Re: Oops - embarassing or what???

The way I got to know moscow on this forum, he means, UK voted against the mighty EU, and got it's way.
The fishing quota, the pound, schengen etc. In many decisions the UK got a special position.

Re: Oops - embarassing or what???

Our fishing fleets are decimated we get about 5 per cent of our own fish ! How did we win at that ?

Re: Oops - embarassing or what???

When Britain joined the then EEC in 1973, we accepted the fait accompli of a joint 200-mile European fishing limit (rather sneakily agreed by the six original members*in 1970). Margaret Thatcher’s government did force concessions. When the common fisheries policy was finalised in January 1983, it was agreed that the pool of fish available in each sea area – the total allowable catch (TAC) – would be split into national quotas based on actual fishing records from the 1970s. Britain successfully insisted that its own quotas must be boosted to take account of its “lost” fishing opportunities off Iceland.

Some of the British quotas for cod and other prized types of white fish were therefore set, and remain at generous levels – 84% of the available haddock in the North Sea, for instance. This was an El Dorado for the Scottish fleets from Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Shetland, but too late for Hull and Grimsby.

It was true then, and remains true now, that about 6o% of the tonnage of quotas within the “British” 200-mile limit went to non-British boats. But two points must be remembered.

The “foreign” boats had fished there for decades, sometimes for centuries. A large part of the “tonnage” of the foreign-caught fish consisted, then and now, of species we do not much like to eat (herring or hake, for instance) or species caught for milling into animal feed. The Danes, for instance, take 90% of the sprats in some “British” sea areas – and they did so long before the common fisheries policy.

The common fisheries policy since 1983 is often reckoned to have been a failure. Stocks of some species, especially cod and haddock, fell to dangerous levels in the late 1990s – largely because EU governments, egged on by successive British governments, awarded catches up to 30% beyond what scientists said was sustainable.

Re: Oops - embarassing or what???

I still can't see how we won anything. If the areas belong to us nothing stopping others paying for a licence to fish those areas. We get the money that way and can use it how we want.

Re: Oops - embarassing or what???

You don't assume all the fish caught by british fishers will be consumed in the UK? What will happen to the fish you intend to land in the EU?