The first thing this will do ...

... is double Fox News viewing public. And raise Sarah Palin's profile, as if she needed that.

Fisheries and discards

A Written Question by the Lord Teverson asked Her Majesty's Government

what was the total tonnage of fish caught by the United Kingdom-registered fishing fleet from species regulated by Common Fisheries Policy quotas in the past year for which the figure is available; and what was the total tonnage of those fish that were discarded.

The response was somewhat complicated and, dare one say it, inadequate. It seems that, to a great extent, HMG does not know the tonnage of fish that has been discarded (because according to the Common Fisheries Policy, it is over the amount our fishermen are allowed to catch and land).

As Lord Davies of Oldham explained:

UK fisheries laboratories send observers to sea to record the quantity of fish discarded and retained by fishing vessels. This sampling is intended to provide estimates of discards of the main commercial species, but at present is not representative of all UK fisheries. It is also only possible to sample a proportion of the vessels participating in any fishery. As a consequence, estimates of total discards are subject to uncertainty.

Not precisely helpful, given what a problem those discards are but we do know some:

Estimates of discards for 2008 are available for the following fisheries:

Fleet-English and Welsh vessels over 10 metres in length.Areas-North Sea (ICES area IV), and waters to the south and west of England and Wales (ICES area VII).Species-Demersal quota species (Cod, haddock, plaice, sole, anglerfish etc.).Estimated 2008 catches-37,000t, of which 27,600t were landed and 9,400t discarded.

Fleet-Scottish vessels over 10 metres in length.Areas-North Sea (ICES area IV), and west of Scotland (ICES Division Vla). Species-Cod, haddock, whiting and saithe.Estimated 2008 Catches-91,700t of which 56,600t were landed and 35,100t discarded.Fleet-UK vessels fishing for pelagic species. Areas-All areas. Species-Mackerel, horse mackerel, herring, sprat, blue whiting. Estimated 2008 Catches-203,200t of which 198,300t were landed and 4,900t discarded.

In total these fisheries are estimated to have caught around 332,000t of the relevant species in 2008, of which 283,000t was landed and 49,000t were discarded.

Thus, we can see that even for the limited areas for which there are estimatesof discards, we are talking about quite a lare amount of fish that is caught and discarded.

While we are on the subject of discards, let us not forget that the first thing the Boy-King of the Conservative Party did on becoming leader is to discard the very sensible fisheries policy produced by the Boss of EUReferendum and the then Conservative spokesman on the subject, Owen Paterson, and adopted by Michael Howard.

It so happens, that yesterday I was outlining the story of the Conservative fisheries policy and David Cameron to a political journalist who described herself as a "europhobe" but who was so mesmerized by the Punch and Judy show that British politics had become that she refused to see anything beyond the notion of getting rid of Gordon Brown and giving David Cameron a chance.

What of his performance over the fisheries policy? Perfectly understandable, she said. When Cameron became leader he had to get rid of the swivel-eyed, europhobic image to make the party electable. Comments like this from highly intelligent and knowledgeable people make me despair.

Response number one is that the Conservative Party was never eurosceptic, let alone europhobic except in the fevered imagination of the BBC, the Guardian and the Independent.

Response number two is that even if that had been true, a rational reorganization of our fisheries policy (which would, indeed, have entailed coming out of the CFP but had many other aspects) would have been popular among a very large proportion of the population and even the chattering classes, as the CFP is universally acknowledged to be a social, economic and ecological disaster. Nothing swivel-eyed even for the Guardian in getting rid of the concept of discards. Yet Cameron discarded the policy, presumably because he did not want to upset the Colleagues. Or, maybe, he thinks it is a good idea. Who knows?

The last few days have been complicated

Anway, I am now trying to get back into my stride with the blog because there is a great deal to write about. As the year goes on, I fear that I shall have to spend more time on EU matters plus British politics, both as dull as ditchwater but closely linked and of some importance with an election coming up. However, I do intend to write about other subjects as well.

