It has become a sad necessity to keep referring to the elephant in the room whenever journalists of any description write long and often emotional articles about something political, economic and social without mentioning the really important aspect of the subject: the role of the European Union and its various policies.

The Common Fisheries Policy is such an elephant with numerous analyses and woeful lamentations about the fishing industry and the presence or absence of fish in the seas around these islands published or broadcast without a single thought given to the noxious and destructive policy.

These awesome pictures in the Daily Mail of fishing trawlers from Peterhead among other places are accompanied by an article that describes fairly the dangers and difficulties of fishermen's lives and looks at the gradual (or not so gradual) decline of fishing ports like Peterhead and Grimsby. Nowhere do we see any references to the most important cause of that decline: that dratted policy.