Letters: Alarm bells should ring over fisheries white paper

The UK Government has found enough free time and resources to produce a comprehensive plan laying out government policy on the UK fishing industry after 2020 although it still has to finalise what it wants from Brexit before returning to EU negotiations next week.

Alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear all over Scotland with the publication of Michael Gove’s white paper titled Sustainable Fishing for Future Generations, with responses required by September 12.

As the common fishing policy will continue until 2020, the only obvious reason for this urgency is to make sure that the government finalises UK fishing policy before the time-limited powers for ministers to correct retained EU law in the Brexit Act run out and powers over fishing would revert to the Scottish Parliament.

The white paper is quite lengthy but it is clear that almost all matters dealing with fishing will take place either at inter-government level, for example negotiations with the EU, Norway and the Faroe Islands on trans-boundary fish stocks or within the UK by the government, for example ensuring that international and common standards are maintained throughout the UK.

If devolution of fishing to the Scottish Parliament ever really did exist, it is now over. Control in all major areas will remain with the UK Government after Brexit.

Michael Gove would be better spending his hard-pressed time on negotiating a customs agreement to facilitate the movement of fish products between the UK and EU, which is worth over a billion pounds in each direction, rather than tearing up his committee’s contribution to that debate.

The inevitable outcome is that the expendable Scottish fishing industry will be traded away in behind-the-scenes deals as before.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

IT is now more than two years since that newly created word “Brexit” came into being and entered the (English) language to the huge detriment of us all: the countries which make up the entity known meanwhile as Britain; Europe; and the world in general.

The result was what it was largely because of a campaign of lies and half truths pedalled by the participating warring factions mainly in England. The end result was that by and large very few people had any real appreciation of what the consequences would be. The whole sorry business had been wished on us as a result of conflict within the Tory party and David Cameron’s confidence that Remain would be the result.

What happened next is surely where it all went wrong. Cameron bailed out and a new hand had to be put in charge of the tiller. Surely at that point no-one from the Remain side of the argument should have taken the job on. I would have thought that if one had any principles at all in public life you would have left it to the Brexit supporters to pick up the baton and run with it. This would have in all possibility caused a huge political upheaval. Governments may have fallen, parties might have changed, realignments taken place, but at least we would all have had a goal to aim for to prevent our country from facing the most desolate future in generations.

So, it might have been difficult for a time, but some way forward would have revealed itself and either some progress towards leaving the EU would have been made, or the whole idea as presented in the referendum would have been dropped. None of this came to pass, because of power-hungry attitudes within a government determined to hang on to power for their vested interests.

Whatever the outcome to these activities had been, we would have been 18 months or so ago in a position to get on with serious five-days-a-week negotiation. Instead were are now, two years on since that fateful day, no further forward in negotiations and complete chaos surrounds us on all sides, and our deluded Prime Minister is, once again, going to have a “solve everything” day out at Chequers which will sort everything, and give us a nice white paper to read on Monday. Everything solved!

It really does make you feel good to be British and have ONEness – as the BBC tell us between every programme. Aye, that’ll be right!

George M Mitchell
Dunblane

WHEN asked about where the dark money’s coming from, Tory David Duguid MP said: “To be honest, at the time, I was more focussed on winning the election than where any donations was coming from”.

So someone, somewhere, somehow, sometime gives you over £7000 for your election campaign and you don’t ask where it came from. Was it cash, cheque or card? Is it from the proceeds of crime? Who knows?

You can’t buy a house these days without proving to your solicitor that your money is not “laundered” in some way. Why can you fund an election campaign without proving where the money came from?

Brian Lawson
Paisley

WHILST driving I was listening to the Light Programme (BBC Radio 2). Easy, relaxing stuff till their midday news came on. Another nerve attack by Russians; an expert comes on to say it was though a syringe ... or may have been due to low river levels ... absolute nonsense.

I say the Russian responsible could have been Rasputin. At a time when Russia are hosting a successful World Cup, your government is seriously messing up Brexit and you are going to tell the public what a bunch of idiots you are – what do you do?

Bring on a big fake news story that is so big it must be true.

Bryan Clark
Maybole