In the meantime, here is a link to a fascinating article in the Times, sent to me by an American friend (I think they still take that rag seriously on the other side of the Pond but I am not sure) about opinions expressed in Yemen.

The title says it all: ‘We regret driving out the British,’ say Aden’s former rebels. Of course, they did not exactly drive the British out. There was a definite policy: Aden was going to go independent as everything else had gone independent. It was a perfectly sensible policy, as there was no point in keeping Aden with no Empire to serve but the last few months there were very nasty and the region's subsequent history has been even nastier.

Non-story of the day

It was my intention to brighten up my readers' day by putting up a video of Moira Shearer dancing in "Red Shoes", a wonderful Powell and Pressburger film, which I finally saw last week. (Three cheers for the National Film Theatre.) Sadly, it has proved to be impossible to embed the central ballet sequence, not, I may add, because of my incompetence but because of somebody's control freakery.

As I have no desire to post comments about the snow or the coldest winter since .... ooooh at least 1982 .... or any of the usual gumf about transport breaking down, schools closing down (that happened in 1987 or 1988, as I recall) and everything coming to a full stop. That leaves me with the biggest non-story of the day: the plot to oust Gordon Brown, its entirely predictable failure and the flap the Conservatives, politicians and commentators have got themselves into.

This morning everyone (well, about three dozen people) became very excited because a couple of Labour has-beens, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, sent an e-mail to every MP in which they called for a secret ballot on Gordon Brown as leader. Of course, this disregarded several matters: the Labour Party's structure and constitution are such that it is well-nigh impossible to oust a leader who does not want to go; the last time they could have done it was at the Conference and they did not; nobody in their right mind would start a leadership election so close to a general election unless they absolutely had to and the Labour Party does not.

For several hours everyone (well, about fifty people) was on tenterhooks: will this succeed? No Minister has come out to support Brown, we were told breathlessly by one of the Tory bloggers (and I forget which one). This will lead to an early election, was the opinion heard everywhere (well, on Tory blogs and Facebook pages). Brown will have to go; Brown is a coward because he will not go; Brown .....

Well, there we are, ladies and gentlemen. By this evening two leading Labour Minister, David Miliband and Harriet Harman have come out in support of Brown and the crisis, it would appear, is over. Here are a few links that give the story in greater detail. ToryBoy blog tells us what Conservatives want from the Snowstorm plot (oh dear, the wit), then tells us that Hoon and Hewitt agree with Cameron that "we cannot go on like this", then assures us that the snowstorm in the teacup will be wonderful news for the Tories (having told us that if it succeeded it would have been wonderful news for the Tories).

Iain Dale spent most of the day updating the story with the odd interruption for the Peter Robinson story, which really should be of no concern to any journalist and blogger. (A politician's wife has an affair and tries to commit suicide is not something we all have the right to know about.)

I have no problems with wishful thinking; indeed, most of politics is wishful thinking. Therefore, I accept that the Tories got all excited because the Labour Party was about to tear itself to pieces over a leadership challenge. It might have been a good idea for them to find out whether this challenge ever had the slightest chance but that would have been realism not wishful thinking.

However, there are a few points one needs to make. In the first place, it might be a good idea for the Tories and their various bloggers to make up their minds whether they want Gordon Brown as leader or not and whether his presence is a good thing from their point of view or not.

Then it might be a good idea to make up their minds whether having an early election (which we shall not have, as this blog and EUReferendum have consistently predicted) is actually such a good idea from their point of view. Would calling an election in the middle of a really cold winter (an insane thing to do) make people feel warm about politicians at all?

Thirdly, the Tories should look outside the Westminster bubble. As far as most people are concerned today's non-events were of precious little interest. At present the Tories' lead is not so spectacular in the opinion polls as to justify their complacency and if this is the best they can do by way of political campaigning, they are not going to attract many more votes.

Fourthly, it is time to understand that the election will solve nothing. Regardless of who wins the most seats, the government in Brussels will not change any time soon.

