• Michael Gove: The EU wrecked my family's fish business
    16 replies, posted
[url]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/04/michael-gove-how-the-eu-wrecked-my-familys-fish-business/[/url] [QUOTE]It was the moment when the dry political arguments about the economic risks and benefits of leaving the EU suddenly became intensely personal. Speaking before a live audience Michael Gove revealed how he had witnessed first-hand the “misery” caused by Brussels’ bureaucrats after their policies led to the closure of his adopted father’s family business. Visibly moved he told how he had watched his father’s fish merchant business “going to the wall” as a result of the EU’s common fisheries policy. The Aberdeen-based business had been founded by Mr Gove’s grandfather, who in turn passed it on to his father Ernest. EE Gove and Sons was a thriving concern, employing 20 people to process and smoke fish from the North Sea, including cod and whiting. But in the early 1980s it went under as a result, says Mr Gove, of the European common fisheries policy (CFP), which gave access to fishing grounds to boats from other countries and imposed quotas on British fishermen.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Mark Robertson from Gardenstown, the semi-retired owner of the white fish and prawn trawler the Zenith, whose sons now operate the boat, said: “I have been in this industry for 30 years and the economy around here has been decimated up here by the CFP. "You can see it in all the coastal communities, in places like Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Macduff. You just have to look at the closed shops everywhere, the quotas and regulations have had a huge effect. Most fishermen I know will be voting to leave.” Sixty years ago Britain's fishing industry employed around 50,000 fishermen, many of them sailing from Scottish ports. By 2000 the workforce had fallen to around 17,000, with numbers shrinking further since then.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Supporters of the EU’s CFP say it was vital to help depleted fish stocks recover from the perilously low levels they reached in the 1970s... But Mr Gove, who was raised in Aberdeen, has accused the CFP of giving “other European Union nations unfettered access to our fish stocks”. Describing it as “an issue very close to my heart”, Mr Gove told a Vote Leave rally in April: “I recognise that fishing is perhaps not the most high employment industry in this country, but it’s a symbol of what we lost when we entered the EU, control over national resources that if we retained them we could have husbanded in our interest and indeed in the interest of others.” Mr Gove, the son of an unmarried mother in Edinburgh, who was adopted by his hard-working, Labour-voting parents at the age of just four months, has spoken in the past of the sacrifices they made to help pay for his education. He recalled that when the fish merchant business collapsed it was only a scholarship which enabled him to complete his schooling at Aberdeen’s fee paying Robert Gordon’s College.[/QUOTE]
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't EU fishing regulations in place to stop us fishing the waters at an unsustainable rate. Its a shame people lost their livelihoods over this but if the alternative is no more fish forever I can see why it was introduced.
You'd be surprised at how stupid the regulations for fishing commercially in the EU are. Some countries are short-handed, while other countries like Norway are given the right to fish their reserves to crazy amounts, even though they are currently under the threat of king crabs taking over the depleted regions and causing local extinction events.
[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;50527506]Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't EU fishing regulations in place to stop us fishing the waters at an unsustainable rate. Its a shame people lost their livelihoods over this but if the alternative is no more fish forever I can see why it was introduced.[/QUOTE] Yes, but the other provision was also to allow full and free access to British fish stocks from vessels outside of Britain. A lot of fishing nowadays is done by Spanish ships using stocks in British waters.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;50527566]Yes, but the other provision was also to allow full and free access to British fish stocks from vessels outside of Britain. A lot of fishing nowadays is done by Spanish ships using stocks in British waters.[/QUOTE] Sure and this needs to be dealt with. But the argument that the leave side seems to be pushing so hard is we need to dump all these regulations and return to previous fishing levels that risked damaging or destroying the ecosystem they rely on. Also very awkwardly Michael Gove's father has come out and contradicted him. [url]http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/15/michael-gove-father-company-eu-policies-fish-processing-aberdeen[/url] Or rather he did and then released another statement stating it was actually Europe's fault.
[QUOTE]Ernest Gove told the Guardian that he did believe the industry in Scotland “more or less collapsed down” after the EU became involved in fisheries policy, but he said he sold his firm voluntarily, as a going concern. “It wasn’t any hardship or things like that. I just decided to call it a day and sold up my business and went on to work with someone else,” he said. “[I] couldn’t see any future in it, that type of thing, the business that I had, so I wasn’t going to go into all the trouble of having hardship. I just decided to sell up and get a job with someone else. That was all.”[/QUOTE] Not as strong as Gove, but not a contradiction per se. He agreed that British fishing was badly damaged by CFP. He agreed that his business in fishing had 'no future' after the CFP. The only disagreement is the stage at which he sold the business, and about whether the business was actually destroyed by the CFP, or whether he sold it [I]before[/I] it was destroyed. But whatever, Guardian contacted a 78 year old man on a whim for an instant statement and apparently unless it is word for word the same, Gove is lying?
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;50527928]Not as strong as Gove, but not a contradiction per se. He agreed that British fishing was badly damaged by CFP. He agreed that his business in fishing had 'no future' after the CFP. The only disagreement is the stage at which he sold the business, and about whether the business was actually destroyed by the CFP, or whether he sold it [I]before[/I] it was destroyed. But whatever, Guardian contacted a 78 year old man on a whim for an instant statement and apparently unless it is word for word the same, Gove is lying?[/QUOTE] For sure our fishing industry was damaged by the regulations but from what I gather (and I'm no expert) we needed those regulations to stop us permanently depleting fish stocks in the waters around us. If we dump these regulations and we go back to how it used to be who's going to step in when we start depleting fish stocks at an unsustainable rate? The government won't do anything because the leave side are basically promising now that they won't introduce similar regulations.
