To have zero sympathy for the fishing industry?

[AgeLikeWine]

The U.K. fishing industry voted overwhelmingly for Brexit ; 92% voted Leave according to a poll from June 2016 (source : The Guardian).

Now they are bleating about the massive logistical and administrative problems and delays that they are encountering in trying to export their catch into EU markets. Today, fish transportation companies have been driving their lorries around central London to protest about the situation.

But this is what they voted for : to ‘take back control of our waters’. They voted Leave in the full knowledge that most of the U.K. catch was exported to Europe, and that that would obviously be more difficult after Brexit, so they should suck it up & stop whinging.

"they were lied to/they're victims too" is such a cop out. So we can't blame Tory voters for voting for an incompetent liar to be PM either? OH Yes we can.

@nicegerbil
Yepp - they did and you missed it. Added to which remainers were shouting it from the rooftops during the referendum and have been for the last year or so or whenever it was Farage started chucking dead fish in the Thames.

It is certainly common knowledge in the fish and adjacent related industries that as soon as the quotas were allocated they were traded away. Because the fishing industry isn't just a load of plucky little boats full of Cap'n Birdseye types (I'm guessing there are still plenty of that kind of boat, though) but huge industrial trawlers, fish factories at sea, and in the UK most of it is dominated by 5 firms.

Yanbu.the EU do not want British fish. Can you really blame them? Certainly not

That is, of course, the baffling paradox. Industries know where their market is. For fish it is pretty much the EU. Now that woman in Wales may have spent 40k getting Brexit ready but that is a pretty big investment for a small company. She may be able to absorb a few months of no shipments, but I don't think many (if any) of the other small ones can. How many will survive this? we will see.

I'm wondering if any of them have sent their paperwork to Johnson as he said they should?

As for retraining - my comment was partly tongue in cheek. But it happened to the miners. Some were unemployed and unemployable after nearly a full working life in a mine, until the day they died (often early with lung disease). And the collapse of the mining industry was pretty much imposed on them by outside forces (more or less) as was the collapse of the steelworks. The fishing industry has brought this on itself. So while i have sympathy for people losing their livlihoods, family firms etc etc, i am not going to cry for them.

I'll point them to Monster, Stepstone, the job centre, the food bank and charity shops. They will have to learn to handle it.

Wah wah wah we've been lied to.

No. It was obvious what was going to happen. They got greedy and they bit the hand that feeds. This is the result.

As my old school used to tell us in pull-your-socks-up assemblies, you are responsible for you own learning.

@Sleepthief

In that case I don’t.

Yepp - they did and you missed it. Added to which remainers were shouting it from the rooftops during the referendum and have been for the last year or so or whenever it was Farage started chucking dead fish in the Thames.

Where is Farage now? Laughing all the way to the bank and Germany with his new passport. The fishermen have served their purpose.

That remote communities should then retrain (not sure in what given what's around) or all move to cities, that they have made their bed so should then suffer the consequences of unemployment.
These are all comments on this thread.

I'm as remain as they come - i never ever wanted a referendum. But even i, sure as i was that sense would prevail and remain would win, could see that when the question was simply "in or out" with absolutely ZERO thought as to what out might be, bar a few lying politicians* saying "yeah, like Norway or Switzerland" and "we'll still be in the CU" etc etc as though the EU were going to simply allow that shocked even bitter and twisted ol' me.

So yes, people thought they were getting what they personally thought leave should be - without, in most cases, trying to find out what that might be. Pushing politicians to commit to something, anything.

I'm from Sheffield originally. I saw what happened when it was "we don't need mines, let them retrain". I wouldn't wish what happened to the miners (and the steelworkers, and all the other heavy industries) happen to the fishing industry. And yet it will.

It was clear months and months ago that the infrastructure wasn't going to be ready by 1st January.

(pp mentioned ham sandwiches. Well, quite. But they get hungry when they get hungry. And of course the Dutch customs were making a point. Why wouldn't they? It's sometimes almost as though the British press see Brexit only from the UK point of view and pretend that everyone else is blithely ignoring it. They aren't)

*How has everyone forgotten:
Q: How can you tell if a politician is lying?
A: Their lips are moving.

Plus, Boris backed down on his recent negotiations and sacrificed fishing %'s to get the whole deal passed through
No one saw that one coming really, with Boris the epitome of statesmanship that he is

Boris lies and shafts people
Shocker!
🙄

It's not just the fishermen and the Sunderland car plant workers.

Most farmers voted for Brexit, and then started moaning when they realised they'd lose EU subsidies and easy access to European labour for crop picking.

