Frequently, the best way of getting information is by asking questions, written or oral in the Houses of Parliament, particularly the House of Lords. On February 2 Lord West of Spithead asked:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the reduction in the number of offshore patrol vessels available for fishing protection on their meeting their responsibilities within the United Kingdom economic exclusion zone.

It is worth noting that what is also at stake is the equal observance of the many various rules. HMG in the shape of Lord de Mauley replied:

Responsibility for fisheries protection in English waters lies with the Maritime Management Organisation (MMO). Fishery protection services in English and Welsh waters are provided by the Royal Navy (RN) under a formal agreement with the MMO. The service is provided by 3 offshore patrol vessels of the Fisheries Protection Squadron.

The MMO has identified that the provision of 500 days at sea is currently sufficient to enable the UK to meet its obligations for at sea surveillance and inspection under the Common Fisheries Policy. This assessment is kept under constant review as enforcement obligations and priorities change.

As the following figures show this minimum commitment has been maintained for the last 2 years and is projected to be delivered again for the year 2014 – 15.

2012 – 13 562 daysbr/>
2013 – 14 512.5 days

2014 – 15 509 days (projected)

The financial contribution to the RN for this service has been reduced in return for a move from dedicated 24 hour fishery protection days to 9 hour days. These days enable surveillance and inspection of fishing vessels to be undertaken during key fishing periods. The minimum number of days required has been maintained during the current financial year despite the fact that one offshore patrol vessel has been deployed elsewhere for part of the year.

Well, that is very nice, of course but it does not precisely answer the question about the impact. We are merely being assured, as so often before, that whatever the government does is perfectly adequate. Past experience, on the whole, would indicate otherwise.

In case anyone has missed it (make that most people rather than anyone), Latvia has taken on the rotating presidency of the European Union. So, naturally, their representatives have been presenting plans for the next six months and, we have to assume, somewhere among those plans there is the usual one about cutting red tape and encouraging business and entrepreneurship.

Here is what the Minister of Agriculture Janis Duklavs said to the Committee for Fisheries (PECH) in the European Parliament:

Multiannual management plan for Baltic Sea cod, Baltic herring and sprat stocks is the first multiannual fishing plan of the new generation. This file is essential for ensuring sustainability of the stocks and at the same time offers more predictability and certainty to the industry. The proposal is therefore on the top of the Presidency’s priorities.

Proposal for Regulation on introduction of the landing obligation: the Latvian Presidency will be fully involved in the outstanding work on the new rules. The obligation to land some fish species entered into force on 1 January this year, but fishermen still have no clear rules on the application. The EU institutional agreement on this file should be completed as soon as possible.

External dimension of fisheries (sustainable fishing partnership agreements with third countries, negotiations with coastal states and representation in international organizations): the Minister underlined the importance of fisheries agreements for a viable and competitive EU fishing fleet in high-seas. It is expected that the work on negotiations for agreements with Mauritania, Kiribati, Seychelles and other countries would be smoothly continued in the first half of 2015.

Let us note immediately the reference to the "competitive EU fishing fleet". Whether it is competitive or not is irrelevant. Nothing much in the EU is competitive, after all. The point is that it is an EU fishing fleet. Or, let me spell it out, for the benefit of politicians, should they bother to read this blog, no amount of reforming has changed the fact that the UK (and that would have been true for a Scotland "independent within the EU) has no fishing fleet of its own while the country remains part of the Common Fisheries Policy, that is, part of the European Union.

That, of course, applies to the internal arrangements as well. Decisions will be taken for political reasons at the centre and relayed down to the regional institutions for them to implement. That, in essence, is the extent of those much-vaunted reforms.

A very merry Christmas to all or readers with some music, which is not entirely relevant either to Christmas or to fishing: a jazz version by the incomparable Maxine Sullivan of that old favourite, Loch Lomond:

UKIP is cock-a-hoop at this article in the Plymouth Herald.

FISHING quotas could kill off independent boats, fishermen have warned - and say they will be voting UKIP for “drastic political” change.

The comments came as fisherman at Plymouth Fisheries in Fish Quay met on Friday with Clare Moody, Labour MEP for the South West.

At least four boats moored in the quay were sporting purple UKIP flags.

When asked why fisherman were supporting Nigel Farage’s party, Bracken Pearce said: “Because what have the other parties done for us? The tweaks they are making aren’t working and we need some drastic change.”

One can understand the frustrations fishermen feel at yet another round of cuts in quotas based all too often on less than convincing evidence but it is about time they, their organizations, their spokespersons and, above all, politicians including those in UKIP understood the basic facts of life: it is not about the quotas but about the policy as a whole. As long as we are members of the European Union (and we hear more about that referendum than about Brexit from UKIP these days) we remain members of the Common Fisheries Policy; and as long as we remain part of that we do not control our fisheries and cannot do so. The quotas are a side issue. We need to concentrate on the main one.

Today is the Feast of St Nicholas, a fourth century Greek bishop and saint. He is usually associated with children and present giving. But he is also the patron saint of fishermen, which is appropriate to this blog as well as of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, pawnbrokers and students in various cities and countries around Europe and of the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine emperors, who protected his relics in Bari.

In Greece and Russia he is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker because of the many miracles attributed to him. Hmmm. Perhaps we should invoke him more often.

