The EU’s Common Fishing Policy has been an unmitigated disaster from just about every angle one can imagine. It has, of course, decimated the British Fishing Industry, but just as importantly wreaked havoc across our seas. So I found this item this morning to be far too generous to the EU, and I also wondered why the RSPB was chosen to be the voice for opinion? Are there NO British fishermen left that could be interviewed? Yes, I know that Dunne was critical of the politicians micro-management of Fishing policy but his critique did not go far enough in also exposing the vast corruption and cynical manipulation of the CFP. The BBC is reluctant to debate the gargantuan scale of corruption, inefficiency and lawlessness that pervades the EU and today this was just one small example.
ALL AT SEA..
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Because the rspb are to conservation, what the bbc are to unbiased journalism !
The rspb are a classic example of a once reasonable institution that has been forced into a narrow and misguided policy by internal extremists.
Their work on the ground has been either inefectual or counter productive and politically they are old fashioned hard leftists. And they are past masters at trying to pass off manipulated study data , to fit in with their politically driven views.
If you want to support a really worthwhile charity, one that farms in a way that encourages a wonderful diversity of bird life, may I recommend The Countryside Restoration Trust.
You can’t expect the RSPB to do other than spout the government line, and the BBC knows it.
They are dependent upon the public purse for
19% of their income.
IIRC the destruction of British fishing fleets was a condition of our joinng the Expensive Eating Club.
Not Grocer Heath's best moment & not a fact ever discussed on the BBC.
‘civitas.org.uk’ (26 May):
Not an insight the BBC airs, so near to the 4 June E.U. elections:
“The true significance of the parliamentary expenses imbrolio”
[Extract]:
“The great British public are no fools when it comes to politics. As Parliament’s power has waned, so too has their interest in what goes on there. Meanwhile, public cynicism with politics has grown apace, as the unaccountable system of law-making from Brussels has steadily replaced the former Parliamentary system. For the public now feels entirely impotent in terms of its influence on the law-making process.
“Current public anger with the political class is likely to deliver some interesting results in the up-coming elections for the European Parliament. However much steam they will allow the public to let off through engaging in unconventional voting behaviour, it seems that public interest in politics and respect for politicians will not be able to be restored until the current democratic deficit is made good by a full return of sovereignty to the Westminster Parliament.”
I think it is Dunn not Dunne !
I resigned from the RSPB many years ago when they transformed into a political pressure group, blatantly supporting Labour policies, with the welfare of birds very much a minor consideration.
They should have their charitable status removed.
More on the CFP here:
http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/1071-common-fisheries-reform-a-red-herring
The Barbican in Plymouth used to have a substantial fishing fleet. It is now wall to wall marina with one ‘bijou’ corner’ being reserved for the new BBC premises
Well heeled ‘charity’ workers, BBC types, publically funded arts people and other ‘liberal’ types all seem to hang out together in the capital in my experience.
As a person whose other half worked and socialised in this microenvironment I was struck at how unworldly most of these people are even as they exude a shallow metropolitan sophistication.
Countryfile did a remarkably balanced piece on the CFP a week or two ago, visiting Norway and showing how much better they arranged things. They even found a British fisherman who’d emigrated to Norway 30-odd years ago to look aghast as one who’d stayed explained the EU rules to him.
No mention of the fact that if we left the EU we could implement a Norwegian-style policy tomorrow, and nothing in it that Christopher Booker hasn’t been saying for years in the Telegraph, but still surprisingly critical of the Union by BBC standards.
Chickenshit personal attacks are funny.
Beowulf 5:34
I agree . I almost split my sides laughing. But, so far as I am aware, there are no age limits on this website.
The RSPB gets generous airtime because they are ‘on message’ its become yet another corrupted political pressure group and bought and paid for mouthpiece.
They take government cash and spew out AGW dogma, they cover up the evidence of damage that windfarms to bird populations and they hide data which shows rare birds of prey are at great risk from the ecomentalist bird slicers.
The trick to getting BBC airtime is now how ‘on message’ you are, a whole host of bought and paid for institutions are now under the control of political ideologues more interested in a political narrative and bleeding the public purse to fund their ‘lifestyles’ than they are about the things they were set up to protect and help.
When you think of the stinking corruption wrought by newlabour and the political infiltration of once wonderful groups its enough to make you cry with despair.
Completely off topic, except that it has to do with marine transport, I read the following in today’s Telegraph report of Jenson Button’s victory at the Monaco Grand prix, by David Coulthard.
“To see him jogging up the track at the end, still in his helmet and overalls, to collect his trophy from Prince Albert was a real thrill for me and I was cheering as loudly as anyone from the BBC yacht.”
Anon
Seems like the BBC carries a HUGE team of people to each Formula 1 venue :
http://tinyurl.com/da2vtd
And these are just the front team – how many more on the production side ? 30 in total ?
Anon
Seems like the BBC carries a HUGE team of people to each Formula 1 venue :
http://tinyurl.com/da2vtd
And these are just the front team – how many more on the production side ? 30 in total ?
Why is everyone screaming about the EU?
Last time I checked Britain was part of it, so any squawks should fall on our own doorstep. Therefore, if there is a crappy law, who is responsbile also? Therefore… do I have to go on?
Anon 8:00
The people responsible for the UK being members of the EU are the politicians who lied to us when we joined and the Labour government who lied to us when they promised a referendum on the EU.
