In another small but significant erosion of personal freedom a bunch of Bureaucrats at DEFRA (Department of Eejits, Fools, Rat-finks & Arseholes) have come up with a plan to preserve Britain’s fishing grounds from the depredations of industrial fishing fleets. They are aiming to take away the right of British people to fish with rod and line from the shore.
The right of British citizens to catch fish from the shore goes back to... well, since before there were such things as laws or British citizens. We know that Bronze Age (3500 - 750 BC) humans used to fish from the beaches so as it is not a right that was conferred by Kings or Courts, Machiavelli does not see how it can be revoked by little people wearing cheap suits from Matalan. But it is true, they plan to regulate shore fishing to help preserve our fish stocks.
How much harm do shore fishermen with their rods and lines, buckets of bait and thermos flasks of hot Bovril do? Well nobody knows but it is my guess that all of them, in a good year will not take as many fish as a single factory trawler will catch in one haul.
The true idiocy is that because of bureaucratically imposed quotas most of the fish caught by the factory ships cannot be landed and have to be thrown back. After being dragged a few miles in a net of course the fish are dead and serve only as snacks for seagulls. So on top of one pointless and self defeating set of regulations we are now set to impose another.
The factory trawlers are not the worst offenders of course. High tech fishing now involves sucking up everything from a chunk of the seabed thus destroying environments vital to the marine food chain. But the big food companies whose subsidiaries own such ships and nobody at the Department of Eejits, Fools, Rat-finks & Arseholes seems quite as anxious to bully them as to push Joe Bloggs around for simply taking half a dozen herring home for his tea once in a while.
You get the picture?
This plan is the latest example of gesture politics. “Oh shit, we’ve fucked the fishing industry. Quick let’s announce a plan so we look as if we are doing something.” In the end of course it comes down to the same old thing. Big business must not be constrained in any way.