David Levy – The fishing disaster – you can create the change, if you want to – Dec 14
It is crystal clear, and thank you Greenpeace for your latest research on who owns the UK fishing quotas.
British fish quotas in the main are owned by foreign companies. The small scale inshore fisheries who give value for money, even taking children out mackerel fishing, get only 5% of the UK quota. The rest is shared out amongst large factory ships of which nearly half are foreign registered.
Our Government is responsible for this state of affairs. Worse still, they are silent on this subject and they have over the years run our fish stocks into near collapse. It doesn’t matter whether you blame Labour, Liberal or Conservative — they are all complicit. They have put this country into fish food security meltdown.
We cannot feed our people from our waters beyond five months of the year, and to make up the shortfall this means we now export our greed and poor management of fisheries around the world. This means some of the poorest communities of the Third World are going without the bounty of their seas because our fleets have fished out their waters.
This is morally indefensible and will, if unchecked, lead to the global collapse of fish stocks. The reality is, whichever fish stocks in the world one looks at, the majority of the larger fish have already been taken. It’s a recipe for disaster.
All of the so called reforms and time taken to change the Common Fisheries Policy are a charade. The laws are being weakened because it’s easier to fail than to tackle and create a solution.
Until people realise that they are the missing element behind change, the status quo will remain. People can make the difference — if they get involved, and if they ask the questions of their MPs.