You can’t blame the people for the UK being a member of the disaster that is the EU !
andrewdcramb – totally agree. The ‘Common Market’ is the one thing I really regret voting for. Completely taken in! People who were against at the time were sidelined as I remember and had very little air time.
PatD 10.07 PM
I also voted to STAY in the Common Market. Don’t forget that Heath never gave us the option to join, Wilson gave us the option to stay in or get out.
But the difference in political views between then and now are interesting.
Back in the seventies, many of the ‘hard’ left, Foot, Benn, et al campaigned against staying in the Common Market whereas the Tories were strongly in favour. How times have changed.
It is now the ‘hard’ left who are the campaigners FOR the EU and the ‘hard’ right against.
I think that tells you everything you need to know about how the Common Market/EU has changed over the last 30+ years along with it’s political objectives.
Long live the EUSSR!
Fix this site. Every time I try to leave it my computer freezes.
The fact remains — we are part of the EU and should be more vigilant about our interests. Anyway, would you rather have taxes and word battles, or wars of the hot variety that plagued most of Europe for centuries? I think this way is better.
from Anon. 8.00.
BTW this site really stinks. I can’t use it unless I sign on as Anon, and then there is that annoying letter recognition crap!
It’s irrelevant repeating the ‘we are all part of the eu so get on with it’
How’s about a vote:-
‘no offence you bunch of socialist twats but can old blighty please get it’s coat and leave eu’
Oh and dv- this captcha stuff really does my head in!
Agree with both Anonymous’s comments re this site. It will not let me get out either and now signs me in as PatD – a name I only use on a family blog…the wonders of the net!!!
I have problems with the site using IE8. The page stops loading when it reaches the B-BBC Poll posting (micropoll).
Work around (IE8):
In Internet Options, Security, Internet Zone – Set level for zone to HIGH.
Side effects – Recent Comments are not shown, Word Cloud is not displayed.
Page is ok with Google Chrome & Firefox (even with errors detected by both).
What is word verification achieving?
Word verification is there to defeat robotic spammers. It’s used by thousands of sites worldwide.
If people think this site is hard to use, they must have an atrocious time elsewhere.
As for the EU-lover who seems to believe that it has prevented wars, I’d suggest he goes away and reads a good book about NATO.
The only thing the EU has prevented is effective democratic control over a legion of unelected demagogues.
GCooper
Well said
I really do find it strange that some people are happy to live under the EU dictatorship.
There was no war within the USSR for years under their EUSSR but it didn’t stop people from wanting democracy – the only people who are scared of the democratic process are the brainless and corrupt.
I think that tells you everything you need to know about how the Common Market/EU has changed over the last 30+ years along with it’s political objectives.Its political objectives haven’t changed, only our understanding of them. “Ever closer union”: it’s in the Treaty of Rome. But even if the British electorate were aware of that 35 years ago, they were told not to worry their pretty little heads about it because it didn’t really mean that. Just as the Lisbon Treaty isn’t really the Constitution, and this doesn’t really mean the EU has a Military Staff.
Anyway, this is drifting off topic…
GCooper said…
Word verification is there to defeat robotic spammers
Haloscan didn’t have word verification and didn’t seem to attract robotic spammers. Was that just luck? We now seem to have a greater problem than before with school children posting (or perhaps pre-school children?).
Roland Deschain writes: “Haloscan didn’t have word verification and didn’t seem to attract robotic spammers. Was that just luck?”
Possibly. And bear in mind that we don’t now how many spams were picked-up and manually filtered out by the owner.
I’ve no great love of the new system, but is it really so difficult to type an extra word when posting?
As for our juvenile troll, no one has ever suggested the new system will prevent trolls. Perhaps more to the point, at least we only have one now!
I find the nostalgia for haloscan puzzling given the propensity it had for eating posts, getting out of synch with its multiple servers and rendering the entire comments system useless at the drop of a hat.
As I’ve said before, blogger’s system certainly doesn’t inhibit Guido’s burgeoning commentariat!
G Cooper
I wasn’t particularly being nostalgic for Haloscan, just wondering out loud! I quite agree that typing in an extra word shouldn’t be a problem.
My main gripe about Blogger is that it doesn’t remember names, leading to a confusion of Anonymice who either can’t be bothered retyping their name or forget to do so. And for whatever reason, the comments have lost a lot of their sparkle since the move away from Haloscan.
I agree – the sparkle does seem to have gone. Also, there seem to be far fewer comments. My main gripe is the loss of the “unread comments” facility.
I’m afraid I think I agree with Roland Deschain and hatethebias. There is a sense that something has been lost, though it’s not quite clear to me what it is.
Haloacan is in the process of being restored. I hope we can then start a nostalgia trip for Blogger comments. As to the sparkle – well, like beauty it is in the eye of the beholder.
As someone who got very angry when all the previous Haloscan comments vanished I’d like to point out that I like the fact that Blogger comments appear on the same page if one clicks on a link to an individual blog post (like this). Is the same thing possible with Haloscan as a back-up for when it screws up and no comments can be viewed?
Anonymouse
@ 10:50 AM, May 27, 2009
The hard left are not all pro-EU. The NO2EU party appears to be a motley collection of the likes of Tony Benn, Bob Crow, Dave Nellist and other left wing nut jobs. You don’t get much leftier than that crowd.