tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660751614871769034.post3987638254010953197..comments2023-10-09T11:00:19.400+01:00Comments on Four Thousand Words: A Rant About Ignorance (and the EU)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660751614871769034.post-88562414032085587282011-03-04T19:16:46.221+00:002011-03-04T19:16:46.221+00:00Hello Stuart,
Thank you for taking the time to co...Hello Stuart,<br /><br />Thank you for taking the time to comment on my blog. It's much appreciated and shows that people care about the genuine issues that I discuss.<br /><br />Do we need the EU? That's a big question, especially given my final admittance that my knowledge of it is sketchy at best, and the central tenet of the article was my reaction to what I suspect to be ignorance about the EU, rather than the EU itself.<br /><br />Let's look at what I do know about the EU. For starters, it contains all of our major trading partners and is responsible for more than 20% of the world's business. With the loss of the industries that you describe (more on that shortly) and the UK's long-term move to an almost entirely service-based industry model, can we really remove ourselves from an agreement that would see already dwindling trade levels plummet? I haven't looked into the way in which the EU trade income is distributed, nor do I have a full appreciation of the amounts paid into EU projects by the UK, but it seems to me that limiting our options by removing ourselves from the single market would be unwise.<br /><br />The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is firmer ground for me because my father was a fisherman for a period, the subject interests me immensely and I own a number of excellent books on the subject. I particularly recommend 'Sea Change' by Richard Girling, which gives a stinging appraisal of how abysmally the CFP is failing in its remit to protect fish stocks in Europe. It is also particularly harsh on Britain's attitude to cod fishing, because a failure to adhere to already weak European regulations has contributed to the current crisis whereby cod numbers in the seas around Europe are at an all time low.<br /><br />As I see it, there are two key issues that threaten the future of the fishing industry in the UK, and these are the reluctance of the buying market to accept anything but cod on their plate, and the acknowledgement that quotas on fish are not determined solely by faceless bureaucrats in in Brussels but by genuine scientific determination that fish numbers cannot support the levels at which we have fished in the past. Yes, there are genuine issues in the way quotas are distributed and fisherman still throw dead fish back into the sea because they are considered too small to land, but these are separate issues worthy of a blog entry of their own. As with climate change, the British public's failure to observe the available evidence is at the heart of this issue.<br /><br />I know less about iron and steel production but it is apparent from figures produced by the World Steel Association that production in the UK is falling, though it could be counter-argued that this process began following the privatisation of British Steel by the Thatcher Government in 1988. British Steel became Corus and was acquired by TATA Steel of India in 2010. Despite falling production, the Corus subsidiary remains Europe's second-largest producer of steel today. However, my lack of knowledge of the production industries means that it is hard for me to say whether the long-term future is healthy for the company or not.<br /><br />KrisKris Holthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17496824392835614891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660751614871769034.post-43952359055564443342011-03-04T00:01:56.259+00:002011-03-04T00:01:56.259+00:00Do we really need the EU?
I mean we've been ...Do we really need the EU? <br /><br />I mean we've been in it since 1972, that is 39 years where those bloody Brussels technocrats have told us how to live.<br />We would still have major industries such as fishing, iron and steel production, I know the latter we have but not at the levels known previously.<br />Is opting out of the EU circus a real option, for getting Britain back on track?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com