UKH

Apparently the Tory Fisheries minister didn't read the Brexit deal when it was published because she was too busy organising a nativity trail.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/politics/uk-politics/2810566/fish...

Hardly worth mentioning but she's the daughter of a Baron, grew up on the family farm and went to Cambridge.  Degrees in English and Law so obviously qualified to be minister for Fisheries even if she has f*ck all interest in the job

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Prentis.

No wonder Brexit is f*cked up when so called ministers can't even be arsed to read the most important documents.

Insomnia?

The only fish she gives a f*ck about are the finest salmon pulled out of the Tay, probably.

More like I've changed time zone during lockdown. 

when you say “hardly worth mentioning”, as you do in your OP, what do you actually mean?

“Did not read it on Christmas Eve as she was too busy organising...”

(Your source)

sounds pretty sensible to me - I doubt her reading it that day would make a jot of difference.

Have a scan through the shadow cabinet and their relevant qualifications. If that's your criterion for bitching about a political party then you're out of luck.

They're all politicians. One rung above estate agents.

I took it to mean she's yet another Tory in power from a very specific, highly privileged background.

From Tom’s wiki leak she has served as a civil servant for a long time, and as someone with a farming background probably one of the better fits for post being within DEFRA. Give has a fishy background but he has bigger... I’ll get me coat.

Surely the fishermen just need to be more dynamic and search out new markets? Australia, the US and Africa? The Asians love a bit of shellfish? Box it all up in a container, stick it on a ship a 6 weeks later its there. Bobs yer uncle. 

Don't know if sensible is the word; i'd have thought more "pointless". Whatever she said / did would have been totally irrelevant as I think it has been clear for quite a while that fishing was always going to be sacrificed (or ignored) as part of the bigger "deal". The support / voice of the fishing industry was needed by the tories in order to maintain momentum during the talks, then, as with NI / the DUP, they were shoved under the bus without a second thought when they were no longer needed. As for her, well she has her ministerial brief, awarded on the basis of her loyalty to Johnson on Brexit, and she, along with all the others, will do as they are told or be out of a job.

You are partly right. We pushed for a fishing deal at any cost, whilst neglecting other more important areas of trade. Fishing supports 0.6% GDP. The city supports 7% of GDP, 1.4 million jobs and billions in revenue.

So we screwed the fishermen, the city and the economy. But its ok, as we'll get a chance to vote on any deal before we leave.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/city-of-l...

Oh indeed. Now what was it Boris said about business?

four letters, began with F.........

About the only time he's stuck to his word.

And if she had read it, what actual difference would it have made?

Pretending to, because it plays strongly with the "sovereignty" thing in the minds of the true believers.  All the while not really giving a shit for the fishing industry, as the fishing industry seems to have belatedly realised.

See also: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's (eventually successful) campaign to reform the EU's policy on discards, while Nigel Farage couldn't be arsed to turn up to 41 of the 42 meetings he was entitled to attend and speak at as an MEP.

https://www.rivercottage.net/campaigns/hughs-fish-fight

Another example of an industry that contributes a tad more to the UK economy than fishing.  (One in which the UK industry genuinely is 'world-beating'.  Well, was anyway, in the pre-Brexit pre-covid beforetime.)
https://inews.co.uk/news/brexit/musicians-express-outrage-government-disput...

It isn't just musicians, it's truck and bus drivers, technical crews, accountants, tour management, caterers, you name it.  With very few exceptions, any large scale tour visiting the UK and other European countries would have mostly British crew and truckloads of equipment from UK hire companies.  It's extremely rare for a European tour on a similar scale to visit the UK with a majority European crew because a ridiculously large proportion of the most commercially successful artists, if they're not American, are from the UK.  Who knows where we are now, but a year ago the reciprocal deal that Priti Patel allegedly couldn't swallow would in effect have been ludicrously biased in our favour.