[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;50528030]For sure our fishing industry was damaged by the regulations but from what I gather (and I'm no expert) we needed those regulations to stop us permanently depleting fish stocks in the waters around us. If we dump these regulations and we go back to how it used to be who's going to step in when we start depleting fish stocks at an unsustainable rate? The government won't do anything because the leave side are basically promising now that they won't introduce similar regulations.[/QUOTE] Okay. But we don't need to be sharing our fish stocks with the whole of Europe.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;50527928]He agreed that his business in fishing had 'no future' after the CFP[/QUOTE] I didn't get that from his quote, I got that he just didn't think the business was going anywhere so he decided to sell it off, much like how if you think any job isn't going to advance you and you aren't going anywhere with it, then you leave it if you really want a career. I don't think he blamed the fact he saw no future in it on the CFP.
[QUOTE=MissZoey;50528060]I didn't get that from his quote, I got that he just didn't think the business was going anywhere so he decided to sell it off, much like how if you think any job isn't going to advance you and you aren't going anywhere with it, then you leave it if you really want a career. I don't think he blamed the fact he saw no future in it on the CFP.[/QUOTE] Oh, so he was fine, but he directly linked the collapse of the entire fishing industry, of which he was part, to the introduction of the CFP. He didn't directly say 'my business collapsed because of the CFP', but came extremely close by saying the entire [I]industry[/I] collapsed due to the CFP.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;50528053]Okay. But we don't need to be sharing our fish stocks with the whole of Europe.[/QUOTE] For sure, I'm not saying we should. But isn't this something we should have raised before the referendum? If its a big problem I'd to think our representatives would have brought this up before.
[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;50528119]For sure, I'm not saying we should. But isn't this something we should have raised before the referendum? If its a big problem I'd to think our representatives would have brought this up before.[/QUOTE] Again, it is a non-negotiable for the EU. CFP is here to stay whatever we say or do. They consider it fundamental to the EU and will not budge, no matter how violently we complain about it. [editline]15th June 2016[/editline] The Guardian's headline is basically a lie, to be honest. He wasn't exactly extolling the virtues of the CFP and directly linked it to the collapse of the Scottish fishing industry. What a win for Remain!
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;50527566]Yes, but the other provision was also to allow full and free access to British fish stocks from vessels outside of Britain. A lot of fishing nowadays is done by Spanish ships using stocks in British waters.[/QUOTE] Yet they are still bound to the regulations so your problem seems not to be the regulations but that Spanish people are fishing in your waters am I right in that?
[QUOTE=Killuah;50528298]Yet they are still bound to the regulations so your problem seems not to be the regulations but that Spanish people are fishing in your waters am I right in that?[/QUOTE] Yes. I also hear widespread complaints that the Spanish dodge the restrictions on fishing and as such undercut British fishermen. The regulation probably caused the original problems (even though it may have been necessary) but the current problems are more to do with the weird way that quotas are allocated and foreign use of our waters. [editline]15th June 2016[/editline] [media]https://twitter.com/J_Bloodworth/status/743156097314340864[/media]
[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;50527512]You'd be surprised at how stupid the regulations for fishing commercially in the EU are. Some countries are short-handed, while other countries like Norway are given the right to fish their reserves to crazy amounts, even though they are currently under the threat of king crabs taking over the depleted regions and causing local extinction events.[/QUOTE] from what i've read its actually London giving most of the rights away to very large fishing operations and leaving the average fishermen high and dry
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;50528308]Yes. I also hear widespread complaints that the Spanish dodge the restrictions on fishing and as such undercut British fishermen. The regulation probably caused the original problems (even though it may have been necessary) but the current problems are more to do with the weird way that quotas are allocated and foreign use of our waters. [editline]15th June 2016[/editline] [media]https://twitter.com/J_Bloodworth/status/743156097314340864[/media][/QUOTE] Yeah if anyone is gonna dodge restrictions, at least it should be british multi-millionairs, not them Spaniards [media]https://twitter.com/GreenpeaceUK/status/743009465667092480[/media] [editline]16th June 2016[/editline] [url]http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/brexit-flotilla%E2%80%99s-star-trawler-was-involved-%C2%A363m-fishing-fraud-20160615[/url] [quote]The flagship of a pro-Brexit flotilla currently sailing up the Thames [B]was caught up in the UK’s largest ever fraud involving illegal catches of fish [/B]and is now partly owned by one of the richest fishing barons in the country, Greenpeace can reveal.[/quote] [editline]16th June 2016[/editline] This is not about "the fishers" or "the people", this is about industry millionaires wanting back their protectionist laws [quote]A Greenpeace investigation has revealed how just three large fishing firms have come to control nearly two-thirds of England’s fish quota, leaving thousands of small boats struggling to keep afloat[/quote] Who is wrecking families' fishing buisinesses here?
If only we had someone sensible and level minded like Nigel Farage on the EU fishing committee to sort these things out Oh wait he's on there and he's only ever been to one meeting
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