The Scottish referendum is over and we can turn our attention to other political matters among which Britain's membership of the European Union is one of the most important ones.

In connection with that we have to note that, unexpectedly, UKIP now has two MPs (as well as three peers). The two are Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton and Mark Reckless, MP for Rochester and Strood. Neither of those seats is exactly a UKIP victory as both MPs were incumbents as Conservatives and fought the by-elections under a different flag. Mr Carswell, majority in this by-election was even more handsome than it had been in previous elections when he had stood as a Tory, even allowing for that fall in electoral turn-out. Mr Reckless, on the other hand, reduced his majority quite considerably.

Or, in other words, we have no idea how this will play in next year's General Election. It is reasonable to assume that Clacton will stay UKIP but that is less likely for Rochester and Strood and to this day we have not had a single UKIP victory for the Commons, which matters considerably more than the European Parliament.

Still, they are there in the House and will stay there till next May at least. Will this make any difference? This is what nobody can predict. Two MPs cannot make too much difference in either voting or debating matters though it is fair to say that Messrs Carswell and Reckless will have some support among members of other parties, especially the Conservative one.

There is also the possibility that one or two other MPs might decide to defect to UKIP and call a by-election with unpredictable results. So far, nobody is moving in that direction and Mr Reckless's result is not encouraging to anyone who might be thinking in those terms.

The problem is that UKIP has become a little unpredictable as well. The party whose purpose was campaigning for British withdrawal from the European Union (and, incidentally, from the pernicious Common Fisheries Policy) now prefers not to refer to that subject. Instead they concentrate on subsidiary subjects like immigration and focus their campaign on demands for a speedy IN/OUT referendum.

There are two problems with that. One is that the result of that referendum is moot. In fact, going by opinion polls, one would have to say that the likelihood of an IN vote is very high. It would, therefore, be inadvisable from our point of view to have a referendum too early, before we have organized our troops and, above all, marshalled our arguments that would have to include explanations of how we would exit and what would we do in the country afterwards. How would we organize fisheries in this country once out of the CFP? There are many ideas around and we need to have some clear arguments.

Secondly, if it is a referendum one wants then a Conservative government is a better bet than a Labour one and if the Conservative lose too many seats to or because of UKIP then we shall have Ed Miliband as Prime Minister and he has already made it clear that he is not interested in calling a referendum.

The two UKIP MPs have not been back in the Commons for very long and have not, therefore, had a chance to speak about many matters, including fishing. We must assume that they oppose the CFP but we do not know what they think should be put in its place. In fact, we do not even know how they envisage Britain's exit (known in some circles as Brexit) and what they think should be done afterwards. What sort of agreements will have to be negotiated, for example? We must wait and see what they will say.

On the other hand we do not have to wait for another MP, one who has made it clear that he has not the slightest intention of leaving the Conservatives for UKIP and that is, former Cabinet Minister for the Environment, Owen Paterson.

Readers of this blog know Mr Paterson and his ideas as he was spokesman for fisheries before the 2010 election and is responsible for a detailed plan for the British fishing industry outside the EU and the CFP. (It seems not to be available any longer on the Conservative website so we shall have to find another link for it.) The policy was produced in 2005 and was accepted as such but was discarded when David Cameron became leaders. Its details may well be out of date slightly but it is a strong set of ideas that one can build on.

Mr Paterson has made a speech to a reasonably eurosceptic think-tank, Business for Britain and he called on the Prime Minister to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon that lays down the procedure for a member state to leave the European Union before any renegotiation. (As a matter of fact, this is considerably stronger and more outspoken than the usual mealy-mouthed pronouncements by Business for Britain and its various spokespersons.)

The prime minister's promise last year to hold a vote on Europe in 2017 if the Conservatives win the next election was seen as an attempt to halt the rise of UKIP, which senior Tories feared could prevent them from winning an overall majority at next May's general election.

But four days after UKIP defeated the Tories in the Rochester and Strood by-election, Mr Paterson suggested to Mr Cameron he had to be prepared to leave the EU if he wants negotiations on a new relationship with Brussels to succeed.

He urged him to give a manifesto commitment to invoking article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

This would give formal notice of Britain's intention to quit the EU and would spark two years of negotiations ahead of a 2017 referendum.

Unlike calls for a referendum and chatter about immigration (important or otherwise) this goes to the heart of the problem: Britain's membership of the EU, the need to leave and to negotiate a different arrangement. So far there has not been a response from Downing Street, which indicates that Mr Cameron and his advisers take this development very seriously. At least, we hope that is what it indicates. Because this is, indeed, a serious development. A senior Conservative MP with a great deal of experience and with every intention of staying in the party and fighting the battle has stated the need for a real policy on the subject.

James Delingpole puts it all much more forcefully on Breitbart-London, adding for good measure that UKIP is keeping out of the spat because they do not have a real EU exit strategy. This from a man who has been seen for a while as little more than a spokesman for UKIP is quite a strong statement.

For once, a posting not about the common fisheries policy or about political shenanigans.

Many readers of this blog would have taken part in local ceremonies of remembrance but those who were in Whitehall, watched on TV or listened on the radio to the grand and moving ceremony at the Cenotaph would have noticed that a wreath was laid on behalf of the Merchant Mariners and the Fishing Fleets. That is as it should be. Without them the war on the sea could not have been fought and many lost their lives in both big wars.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.