And that's ignoring the fact that it would spare European artists/crews/etc., the hassle of obtaining one work visa and their UK equivalents the hassle of obtaining somewhere between one and twenty six of them.

At this stage it should be pretty clear that they are not only trying to close the country down to any "outsiders", they are trying to limit international contact of British people as well. They are aiming for cultural reform of the country.

If the aim is to remain in power, they are right too. That is a pretty good way to ensure the massive political shift from old to young is stopped.

The great thing about the existential COVID doom is that it takes my mind off Brexit despair.

To the disliker: Would you kindly explain to me your theory about why the government pulled out of as many exchange programs and pan-European efforts as possible, even where there was no actual cost to the country? I'll wait. Liberals are never going to vote for their ilk, so they are trying to stop production of liberals.

Good point - I would have thought that degrees in English AND Law from a world leading university would be a good starting qualification for understanding and negotiating treaties.

I'm not trying to defend her actions in any way. The fact that she seems to have totally failed to do her job looks pretty damning. 

I don't know.  I'm a believer in Hanlon's Razor, the philosophical principle that you shouldn't attribute anything to malice that can be explained by stupidity.

I think you're certainly right about there being a desire for 'cultural reform' though, eg the stuff we were hearing a while back about them wanting to see right-wing comedians on the BBC.  Neglecting the fairly obvious fact that 'right-wing' comedy just tends not to be very funny.  'Punching down' just seems like bullying.

(Wanting to destroy the BBC entirely is a different thing though, that's just about doing what's best for Uncle Rupert.  And with the USA in flames, what a time to be just getting ready to launch a couple of 'Fox News UK' TV channels!)

And somewhere between malice and stupidity, there's just sheer spite.  Based perhaps on the assumption that everyone involved in 'the arts' is an arty-farty liberal lefty.  We got a peek at that in Dominic Cummings's charming reply when he was asked about financial support for the arts back in the early days of lockdown #1: "The f*cking ballerinas can get to the back of the queue."

I'm way off on a tangent now though, sorry, this is a thread about fish!

In case you've not noticed I am not a big fan of Labour or Westminster in general.

However, this particular crop of Tories are particularly bad.   The problem is that when the Tories purged everyone who was against Brexit they were left with the dickheads and morons. It is the same sort of cancer that Trump inflicted on the Republicans.

I would have expected the Minister for Fisheries to have read every single draft of that agreement and been commenting at every stage of the negotiation and to have been working very long hours around the time it was signed off with a team of people making sure every i was dotted and every t was crossed.

These guys are dilettantes and the EU people are not.

Normal, competent people do that for million pound contracts never mind the fate of a whole industry.

Did Nicola actually throw Alex in ?  That’s one way to shut him up. 

Except that she is a rather lowly Parliamentary Under Secretary and not a Minister as you state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Under-Secretary_of_State#:~:tex....

Of his tenure as an under-secretary in Macmillan's 1957–1963 Conservative government from the Lords, the Duke of Devonshire noted: "No one who hasn't been a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State has any conception of how unimportant a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State is"

Maybe not but this was the thing that would make or break the fishing industry, I would expect the minister of fisheries to be curious enough to take a beak as soon as it dropped. 
 

Do we know when (if?) she actually read it?
 

But lets face it, your more interested in Tory bashing than wether or not a minister read some papers, and your broad statement that the EU are not dilettantes just weakens your argument. 

I don't think guys like Barnier and the people working for him are dilettantes.  They look like very experienced and hard working, detail oriented negotiators to me.

If you were a business person hiring someone to negotiate on your behalf would you hire Barnier or Liz Truss?

The impression I get is that these Tories do not give a toss about details and hard work.  They are entitled (some literally) and have an agenda which is about power and the economic interests of a very few specific industries where their donors/backers/friends/family work.

Who'd could have guessed sovereignty smells so much like bilgewater.

jk

Society is now very divided, and we should be working towards bringing people together, not driving people apart by taking ideological positions, and then just shouting at each other.

