My Solution to the Fishing Dispute

 

Apparently, the issue that is driving Britain and France towards a full-on trade war is whether a pitiful number, 56 I understand, of small French fishing boats are entitled to fish in our coastal waters.  The qualification for renewing fishing rights, post Brexit, is childishly simple – prove that you have fished there before, for only a single day in the last few years, and we will renew your permit. The majority of French fishermen have found the low bar of qualification easy to surmount but a few applications have been refused.  From a French point of view, refusing a fishing permit is a prima facie breach of the Brexit Trade agreement.  From our point of view, permits have been refused only when the applicant is unable to prove that they are qualified in the first place.  The resulting feud is a pissing contest, “par excellence.”  If the consequences of escalation were not so serious, it would be very easy to laugh.  Macron, having marched his adoring electorate to the top of the hill, is not going to back down now and, from a British point of view, concession on such a nit-picking and economically insignificant point as this could prejudice our negotiating position on more important matters in the future. It will take a grand gesture, by one side or the other, to save face and move forward.  Sometimes only a bold and breath-taking “coup de theatre” will do.

Looking back on my time in the “Green Ink” environment of my previous post, I remember being startled by a security assessment on the potential future Naval Attaché for one of our Embassies overseas.  The security assessment had been submitted to my boss in Intelligence for his approval as the final arbiter in these matters.  My experience in security vetting was strictly limited to having been the subject but I expected the narrative reports I was about to check would have covered the usual ground of financial probity, political leanings, potential blackmail through homosexuality, honesty, drinking habits, gambling, debt etc, all the things that would make a potential spy stand out rather like Kim Philby didn’t.  I was, therefore surprised to read the single sentence assessment of character which had been signed by an Admiral – “I know this man!”  This indeed was a grand statement with at least two reputations standing on just four words.

It now occurs to me that little Emmanuel could learn something from this that could be helpful in resolving the dispute.  All he needs to do is to write to Boris with a bold statement, like the aforementioned Admiral, that he knows all these jolly fishermen personally and is confident that they are all good an honest “Jacques.”  Boris would have no alternative, as a gentleman, but to accept his counterpart’s word, grant the outstanding permits accordingly, and we could all then live happily ever after. Of course, zut alors, if the Macron declaration should later prove to have been economical with the truth, then that would be a matter for France to deal with and explain to the world.

 

 

Green Dreaming

 

A friend’s idle inquiry, “how much electricity does a heat pump use and how much do they cost to run,” prompted me to flick to Google on the mobile phone.  A helpful site informed me that, for an average 4-bedroom house, a heat pump with capacity 9-16 KW, depending upon the standard of insulation, would be required.  Mushroom Towers was constructed in 1996, according to the standards of the time so I suspect additional insulation and higher capacity radiators would now be required to keep us warm, even with a high capacity heat pump on continuously, as recommended.  At our age, we’d rather not feel pinched so let us assume a 16 KW pump.  That is an awful lot of electric fires on all the time.  The standard variable tariff with my current provider quotes a rate of 15.83 pence per KWH – until March 2022 when goodness knows what the cap increase will be – to say nothing of the cost of installation.  A Screwfix best-seller, rated at 12KW, would set me back £7799.99 including VAT to which should be added; the installations cost including higher capacity radiators and additional wall insulation.  Without reporting to the precision of Excel to crunch the numbers, on face value, it would seem impossible to construct a coherent business case to dispense with my trusty 24-year old gas boiler even if, according to British Gas, “we can’t get the parts any longer,” and I should need to replace it, like for like.

Although the economic case doesn’t stand up, who would say that they don’t want to live in cleaner and greener world?  But are we really confronting an existential climate emergency or is it more likely that the so-called “emergency” is only speculation of what could happen, other things being equal?  So it could be worth reminding ourselves how we arrived at this net zero race to the bottom.  The Spectator reminds us that it was Theresa May, in a throw away line at the fag end of her disastrous tenure, who committed us to reach net zero emissions by 2050.  This grand design was accepted with “minimal debate or scrutiny.”  Yet here we are, committed by our Parliament, to a “Net Zero Strategy,” but with no clear idea of the costs to individuals or the impact on their lives.  I realise that, by questioning the King’s new suit of clothes, I have become a “climate change denier,” which, as Charles Moore observes, is “a deliberately libellous term, echoing the Holocaust.”  Doubtless other paragons  of climate change virtue would simply brand me “scum,” in the vernacular of current political debate.

In truth, I do not know whether we face an existential climate crisis or not and I am certainly not well enough informed to opine on the most cost effective and socially acceptable measures we might ned to put in place in mitigation.  The debate has become so polarised that it has become impossible to reason – the politicians bound headlong on a virtuous journey, the global warmers shrieking that disaster is merely round the corner and those who are not too sure branded head-banging deniers.  Someone needs to call time out – time to stop and reflect.

Recognising the “groupthink de jour” surrounding environmentalism, Allister Heath, writing in the Telegraph, argues that, “the green challenge is too important, its implications too dramatic, to be left to an establishment that has embraced net zero as if it were a new religion.”  He suggests the public should have the final say through a referendum.  A referendum would afford the opportunity for all issues, not just the science of climate change, to be exposed and scrutinised.  Who, especially in a post-Brexit democracy, could argue with that?  Of course, we should need to fight to ensure that the establishment did not rig the question on the ballot paper but any party promising an open referendum on the momentous costs and changes inherent in the Net Zero Strategy would get my vote, and many more, I suspect.

But will our political elite, so intent upon cementing their place in the hall of virtue fame, take heed. They should do, especially if they have read Roger Scruton.  This extract from “Green Philosophy – How to think seriously about the planet” should preface all parliamentary discussion on the environment:

“The solution to the real environmental problems will always elude us, if we cast away the one human motive that is able to take over when markets fail, which is that of public spirit. But whence comes public spirit? It comes from patriotism, from love of country, from a sense of belonging and of a shared and inherited home. It comes from believing that this problem is our problem, and therefore my problem, as a member of the group. That belief disappears when anonymous bureaucracies confiscate our risks, and pretend that they can regulate them to extinction. Those commonsensical observations are all but politically incorrect, in a culture that has surrendered so much to the state, that it no longer trusts the ordinary human instincts.”

In other words, trust the people who elected you (in the privacy of the polling booth)!