To be honest mate just any specific issues you had would be a start. It’s the only thing you’ve said that makes any kind of sense. Yet you’ve not elaborated on it enough for it to mean anything.
Like, ok the EU is bad for U.K. fishing... but is it worth sacrificing the economy and our freedoms?
All I had to do was google “fishing industry uk’ and I have this link;
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...shermen-fishing-industry-quotas-uk-government
That debunks your vague notion that the EU is bad for U.K. fishing..
Does it? From aforementioned article;
"The real scandal in British and European fisheries over the past 35 years has been the relentless hoovering up of catching opportunities by big boats and big companies"
"the government is open to “alternative approaches to the future allocation of quota”. On the other hand, it promises to “recognise” the “business model” which has allowed big fishing companies to buy up (from other fishermen) an indecently large share of catching opportunities in Britain"
"Such accumulations run directly contrary to the principles laid down by the
common fisheries policy(CPF). Article 17 of the CFP bans “dominant positions” and calls on member states to allocate their fish quotas according, among other things, to “the impact of fishing on the environment” and “the contribution to the local economy”.
"Since the creation of the CFP in 1983 these core principles have been systematically ignored by Brussels and several member states, but most egregiously of all by successive UK governments. Small, coastal boats under 10 metres, which make up 77% of the English fleet, currently have the right to catch 3% of the total English catch of quota-controlled fish such as cod, haddock, plaice, sole, herring and mackerel. One super-trawler, British-flagged but ultimately Dutch-owned, has the right to catch 94% of the English herring quota in the Atlantic and North Sea."
"Low Impact Fishers of Europe (Life) uncovered the opaque ownership pattern of the half-dozen fish producer organisations (POs), which possess 97% of English quotas... ...The investigation, entitled Fishy Business in the EU, found that one of the English POs belonged, in effect, to a single Dutch company. Another, the Fleetwood PO, is dominated by UK fishing companies controlled by Spanish interests.
Claims by Ukip and others that the British fishing industry has suffered a calamitous decline “because of the CFP” are misleading. The big British fishing companies and the big boats are doing fine. They are now the most prosperous in Europe, with
record revenues in 2017 and operating profits averaging 25%.
It is the small-scale skippers and coastal communities who are struggling with operating profits close to zero. This is due not to competition from European boats (with local exceptions in the Channel) but to the failure of UK governments to challenge the “eating up” of quotas by big fishing interests.
Much the same accumulation of quotas has occurred in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland. There is a healthier balance in France and in non-EU Norway. Paris and Oslo forbid the private “ownership” of quotas, which is not enforced by the EU, as some fishermen’s leaders claim.
Some degree of concentration of the fishing industry is inevitable and desirable. Small scale-fishermen have a limited range; processing factories cannot be built all around the coastline. The present egregious imbalance between big and small interests is unhealthy: it destroys small coastal communities and hands over entire fish stocks to high-impact – ie more destructive – types of fishing.
In
Scotland, foreign companies have been kept at bay but the country’s generous quotas for species such as herring and mackerel have been bought up by a handful of fishing families. Two-fifths of the entire Scottish catch by value, and 65% by tonnage, was landed by 19 powerful super-trawlers in 2016. Small-scale coastal fishermen, who operate 80% of Scottish boats, have to make do with 1% of quotas."
OK - so we can see that no EU "**** over the Brit fishermen" directive hasn't ever existed, but I don't think anyone claimed that. However, despite the author shifting the blame it is clear the EU has no interest in small-business fishermen or their livelihoods - REGARDLESS of where they are from. While, categorically, yes, we bring in the same amount of fish and therefore money as we would otherwise, a HUGE chunk of that catch is hauled by a few supertrawlers, and the money they make (for putting fish from British waters on the British market) immediately leaves Britain for Spain or the Netherlands, and neither the EU nor our government has done anything to stop this.
What you, and the author, fail to understand is the very real impact this has on small, family business, and small, traditional fishing communities (that have existed on our shorelines longer than parliament has). I have a family friend who has been a self employed fisherman for over 25 years. Depite being an expert in his craft, and lowering his costs by having his sons work the boat and his wife administrate the business, every year os a struggle to make ends meet, because he chucks back a huge portion of what he catches due to quotas. These fish are then RECAUGHT and sold on our shores by foreign companies with outrageously oversized quotas. Tell me how this can possibly be logical.