I would suggest, that though you obviously have a point, you are part of the problem, and not of the solution.

No. she may have been interested, but dont forget the cabinet and the junior ministers were chosen because of their brexit support, and/or their willingness to vote for it despite apparently being against it (in her case).

Any objections / points she would have come up with would have been a complete waste of her time, so by organising a nativity display or whatever, her time was much more productively spent.

And to Tom;

Do you really think they would have listened? After the first set of suggestions, she would have picked up the message loud and clear that her input was not welcome. If she tried it again, I think she would have been warming the back benches.

so how do we (maybe forgetting Tom on this one given his pretty transparent independence agenda) achieve this? Its pretty obvious that the current government are not a normal conservative one; dont forget brexit was at least as much a labour thing as a conservative thing, and that was the cause of the "red wall" seat losses up my neck of the woods. Johnson and co are there to take as much as they can for themselves, and we need a massively strong opposition if we are ever going to "reunite" as a nation. 

Thier MO is very much taking an ideological position and then shouting; they also dont care whether what they shout is true or not, as long as enough people believe it. How should they be opposed? We cant walk towards them, as they will just move further away.....

mind you Scottish fisher folk did overwhelmingly vote for Brexit......

The solution for Scotland is independence and returning to the EU as fast as possible.

'The problem' is in England and 'the solution' could take far longer than I am willing to invest.

And yet another group have now learned the fundamental lesson:  never trust a Tory.

You could well be right.  I suspect you are, it would explain her apparent lack of interest.  What kind of dysfunctional government isolates the Fisheries Minister and her departmental experts from negotiations on fisheries? 

If you do that you are going to f*ck up on all the detail.   Oh wait...

Whats your plan for dealing with the 28.6% of Scots who voted for the tories?

25.1%

Ah bugger thought I had picked 2019 but clearly was braindead and got 2017 instead. Anyways so Tom what do you want to do about those people you are desperate to pretend dont exist in Scotland?

you might run into trouble with Spain post independent if you want to join the EU

That's quite an original spin on that old chestnut "stop bashing Boris, he's doing his best", nice one.

But probably not eh? Why would there be trouble?

Give Boris another few months to p*ss them off: he is doing a brilliant job.

After independence my guess is there will be a successor party to the Tories which drops the unionism and anti-EU nonsense but has a slightly right of centre economics and social viewpoint.  It will quite likely win fairly regularly because its politics will be tuned to what middle class people in Scotland want rather than what goes down well in England.

Did they? I went looking to try to find authoritative figures on that the other day, and couldn't find any. Could you point us in the direction of some?

Which is why my second question was the more important one, when did she read it? Obviously, she would not be able to amend it but she needed to understand it fully ASAP so that she could differentiate between problems caused by the provisions of the deal and problems caused by the civil service failing to implement it properly or border control in the uk or Europe misunderstanding or playing silly buggers. 

I know nothing about her but did have a meeting with her Dad once when he was an MP. He only got his baronetcy (or whatever it is) after he left the House of Commons and joined the Lords a few years ago. So assuming a wealthy titled upbringing is not necessarily accurate. 

Her dad went to Marlborough College so I’m going to go out on a limb and guess at wealthy if not titled.  

pre Brexit - but one of many

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40152-018-0090-z

They haven't f*cked up on the detail, they didnt care about it. look at Northern ireland. They took it down to the wire so there could be no debate about the deal. Get it through at all costs. Fishing under the bus, NI looking like it could well leave the UK before Scotland (sorry, and all that), exporters and importers not having the first clue what they are supposed to do with paperwork and VAT / duty costs...........

Maybe she followed IDS' lead and just didnt bother. Remember him admitting he hadnt read the withdrawal agreement and later found some bits that he thought shouldnt be in there? So his suggestion was to renegotiate it, without realising that renegotiating it would mean us rejoining the EU...........

