A LOUD RANT ON A HARD CATCH

In 2006, the European Commission produced a Green Paper on mental health entitled "Improving the Mental Health of the Population: Towards a Strategy on Mental Health for the European Union" Among the propositions outlined in the Green Paper was one that "Employment opportunities, whether full-, part-time or voluntary can significantly aid peoples' recovery from mental ill-health." The policy of having the Common Fisheries Policy formulated by lunatics was therefore to continue.

And so the idiotic edicts continued to emanate from Brussels, as they had done since the inauguration of the unwieldy undemocratic monstrosity which is the European Union. The more stupid the regulation, the more weight was given to it, as the drafters of the ridiculous rules knew full well that no responsibility for the consequences of their creations would ever attach to them. One rule, fortunately largely ignored, advocated the wearing of hairnets by fishermen while they dealt with their catches. If they could have formulated a procedure whereby fishermen were required to stand on one leg and whistle the Marseillaise as they gutted, this would, no doubt, have been fully sanctioned by the Commission.

Landlocked countries, whose citizens would not know a cod from a codpiece or a haddock from a hole in the wall, are now obliged to vote to decide where our fishing fleets are allowed to catch what, when and how much. In the same manner that the camel is a horse designed by a committee, the commission continues to concoct an annual mishmash of misregulation which does absolutely nothing for stocks conservation, while providing the maximum disruption for our fishermen, who are only trying to earn a living for themselves and their families, as their fathers and grandfathers have done before them. Year after year, our negotiators arrive back from Brussels bearing a bigger can of worms for our fishermen to somehow craft into a workable arrangement. And this is how it will be, until our fishermen, fish-buyers, processors and enforcers get together to throw this unfortunate problem over the side with the discards, and decide our own future - who can fish in the waters around Shetland, how much and when in which areas, and start a sustainable industry for upcoming generations of fishermen.

It's been done before. Britain was on the receiving end from the enforcers of Icelandic fisheries policy during the Cod Wars. And if our politicians back us, we could gain a bit of leverage at the pantomime which is the European fisheries debate by presenting a real threat of action, if what they offer us is useless to our fishermen. But I'm not holding my breath over the resolve of our representatives. They will continue to return, grinning from ear to ear, from negotiations, over the "good deal" they have secured, only for our men on the boats to discover that what they've got is completely unworkable. And the same thing will happen next year, and the year after, until the last syllable of recorded time, to quote Shakespeare out of context.

The Scottish Parliament may have been expected to take up the torch for our beleaguered fishermen, but they have been as totally ineffective as their Westminster counterparts. When our Scottish Nationalist first minister was recently asked to comment on the latest "deal" from Europe, he dismissed the parliamentary criticism, claiming the arrangement was a perfectly good one. When one considers that his constituency contains all the major white-fish ports on the Scottish mainland, this is somewhat surprising, until one remembers that the main aspiration of the Scottish National Party is the political oxymoron of "independence within the European Community". No help there then.

And then there are the marine conservation pressure groups, bodies of like-one-track-minded people, mostly city dwellers, for whom the only ideal future for our marine habitats is a haven for aquatic mammals. For these people, fishermen's livelihoods are a complete irrelevance. Few, if any, of the individual membership of such organisations have ever had to earn a living from land or sea, and yet undue consideration is always given, by the legislative bodies, to their opinions. Given their backgrounds and sound-bite-based education, it is scarcely surprising that their entire ethos is based on the Orwellian assumption that all fishermen are bad people.

I've always had the utmost admiration for Scottish fishermen, who have to work in increasingly murky waters and diffcult conditions, both physically and politically. I've been to sea with fishing boats myself, and I've seen what their crews have to do to earn a crust. They have to be fit, agile and tough to contend with the natural elements, and they are going to have to find another kind of resilience for their battles to retain their living in the future. They will probably have little support from their elected representatives, but, for what it's worth, they have mine.