The Thamesmead Grump

 FISHY TALES

The fishing industry is up in arms over what it describes as major disruption to exports caused by new post-Brexit rules and is blaming government incompetence for the problem. (BBC News, 18 Jan 2021)

We used to have a perfectly straightforward and seamless process for exporting UK fish to the EU; it was called the European Union customs union, and it enabled the various member states to transport their goods to other member states without any problems at all. Unfortunately, this all changed on the 1st of January this year when we finally left. 

Because the government only had four and a half years to sort out some other arrangement, what we finished up with was a dogs dinner of confusing regulations with a side order of massive amounts of paperwork, with exporters having to try and understand it all in the few days before it became necessary. Added to all this shambles was the fact that the provision of resource in terms of customs staff and facilities for processing all this extra bureaucracy was hopelessly inadequate. 

There was absolutely no reason for us to have left the EU in the first place. As far as the UK fishing industry was concerned, the arrangements were working well. Even the arch Euro-sceptic, Nigel Farage agreed it was working perfectly which is why he didn't think it necessary to attend more than one of the 42 meetings of the influential European parliament fishing industries committee meetings. According to a Greenpeace report in 2015, there were three major votes on improving the common fisheries policy but Farage never voted in favour of any of them, presumably because he thought they were fine as they were.

Ultimately though, it is all the fault of the government, the exporters who don't understand the new rules, the lack of staff at the ports and not (and this is important) the fault of all the idiots who voted for it in the first place.