Now thats an interesting topic in its own right. i agree that is a pretty reasonable scenario; as part of that do you think the SNP would continue to exist / continue with the same level of support as a separate party, given that its prime raison d'etre would have been achieved? I could see scotland developing a PR / 3 party government system, as the SNP supporters go back to their natural political homes of labour, tory and lib dems (who were traditionally quite strong in scotland). 

Yes, of course I remember which is why I am asking. You seemed to be suggesting there was no reason for her to read it because she couldn’t alter the contents and I just pointed out why she would need to read it regardless of that. 

my comment was a bit tongue in cheek; i'm afraid my respect levels for the likes of her and IDS has reached the level of their respect for the rest of us. They are just useful idiots filling the bums on seats roles.

If she had any pride or self respect as a minister, however junior, of course she should have read it. There are things i do at work that i know wont influence the outcome, but i am a professional, and act and speak accordingly. If you cant even be bothered to try, what does that say about you?

Or Wiff Waff himself. 

Remember this?  Going on the telly specifically to waffle about paragraph 5B, hadn't bothered to read paragraph 5C and tried a couple of times to bluff it out before being forced to 'fess up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-48971407

FFS

Thanks for reminding me........I think......

I wouldn't be too harsh on her, judging by the bollocks that the government has come out with on what the deal means, I'm guessing none of them have read it.  That's the only plausible explanation, otherwise it would mean they are bare face liars. 

It seems likely that her Boss, leading from the front, hasn't read it either:

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/europe-news/spokesman-indicate...

What a surprise.

The Haunted Pencil weighs in on the fish deal - happily displaying the fruits of his expensive education:

https://twitter.com/WritesBright/status/1349700866211778561?s=19

I think the SNP will fracture and there will be at least three parties.  Greens aren't going to go away.  I don't think the main left and right of centre parties will be called Labour and Tory.  Probably SNP will become the equivalent of Labour and a new party with a name untainted by unionism or Toryism will become the right of centre one and take a large chunk of the SNP and former Tories.

The Catalonians are quite keen for independence (or enough potentially are to cause a problem), if Scotland goes independent and then seeks to join the EU, and is accepted, Spain could worry that it gives a green light to Catalan to hold a referendum on independence and becoming a member in it's own right, and not agree to Scotland joining because of that.

Something like a Cultural Revolution then?

Your criticism isn't really fair. Mogg is very in touch with the fish community, he is himself a kipper after all.

I think it's clear this government has an extremely narrow ideological view. Despite all the problems with exporting fish Jacob Reese-Mogg proudly proclaimed in parliament yesterday ".... but they're our fish, BRITISH FISH!" to which the response was flatter than a Dover Sole.

I don't agree with with TiE's views often but I don't think you can simply dismiss someone's concerns without further alienation.

Pretty shocking but somehow horribly predictable. I doubt her input would have mattered one iota but then but who's fault is it that negotiations went on so long there was no time for scrutiny - a very shoddy way to run government.

Channel 4 and BBC news both ran pieces on the plight of Scottish fishermen. No one interviewed from the trawler deckhand, the harbour fish processing guy, the Loch Fyne fish farm or the haulage company acknowledged that this was avoidable. I really don't know whether they all GENUINELY thought they would be able to carry on frictionless trade to the EU with a hard Brexit in which all / most fishing rights are repatriated or whether, presumably otherwise competent business people, are just dumb.

I just can't fathom (sorry) how they can be so ignorant of their own self imposed predicament.

All countries that were formally part of another country or just Scotland? Have you got a link to where that has been said? I know they don't want Catalonian Indy but thought that they think Scotland would have to apply to join like every other applicant - ie not continue as a member?

everything I've read suggests it depends on the route to independence. If Scotland becomes independent through a legal process with the agreement of the rest of the UK Spain won't object. That route isn't open to Catalonia unless the Spanish constitution is changed.

Fishermen aren't renowned for their intelligence - most left school as soon as they could because schoolwork was too difficult.  Intelligent people would also get out of an industry which has been in decline for as long as most people can remember.