they logged their over-quota catches as different species. Although Judge Wassell claimed that quota had been available, the court had heard no evidence on this (the fishermen themselves were not permitted to speak in their own defence). But the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation, responsible for individual quota allocations, insists that virtually no extra quota was available in 2002. It was so dismayed by the judge's comments that it has asked for a transcript of his judgment.
In response to accusations that the men acted solely out of "greed", Mrs Turtle says: "It was need, not greed - most weeks our men come home having earned less than the minimum wage."
Ironically, since 2002, the Newlyn fishermen, working with government scientists, have convinced both Defra and Brussels that Cornish hake stocks had been so underestimated that fishing for hake is now "unrestricted". But of those six Newlyn boats, only two are still in full-time fishing. One skipper, John Turtle, now working on a North Sea supply vessel, says: "Defra has broken the back of the Newlyn fleet. I haven't got any fight left in me to return to fishing."
Another skipper, Shaun Williams, now working as a lorry driver, says: "I wanted to leave a good industry for my son to join, but that industry is now very, very sick and struggling to survive."
The final blow for Newlyn could come in May, when Stevenson's comes up for sentencing, after its records have been trawled through under the Proceeds of Crime Act, designed to seize the assets of terrorists and international drug dealers. Last year this was used by the MFA to wipe out three small fishing businesses in the Thames Estuary, when fishermen were forced to sell boats and homes to pay punitive fines.
The quota system being enforced in this ever more draconian fashion is the one which every year forces fishermen to throw countless millions of saleable fish dead back into the sea. Even the EU's fisheries commissioner, Joe Borg, calls it "immoral". But what is even more startling about the disaster created by the Common Fisheries Policy has been the uniquely ruthless zeal with which Britain's officials have set out to enforce its "immoral" rules on our own fishermen - with the enthusiastic support of judges (and even some journalists) who seem quite unable to recognise the human tragedy involved.
Another British industry which may soon disappear, thanks to our masters in Brussels, is production of that remarkably useful metal aluminium. Although we rank only 19th in the world production league, our two main plants, in Anglesey and Northumberland, are as efficient as any of their competitors. But aluminium relies heavily on constant supplies of electricity.
The Holyhead plant, Wales's largest electricity user, is supplied at a discount price by the nearby Wylfa nuclear power station, state-owned through the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). If the NDA was privately owned, it says it would be happy to carry on selling power to its largest customer at a discount. But under EU state-aid rules this is now "against the law".
So it was announced last week that Holyhead is to close next September, with the loss of 500 jobs.
The Northumberland plant at Lynemouth uses its own coal-fired power station to produce even more aluminium than Anglesey. But Brussels has ruled that, because it fails to comply with the EU's Large Combustion Plants directive, it too will have to close, losing 600 more jobs and almost all that remains of our aluminium production.
As ever more of British industry disappears, with Lord Mandelson predicting that even the City of London will emerge from the slump much reduced, it seems we shall soon have to live on air. Then, when Brussels discovers that air contains carbon dioxide, calling for yet more regulation, will even that be beyond our reach?
Telegraph readers sent responses to this story that were, as usual, intelligent and perceptive …
"The thing that strikes me as sinister is the fact that the judge placed a no reporting ban on the case. He compounded this by refusing the defendants to speak in their own defence. This suggests you are describing a show trial. I thought we fought a war or two to prevent this sort of thing happening here".
"The people are free when they are able to get the kind of country that they want. But when the people just have to put up with the kind of country that the authorities want, they are living in a dictatorship. Our dictatorship is heavily tarted up to look like democracy but, in truth, we are subjugated to the will of Brussels. In order to regain our freedom we must leave the EU"
"Sadly, it has come to a point that I believe many so called "civil & public servants" have become nothing more than nasty, vindictive and willing oppressors of their fellow citizens, doing the bidding of their political masters.
"I think the time is approaching that these individuals should be seen much as collaborators in WWII europe were viewed. They should be shunned, ostracized, shamed and made outcasts from the society they so brutally try to dominate. It is these types of people who willingly herded fellow citizens into cattle cars just 60 years ago". (Careful, when Ken Livingstone said something like this he caused a storm of outrage, although it's not clear who it's offensive to. The cattle, perhaps - GOS)
"What this disgraceful case really shows is that there is much about Britain today that should frighten us all greatly and by that I do not mean the chance of dying at the hands a terrorist bomber. There now exist vast armies of officials which excel at punishing the little man but not the bigger player and they are equipped with a huge range of powers given to them not only by the EU but by our 'government'. The laws used against the Newlyn men were intended to catch and punish dangerous criminals, not fishermen trying to earn a living in the face of mad and complex regulations that serve no useful purpose. The obsessive manner in which the Newlyn men were pursued is chilling - and to what end? We know now that this is part of a pattern - who can forget the Poole (Dorset) case in which surveillance provisions were used by a local authority to stalk a young mother for three weeks because one of her neighbours had wrongly accused her of registering one of her children for a school outside her catchment area, a crime now apparently so serious that it is considered worthy of the attention once normally given only to individuals suspected of planning armed bank robberies or acts of terrorism.
Be afraid ..."
The GOS says: I've just got one thing to add. By the time they'd been caught in the nets and hauled on board, the bl**dy fish were bl**dy dead, so what was all the bl**dy fuss about? What were the fishermen supposed to do - the bl**dy kiss of life?
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