This is an EU v UK issue and should be treated as such but France as per usual is impatient and wants the dispute dealt immediately so is taking matters into their own hands which doesn’t help the situation.
Yes Crace is always accurate - and funny…
This was all the doing of the Tin-Pot Napoleon, Emmanuel Macron, who wanted to look tough with a tricky election campaign beginning. Thank God, we don’t have our own pumped-up narcissist who would play political games to win favour with his own home audience.
And
When the government had ordered its backbenchers to vote against an amendment banning water companies from pumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea, it had really been a training exercise to make sure that Tory backbenchers were dumb enough to vote for any old crap. Literally.
This is a more reasoned piece than Mr Crace’s -
But as Mr, Crace says: ‘Thank God the UK doesn’t have its own pumped-up narcissist who would play political games to win favour with his own home audience’.
Everyone knows Johnson is an a**e, Macron wants to be the leader of the EU, that’s the big difference.
Anybody who has the guts to kick Johnson and Frost in the balls gets my vote.
And you’re happy with the collateral cost - UK fishermen lose income as do workers at French ports, then there are EU importers and consumers who also lose? Really worth it?
Yes, and more - Neville Chamberlain taught us the dangers of appeasement.
Interesting situation here - the guests in our gite this week are from Jersey - should have been going back on Sunday but crossing suddenly changed to first thing tomorrow, because the ferry company is predicting they won’t be able to dock later.
Bring it on, j’en ai ras-le-bol.
Sunday and Monday’s crossings cancelled due to the forecast bad weather.
Interesting take on that below from the Chris Grey’s insightful Brexit Blog
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/
Jersey row
Fishing is also central to this week’s drama over the permits that, because of Brexit and in line with the fishing chapter of the TCA, French fishermen now need to fish in Jersey’s waters (it has arisen now because, until the end of April, there was an ‘amnesty’ under which the pre-Brexit arrangements continued). It’s a highly complicated story as all fishing stories are, but particularly so because of the distinctive constitutional status of the Channel Islands%20and%20courts.). Thus it is not actually about CFP, but it is about Brexit because the TCA superseded the Granville Bay Agreement, dating back to the nineteenth century but last amended in 2000, which had governed fishing rights in these waters. Scrapping it as part of Brexit was strongly lobbied for by the Jersey Fishermen’s Association during the TCA negotiations. Separately, the UK also chose to leave the 1964 London Fisheries Convention (causing problems for fishing around Guernsey, Alderney and Sark which have been more quietly dealt with by agreeing an extension of the interim arrangements with the EU).
Brexiters see ‘taking back control of our waters’ and being ‘an independent coastal nation’ as emblematic of regaining sovereignty. But the inevitable consequence is to encounter the sovereignty of other countries. For this was not, as some Brexiters are inevitably spinning it, a row with the EU but with France, although the EU is ‘siding’ with France in saying the permits are not being issued as the TCA says they should be (£) (the UK government disputes this – I do not know who is correct, but there are now talks underway).
This carries two lessons. First, that the EU will tend to stand up for its members against third countries, which is one of the ways sovereignty is magnified by membership. Second, it underscores that EU membership does not end national sovereignty. Nor is it necessary to leave the EU to engage in nationalistic posturing to appeal to nativist voters. Hence, with elections in both countries in prospect, foolish and ridiculous words from French politicians threatening to cut off electricity supplies to Jersey were matched by foolish and ridiculous actions from the UK in deploying Royal Navy vessels to observe what turned to be a rather limited ‘blockade’ of St Helier by French (and some Jersey) trawlers. For all the furore, the drama is already fading but it or similar rows have plenty of potential to flare up again.
At one level, all this is (just) yet another Brexit mess, and a reminder of how Brexit has thrown a rock which produces waves and ripples which are now showing up in small and large ways. Interestingly, despite the political rhetoric, as the participation of some of them in the blockade shows, Jersey fishermen are highly sympathetic to their French colleagues, recognizing that they’ve all been caught up in this mess. It also bears saying that as long ago as March 2017 the House of Lords EU Committee warned the government of the dangers Brexit posed for the Channel Islands. But my point here is that this episode illustrates the consequences of a free-for-all between ‘sovereign equals’.
ha ha. The fat controller, venal, mendacious chancer with a “second rate mind” (fact check quote from one of his tutors) makes Macron appear a model pf probity. Of course he wants to be re-elected, anything but Le Pen.