Poorer areas of the UK that have benefited from EU subsidises for roads, improvements to council houses and all sorts of other things voting leave in the majority.

I remember a load of British pensioners who had retired to the Costa del Sol stating on BBC Breakfast that they were voting leave 'because of all the immigration'. You could not make it up and now the same people are complaining because they're losing access to the bank accounts with British based banks because they can't provide a UK address and it's not economical for the banks to operate from outside the EU.

There's endless stories like that and the great galling fact is that if just a small percentage of the people who voted leave had actually understood what they were voting for, they wouldn't have voted to leave and we wouldn't be in this position now.

[quote donewithitalltodayandxmas]@NiceGerbil it wasn't entirely precictable any kind of deal could of been done or we could if got things more prepared.
You can't say the day you voted remain you knew that as soon as brexit happened their would be shellfish rotting , [/quote]
You could have predicted that any deal (even the so called Australian deal) that increased friction could lead to delays in getting things exported or imported and extra costs.

Anyone who voted Leave needs to own it now the shit is hitting the fan.

I feel that we need to be constant in our push back against people who don't want to live with the consequences of their actions around brexit. Much of the media is being very uncritical about this and are publishing story after story of the woes of small business owners who often, after a small investigation, appear to actually have actively campaigned for Brexit and even, in at least one case were quoted before the passing of the withdrawal agreement as saying that the financial losses from brexit were 'a price worth paying'. This is coupled with a range of stories about the "shock" issues with brexit that are all in fact obvious and predicted consequences that were repeatedly warned about.

It is clear that there is a concerted attempt to rewrite history here and to point the finger at remainers. It must be resisted at all costs.

My view is that if you voted for brexit and continued to cheerlead it throughout the past 4 years you entirely deserve any damage to your business that it causes as you have made poor business decisions. I just feel sorry for any staff these people have who may be losing their jobs in the middle of a pandemic.

I too am baffled. People who voted for a more difficult relationship with their main trading partners up in arms about.....more difficult relationship with main trading partners. Quite how people in marginal industries, plus the weird WW2 fetishists who probably wank over maps of the British empire, have been allowed to fuck the rest of us so comprehensively is something I will never understand.

@Alconleigh My thoughts exactly

If they didn't understand it in the referendum they then had two general elections that followed in 2017 & 2019 to pause and have a think about what might happen make but still they handed Johnson and the Torys whopping majority.

They actually wanted a no deal! They wanted to preserve an industry that employs the same amount of people as Debenhams and turns over less. They didn’t care about anything outside their bubble and now it’s come back to hit them in the face.

By the time anything is recovered, if it ever is. They’ll all be dead.

@SilverGlitterBaubles

Exactly

2016 : Take back control ~ we hold all the cards ~ Easiest Deal in History

2017 : Brexit means Brexit ~ Red White and Blue Brexit ~ no deal is better than a bad deal

2019 : Get Brexit Done ~ WTO rules will be fine

THREE VOTES
three chances
You knew what you were getting
suck it up and enjoy your winnings

I've got total sympathy for them. Nasty thread.

@donewithitalltodayandxmas

Yes sure there are people who would try different fish and many, like you, wouldn't like it.
We ve had a decade or more of chefs imploring us to try different fish but we still haven't really moved away from Cod and Haddock.

I don't accept lots of things i can't change, there is a difference.....however, i disagree with you, i do not think we will ever have the chance to change it :(

I have sympathy for those of them who did not vote to do this to themselves and to fuck the rest of us.

@derxa

I've got total sympathy for them. Nasty thread.

No its not, leave voters have taken away so many freedoms and advantages we all had, esp from the young. Unlike a GE result, we cannot undo this 5 years later.

So if leave voters get what they voted for (ie less access to their trad markets) we are pleased for them.......

@Sparrowfeeder

Screw them, I hope they go bust. They voted for it and I don’t agree ethically with fishing as an industry at all.

I don't understand this. Can you explain a bit.

If fish cannot be sold abroad why isn't it sold in the UK? I'm sure Boris or Gove or Rees-Mogg could come up with some simple, 3-word shit motto to make it our patriotic duty to save the fishing industry by eating lobster and crabs three times a day.

^This. We would then all be healthier because fish would be more affordable. I am financially OK but even I balk at the cost of fish - I would love to eat it 2 or 3 times a week but can't afford to...

@derxa

I've got total sympathy for them. Nasty thread.

Would you like to explain to us why you sympathise with an industry which is seeing its main export market destroyed by Brexit, which that industry overwhelmingly voted for?