to think we should deploy the entire fleet to deter those pesky French fishing boats?

[chomalungma]

Just 4 gunboats?

Don't they know how big the channel is and the whole fishing area?
Not enough.
Our territorial waters need defending.
Deploy the fleet.

Love it, lets just go back to before the eu was a thing, even before ww1, and lets have a scrap with the french, they will probably surrender anyway!

Boris's War. One for the history books.

"Couldn't we build a wall?"

BJ doesn't do walls - that's the other idiot over the water.

BJ does bridges.

Not sure how it would help, but no doubt he'll be proposing one any day now...

Unless my prawns have Union Jack tattoos I am sending them back

@BlackForestCake

What actually happens if we attack boats belonging to a fellow NATO member?

I actually dont know, would be interested to find out what would happen! But it didnt stop our wonderful friend across the water selling excoset missiles to the argies back in 82

The press is not helping at all, if there is proper conflict with the French & their fishermen the navy will be far busier picking up immigrants from the Calais camps in U.K. waters, sadly.

I think we should paint those white cliffs with the red white and blue (in fact we can just do red and blue, since nature has already provided the white

I think you are being far too lax OP. What the hell do we have a nuclear deterrent for if we aren't prepared to use it?

I agree with @flaxmeadow in that this escalates an already dangerous industry, and I truly hope no-one is hurt when tensions inevitably run high while livelihoods are at stake!

Re English fishing - read the number of people engaged in ''English fishing'' were fewer than those who worked for Debenhams and the revenue from hobby fishing in England was greater than it's ''fishing'' industry. They sold off their fishing rights long ago.

This could get ugly. From reading various reports over the years of French and Spanish trawlers trying to muscle in, it's been ugly for a while. I do feel sorry for British fishermen having to contend with that. As pp have pointed out, it's a very hard way to make a living.

Serious OP or not. Do people know how small our navy is now?

The way remainers here are sneering at UK fishermen, and our fishing industry, reminds me of the way Thatcher used to sneer at coal miners, another dangerous, often low paid, occupation and industry that provided affordable and vital goods to everyday people

What the hell is wrong with you?

@Flaxmeadow

It's pathetic. The UK has massive territorial waters

No more massive than any other coastal nation in Europe

Actually, only Norway and Greece have longer coastlines than the UK

www.mapsofworld.com/europe/thematic/coastal-countries.html

@Flaxmeadow

The way remainers here are sneering at UK fishermen, and our fishing industry, reminds me of the way Thatcher used to sneer at coal miners, another dangerous, often low paid, occupation and industry that provided affordable and vital goods to everyday people

What the hell is wrong with you?

Who is sneering at fishermen?

Trust me - that's not the target of this OP.

It's the willy waving, gunboat headlines of the papers and our politicians who are the target.

Fish are international though aren't they? They don't know if they're swimming in and out of territorial waters - all the EU and Britain have to do is be patient.

But it didnt stop our wonderful friend across the water selling excoset missiles to the argies back in 82

To be fair to our "wonderful friend" as I recall events the Exocets used were sold to the Argentina before hostilities began and it's known the French acted to stop a further batch getting into Argentinian hands via Peru once the war started.

..and of course also before the war the UK had sold the Argentinian's two Type 42 destroyers, a soldier using a British built surface to air missile system (Blowpipe) downed one of our Harriers and the Argentine Air Force also operated some (UK built) Canberra light bombers....

Don't you love the arms industry?

@tara66

Re English fishing - read the number of people engaged in ''English fishing'' were fewer than those who worked for Debenhams and the revenue from hobby fishing in England was greater than it's ''fishing'' industry. They sold off their fishing rights long ago.

Someone on another forum quoted some figures showing that the number of people employed in, and the money generated by, the UK fishing industry is lower than the same figures in the the UK lawnmower industry.

@iwantmyownicecreamvan

Fish are international though aren't they? They don't know if they're swimming in and out of territorial waters - all the EU and Britain have to do is be patient.

Surely that depends on the colour of their passports?

This attitude is exactly why our country is now facing a totally unnecessary but potentially catastrophic situation.

Who is sneering at fishermen?

You are. Your whole thread is one long piss take of the RN being deployed to protect men at sea, in our own waters

Trust me - that's not the target of this OP.

It's the willy waving, gunboat headlines of the papers and our politicians who are the target.

Willy waving? I'd like to see you go out from Hull on a trawler and catch the means to make your family a cheap fish finger sandwich, or how about you onboard a Royal Navy vessel, saving the lives of men, women and children adrift in the channel, one of the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world

Bloody fish, they don't know which way to turn, their heads are in France and their arse ends are in UK, give them dual nationality I say because they didn't vote for this shit and neither did I.

@ChocolateCherrybomb

Or some Katy Hopkins clones floating around randomly in little rubber dinghies.

Now steady on!

I don't find it funny. If we have to abide by all the new conditions then so do the other countries - except as we all know by now, some EU member countries choose to ignore regulations they don't like (or lose them votes), so will not be surprised if French fishermen will continue until forced to desist.

@LakieLady Greece is an archipelagic nation, like the Philippines, hence the size of the waters. The waters between the islands behind the baseline are internal waters but with some differences to “normal” internal waters.

Just when we thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse: a pandemic, a No Deal Brexit and now a war!

In other news I’m now getting pop-up adverts for yachts...