Happy Birthday American Thinker!

My, my, how time flies. It seems but yesterday .... well I am not sure what seems but yesterday since American Thinker was going strong by the time I started reading it and wondering why we cannot have something like that on this side of the Pond. I am still wondering as American Thinker, one of the best conservative (small c, non-party, unashamedly patriotic) websites in the United States.

Thomas Lifson, Editor and Publisher of the American Thinker, writes about its sixth birthday.

Still the same, however, is our commitment to presenting thoughtful commentary on the events of public significance, from a wide range of people, going well beyond the usual suspects found in more venerable outlets. We remain grounded in an understanding of fallible human nature, the wisdom of the American Founding Documents, and the value of tradition as guide to the future.

Professor Lifson, "a recovering academic", realized immediately after 9/11 that he had a role to fill in the new war: he would take part in the intellectual battle.

This is something I support. On the fifth anniversary of that terrible day I wrote on EUReferendum:

As for me, that entire day will stay in my memory almost minute by minute. And one of the things I recall very clearly was my immediate conviction that we were at war. My second thought was to wonder where I can sign up. This was going to be a war of ideas, of propaganda as much as of bombs and bullets. I could do that, I thought. Well, it took a little while but I think I managed to sign up for the duration.

One of the most difficult things to define, particularly for a liberal democracy, which we sort of are, is what it is we are fighting for. We know what we are fighting against or, at least, some of us do. Far too many do not, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions on this blog. But what is it we are fighting for?

The American Thinker is one of those sites that helps us to define those issues. Happy Sixth Birthday and many happy returns.

There would be unintended consequences

Or maybe the consequences would be intended but not announced. Martin Howe, one of our leading constitutional lawyers, has an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he summarizes his pamphlet for Politeia.

After outlining the present situation as far as British and European legislation are concerned and quoting previous legal decisions, Mr Howe comes to an interesting conclusion:

The Lisbon Treaty expands the EU's law-making powers and correspondingly restricts the power of the U.K. Parliament to make law. So the U.K. Parliament, while under the transient majority control of one party, has apparently permanently restricted the law-making power of future Parliaments, by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty. This restriction on the future law-making power of Parliament has no political legitimacy because it was never put to the British people for their approval.

According to orthodox and accepted understanding of the U.K.'s unwritten constitution, Parliament had no power to do this. As a matter of the U.K.'s internal law, Parliament can disregard or disapply any laws of EU origin even if that step might put the U.K. in breach of its international treaty obligations.

British courts have commented on this issue a few times since the U.K. joined what was called the Common Market in 1973. They have expressed the view that the U.K. Parliament retains the power to override EU laws if it expressly decides to do so, but if it is silent on the matter there is a presumption that normal Acts of Parliament will give way to EU law.

But the U.K.'s rule of parliamentary sovereignty is not embodied in any formal constitutional text. Rather, it is the product of centuries of custom and practice. Its continued validity ultimately depends upon the willingness of the judges in the U.K.'s new Supreme Court to uphold and apply it. There is a risk that over time, as more and more powers accrete to the EU, our judges might revise or depart from our long established rule of sovereignty.

This is why the U.K. now needs a bill which will write formally into law the rule that Parliament is sovereign and that it can, if it so chooses, over-ride any laws of external origin including those originating from the EU. This bill will cement the rule of sovereignty firmly into a formal constitutional text and make it resistant to erosion.

A law of this kind, if passed and actually applied, unlike the posturing of the German Karlsruhe Court, could have serious consequences in the UK and the EU. Is the Boy-King going to announce it as part of the Conservative manifesto?

Plus ça change ….

How often does one use that title about all sorts of political developments? It's not that there is never any change. There have been many times in history, even recent history, when great changes were enacted. However, one of the things that never seems to change is the behaviour of transnational organizations who continue to spend huge amounts of taxpayers' money to set up more organizations, meetings, conferences and committees to try to control the world's economy. By and large they fail though in the process they manage to undermine real economic development through all those taxes and regulations.

A fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal reminds us of a failed predecessor to the recent Copenhagen Circus Conference, a similar event that took place in Lima in 1975. "Both conferences were failed, taxpayer-funded attempts to institute global economic governance."

I must admit that until reading that article I had not been able to recall the Lima Conference. Even now my memory is experiencing severe difficulties. In other words, the author is correct: these events do disappear from one's horizon.

However, I do recall the political and ideological (I hesitate to use the word intellectual) background:

Lima '75: Those were the good old days of "Third Worldism." The developing countries, spurred by the demonstration of force by oil exporting countries during the oil shock of 1973, called for the institution of a "new international economic order" (NIEO), aimed at securing a better place for these countries in the world economy. Once the call was made, international organizations started aligning their work programs toward that grandiose objective.

It should be recalled that in those days the dominant view in the corridors of international organizations favored strong state intervention in economic affairs. The prevailing view had its dissidents: Bela Balassa, an economist at the World Bank, as well as Little, Scitovsky and Scott, authors of a report commissioned by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), to mention a few. These economists argued that developing countries would do better to place their hopes in the interplay of market forces rather than in state interventionism and, accordingly, should adopt policies aimed at encouraging foreign investment and improving the international competitiveness of their goods.

The governments of many developing countries that adhered to the dominant view arrived at Lima with the firm intention of obtaining the international community's endorsement of a "plan of action," stipulating that 25% of the world's industrial production should be generated in the Third World by the year 2000.

Nothing much came out of Lima but since then there have been adjustments in the economic balance of the world. An ever larger percentage of the world's industrial proeuction is generated in developing countries, a number of which no longer count as such, having developed quite well in the last thirty years. The thing is that all this happened to countries that abandoned the consensus of the seventies and accepted the views of those dissidents.

What of Copenhagen? What did that produce apart from a great deal of hot air and the coldest winter spell that city has seen for a long time?

Like third-worldism in the 1970s, today's environmentalism has its dissidents. There are many. They do not deny the existence of global warming, but question the role of human activity in this phenomenon. In addition, they tend to advocate technological innovation, rather than restrictions on the emissions of carbon dioxide, to deal with the impacts.

Like Lima, the conference in Copenhagen did not go beyond the declaration of intentions. Agreement was not reached on concrete measures to drastically reducing carbon emissions. And just as Lima relegated the hardest discussions to a series of consultations, so Copenhagen sent negotiations to another conference next year—without explaining why agreement would be easier in 2010, the year of mid-term elections in the United States, which will make the American Congress even more reluctant to alienate voters by approving costly measures to deal with global warming.

Beyond their differences, Lima and Copenhagen suffer from a common handicap: Both conferences were a failed attempt, at the expense of taxpayers around the world, to institute global economic governance by imposing quantifiable targets on the 192 member nations.

Fabio Rafael Fiallo, the author of the article, is reasonably optimistic. Lima, he thinks was the high point of "third-worldism" and Copenhagen will prove to be the high point of "environmentalism". The result will not be dissimilar: environmental and economic advances will happen if the consensus is abandoned and the dissidents who are far more vociferous now than they were in the seventies, by the way, will be listened to.

Taking the analogy between the two conferences a step further, it is possible to conclude with a note of optimism. In the same manner that developing countries succeeded in increasing their share in world industrial output through international competition, irrespective of the Lima planning, so one can expect that the issue of global warming will be dealt with, not through the Copenhagen Accord, but by technological innovations, notably those falling within the category of geoengineering. These techniques aim at capturing carbon emissions or, more directly, at cooling the climate.

I am not qualified to express an opinion on the warming/cooling/not going anwywhere special debate but I do understand the politics and, on the whole, I agree with those sentiments. However, I have to add a somewhat pessimistic rider.

These people do not give up. If they cannot get a plan for the world economy one way they will try another way. There will be more taxpayer-funded conferences and attempts to interfere with markets and economic developments. This time round we must grasp what the new ideology is before it takes serious root.