It has been a longish time since this blog was last updated and there is little excuse for that except that discussions as to the best way to proceed have been going on and will be reflected in future postings.

In the meantime, we would like to call our readers' attention again to a document that needs to be revived. It is the Conservative Party Fisheries Policy that had been accepted by Michael Howard when he was leader and ditched immediately by David Cameron when he succeeded to the job.

It is our opinion in FAL that this policy, with a few possible minor changes, can still be the basis of our contribution to the discussion on how to move forward or how to "reform" the Common Fisheries Policy. Those who take the trouble to read at least the Executive Summary will see that we do not consider that there can be any movement until control of fisheries is restored to the UK government. Then we need to consider how far down in the chain should decisions be positioned.

We appreciate all contributions to the discussion, which will be fully aired on this blog.

Have to move with the times though this is an experiment. We shall see how well it works. The address: @FisheriesTruth.

Further to our little excursion into the mind and activity of Chris Davies, Liberal-Democrat MEP and self-styled expert on fisheries, there will be a public debate in Peterhead on the subject on March 30 with "three leading members of the European Parliament" taking part.

It will take place at the Waterside Inn, near Peterhead between 18.00 and 19.30.

 It is free to attend and open to all, but advance registration is required. To register, or with any queries, please email epedinburgh@europarl.europa.eu or call: 0131 557 78 66.

Representatives of FAL will be there.

This posting has to start with an apology. For various reasons there was a long break in updates. The reasons have now been dealt with and the blog will resume with a vengeance.

Our attention has been called to yet another self-styled expert on the fishing industry, to wit, Chris Davies the Liberal-Democrat MEP, a man who, as his CV shows, has been in politics or political PR all his working life. In this he resembles a number of other politicians today.

He is the co-ordinator on the Committee of Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. He was Rapporteur for the main Regulation and the man who set up the inanely named (to go with the inanely grinning photo) Fish for the Future committee.

What can one say about somebody who seriously writes this sort of stuff:

If fish stocks are to recover then the tonnage of the fish caught must be temporarily reduced, and we have to make use of the financially less attractive fish that are caught but are presently discarded. More fish have got to have a chance to breed before they are caught. In some fisheries this will mean that there must be some pain in order to secure long term gain, and that will arouse strong opposition.

There is a real danger that the Commission’s reforms will be hijacked by vested interests who think only of the short term. The Coalition Government in the UK will be strongly in favour I believe, but in the Council of Ministers strong opposition can be expected from Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal and maybe Poland. I expect this pattern will be replicated in the European Parliament, which has equal decision-making powers.

It is easy to understand why he has been referred to as self-styled expert. The whole posting is full of meaningless waffle of this kind, all of it meant to promote himself as the man who will save Europe's fish and fishermen. After all, nobody else has noticed that things were not quite what they ought to be.

To be fair, his committee did produce a long report with many amendments to the Commission's proposals. The amendments seem to take somewhat vague proposals and add words such as "sustainable" to make them even less likely to be put into effect. But it is possible that one or two of our readers who might plough through this document will find something useful in it. If so, could you let us know through the Comments system?

Of course, it does not occur to Chris Davies or his committee that the CFP, which is an entirely political construct whose aim is the creation of a single European fisheries and in which decisions are taken at the centre through political negotiations cannot possibly deliver on any of the promises of sustainable fisheries or scientific conservation, never mind the notion of a sensibly developing fisheries industry.

Still, we are glad to see that Mr Davies remains very satisfied with his work though we are disturbed by his worries that sensible ideas like his will be overcome by everybody else's selfishness and short-termism.

In the European Parliament all the amendments will eventually be considered by the Fisheries Committee, and its membership has a bias towards Spanish, French and Italian MEPs who are not the most progressive. Meanwhile, the Commissioner tells me that Fisheries Ministers on the Council seem once again to be ignoring the big picture about the dire state of our seas and defending instead the narrow interests of their large scale fishermen. It wouldn’t be so bad if the representatives of the nations only minimally involved in fishing were to speak up in favour of reform, but so far they are not getting involved.

We shall see how the debate progresses over the next few months. Woody Allen once said “the world is run by the people who turn up”. In this instance the wrong people seem to be there.

Please note that throw-away comment about Woody Allen, designed to show what a cool guy Chris Davies is: he knows all about films and even someone who was ever so trendy ... oh, about twenty years ago. Still, he is not far wrong: the wrong people do seem to turn up for the CFP debates, not least self-satisfied and ignorant MEPs.

Those words are "common", "fisheries" and "policy". Somehow, reports are produced about overfishing, sustainability, fishermen and their lives, the marine economy and yet, nobody mentions those three vital words. Why is that?

The BBC reports that a new report by the New Economics Foundation, which tends to be a little woolly on politics and real economics, has published a report called Lost at sea: £2.7 billion and 100,000 jobs.  It attacks overfishing, which they say is bad for the economy and criticize European fisheries ministers. Yet, they find it impossible to mention that what is behind the overfishing as well as the discards is an insane policy that has, as its basis, the notion of a common European fishing resource to which all member states can have equal access and which is regulated centrally on the basis of political decisions.

Another report produced by the International Sustainability Unit is entitled Towards Global Sustainable Fisheries and will need a closer examination, which we promise to provide. But it is not a good sign that the Executive Summary sees no need to mention those dreaded words or a few others like "third", "country" and "agreements". How can one have a serious discussion on the subject if one avoids the thorny political issues?

Spanish worry about fishermen not being able to fish in Moroccan waters after the renewal of agreement was scuppered is escalating. (Blogged here.)

The Congress of Deputies overwhelmingly passed the non-binding proposition from the Popular Parliamentary Group (GPP) requiring the urgent renovation of the fishing agreement between the European Union (EU) and Morocco.

The proposal was approved by 298 votes in favour, 28 against and 3 abstentions, EFE agency informed.

Joaquin Garcia Diez, GPP deputy, defended the initiative to prevent Spanish vessels from extended inactivity and the increase of unemployment level in populations which are highly dependent on fishing, such as the fishermen of Barbate.

In this city, 50 per cent of economic activity depends on the product of fishing in Moroccan waters, the legislator said.

For Garcia Diez, the new protocol must be supported by scientific reports and take into account the requirements of European Parliament (EP), and the opinion of the industry and the autonomous communities.

Members of the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) also reached consensus on the amendments tabled by the Socialists, seeking immediate implementation of the aid fund provided for the duration of the fisheries suspension.

Jobs in the Canary Islands are also being threatened.

Having mentioned Reclaim Our Seas Alliance or ROSA again, we feel it may be necessary to give some information about this organization.

ROSA is an alliance of fishing groups from England, France, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland united in a campaign to halt the economic and social decline suffered by fishing communities caused by the CFP.

ROSA represents a new strategic direction for fishing policy that gives Member States with an interest in a particular fisheries area the primacy of deciding the right policy for that area.

ROSA’s objectives are:

1. To halt the centralising process that has characterised EU fisheries policy through the real CFP of equal access to the resource with exclusive competence for all marine resources being with “Brussels” and

2. To initiate the process immediately of repatriating control of policy, management and stocks back to individual EU maritime Member States That is the outcome that we are looking for from the review of the EU‘s Common Fisheries Policy.

So far, that outcome appears to be unlikely and the fight must go on but it is good to know that we are not fighting alone.