The EU didn't tell anyone to do it, but they've also never done anything about it. Considering this concerns small, fragile economies that are critical in rural coastal regions, that is a ****ing travesty as the most ordinary, powerless people just get shat on. Consistently. For decades.
The author only wants to shift a blame that is in reality, shared. Our government might not have stood up for our fishermen, but the EU has also done nothing, and it is other EU member states reaping the benefits as the article points out. Our government hasn't exactly stood up for many little guys, because we have had governments that pander to Europe before they protect our people and their interests. This doesn't just exonerate the EU. They should have done something about these giant companies securing wuch a disproportionately high amount of quotas, because it affects vulnerable communities in Britain, i.e the EU, i.e their doorstep.
Norway, my favourite example, doesn't pinch money from our fishing, because they fish their own waters,because their quota makes sense, because they have the sense not to be in the EU. See how things become immeasurably more complex once they have to pass through Brussels.
Now let's take a look at farming. I found this quite well balanced article -
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ish-farmers-be-better-off-in-or-out-of-the-eu
Note how even the Liz Truss, quoted here as a remainer, wants to " work within a reformed EU to reduce bureaucracy and secure further reform while still enjoying the significant benefits of the single market, which gives us access to 500m consumers. " This, in my opinion is wanting to have your cake and eat it too, as the EU has shown no desire to reduce bureaucracy or change its policies in regards to British farming.
https://fullfact.org/economy/farming-subsidies-uk/ https://fullfact.org/europe/what-does-leaving-eu-mean-agriculture/
We can gather from these articles that UK farms make considerably more from collecting EU subsidies than they can from actually farming. This influenced the leaving to rot I mentioned earlier. This is anecdotal also, but my house backs on to a farm that I regularly walk through and have done for 15 years. I remember distinctly one year, he grew three full fields of cereal crop (not sure which one) and just left them to rot. Literal acres of food. I happened to pass the farmer one morning why all this crop was rotting and he explained to me, that if he harvested and sold that crop, he would have to sacrifice his EU subsidy, which was worth 10-20 times what the crop was, and it would have doomed his business. One or his fields is now a solar power plant, for which he received a hefty chunk of subsidy money, far more than he could possibly have made farming. He is not a greedy man, he is simply left without options if he wants to keep his business afloat, because actually farming won't make him any money despite access to the glorious single market.
Now, a lower environmental impact and solar power plants are not bad things, but this is still farmland that is not being used for farming, in fact many fields sit empty all year and the farmers collect subsidy money just for planting a row of trees because of the 'reduced environmental impact'. Not sure how familiar you are with trees, but they take a while to grow.
As you can see in the links, the subsidies and regulations, much like the fishing situation, favours only the largest farms and agricultural companies, while the smaller farms that stitch this country together are left doing braindead **** like leaving crops to rot just to collect subsidy money, because being an actual farmer is suicide at this point.
This is again, a sign of too much bureaucracy. Incentives that seem logical on the table in Brussels - give the farmers incentives to reduce their impact on the environment - leads to crazy illogical **** like the above. This is because the system is just too large, complicated, and has too much on its plate to govern effectively. Leaving the EU will allow us to set our own policies for reducing the environmental impact that actually work for farmers, so they can collect subsidy from the government and, you know, maybe actually do some ****ing farming.
Here's some examples of the DWP 's mastery of stat manipulation:
https://dpac.uk.net/2015/02/new-dwp...t-the-of-jsa-and-esa-sanctions-has-increased/ https://dorseteye.com/government-manipulated-dla-figures-to-try-to-justify-cuts/
Now, I doubt the high employment figure just based on distrust of that particular branch of government. I could very easily be wrong about that figure, but the DWP has shown a deftness in fiddling stats for years now, particularly in justifying ultra harsh cuts and austerity measures.
This figure could be totally accurate, but how many of those jobs are secure, and how many are careers? I think we have a crisis of opportunity perhaps rather than outright unemployment. I know quite a lot of young people with jobs. I know next to none with actual careers. The apprenticeship scheme is an abject failure used by ****** employers to hire cheap labour, and by the DWP to write people off as employed, when they are making 3 pounds an hour and will be unemployed again within a year.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/09/apprenticeship-schemes-fail-young (old article, but im not aware any changes have been made to the scheme)
I'll leave this essay/post at that for now. If you'd like me to back up anything else I said, let me know.
EDIT: Said Dane, had misread Dutch.
