A new future for fisheries

So far, so good! Scotland has its first Marine Bill which sets out the parameters for the protection of our seas and coastal zones. What we need now is a new vision for the future of our fishing industry. For years I have argued that the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has been an abject failure. It has failed to protect fish stocks, over 88% of which are near collapse in EU waters. It has also failed to protect jobs, with thousands of fishermen, processors and land-based workers being thrown on the scrap-heap.

But it’s not only the fishermen to blame for the decline in fish stocks. The micro-management of fisheries, by an army of bureaucrats based in Brussels, has been a disaster. De-commissioning, tie-ups, catch restrictions, quota cuts, effort limitation, kilowatt-days, net sizes and a draconian punishment regime, has driven our fishermen to distraction. Skippers and crew have to sail through a storm of red tape and bureaucracy, before they brave the dangers of our oceans. Fishing is the most dangerous profession in the world and men and women who risk their lives to put healthy food on our tables deserve better.

The European Parliament elected on 4th June this year has 49% of new members. The Fisheries Committee itself has almost an entirely new line-up. I am proud to have been elected senior Vice President, Carmen Fraga, the former Fisheries Minister from Spain, has been elected President of the Committee. Fresh faces may hopefully bring a fresh approach to the many problems that beset our oceans and coastal communities. I can only hope that with common sense and fisheries management devolved to local fishermen, we may one day see a recovery of the sector.

New disease hits Scotland’s bees

The news that foulbrood disease has infected thousands of bee hives in Scotland has come as a devastating blow to an industry already struggling to cope with colony collapse disorder due to, amongst other things, the varroa mite.

Scotland’s beekeepers must now deal with European foulbrood (EFB), a disease which has rarely been seen in this country before.

It is estimated that up to 5000 bee colonies in Perthshire could be wiped out by European Foulbrood (EFB) following the last week’s announcement of a major outbreak at an apiary near Alyth in Perthshire.

Local beekeepers have expressed fury that Scottish government ministers dithered and delayed before issuing warnings or providing sufficient resources to fight the disease.

The loss of bees could be catastrophic. Bees do more than just make honey. They are a vital part of our ecosystem and are essential to our survival. Almost 70% of global food crops require pollination. Yet bees are dying out globally at an alarming rate.

Probably the most fundamental link in the food chain, the honey bee is fast becoming the weakest.

Refugee camp attacked by Iraqi forces

At around 10:00 local time today, Wednesday, July 29, Iraqi forces entered Camp Ashraf from the northern wing in six vehicles equipped with BKC machine guns. They opened fire on the defenceless refugees killing and injuring a number of people. Hossein Mahmoudi and Hanif Emami, two leaders of People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK), were killed on the spot after being shot by live ammunition fired from the BKC machine guns. Struan Stevenson, Scottish Tory MEP and President of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup in the European Parliament heard first hand of the attack.

The pre-emptive attack on the refugee camp by 2,000 heavily armed Iraqi police and military personnel has so far left 7 dead, over 400 wounded, and 31 abducted. 13 of those wounded are in a critical condition. Doctors are banned from entering the camp to treat the wounded.

The attack against Ashraf began at 15:00 local time on Tuesday 28^th July. Police fired live ammunition and used tear gas, pepper sprays, batons, iron bars, clubs, boiling water sprayed at high pressure and stun grenades. Iraqi military loaders and armoured vehicles demolished gates, fences, and walls of the refugee camp while foot soldiers swarmed into the camp from various entry points.

Struan Stevenson commented:

“The violent attack by Iraqi forces launched yesterday and still on-going against the defenceless and unarmed refugees of Camp Ashraf, in the northern Iraqi province of Diyala, is a war crime and a humanitarian catastrophe.

“The majority of refugees in Ashraf are women and belong to the PMOI/MEK. They fled to Iraq after the execution of 120,000 PMOI/MEK supporters in Iran by the Mullahs.”

On 24^th April this year the European Parliament in Strasbourg passed an urgent resolution demanding protection for the 3500 Ashraf refugees. This followed a prolonged siege of the camp by Iraqi forces, which disrupted food, fuel and water supplies and prevented doctors from providing medical assistance to seriously ill residents of the camp.

Yesterday, the President–elect of the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI), Mrs Maryam Rajavi,  said in Italy that the Iranian Resistance would hold the Iraqi government and its Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, personally responsible for the attack and the deaths and injuries which have resulted.  She demanded that those responsible should be arraigned before a war crimes tribunal.

Iceland’s application to join the EU should be welcomed. Iceland already fulfils most of the community’s membership criteria. Its application to join the European club should therefore be fast-tracked.

Had it not been for its lucrative fishing industry, Iceland would have joined the EU long ago. They need only look to Scotland to see how the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has destroyed fish stocks and laid waste to great swathes of our coastal communities.

The European Commission’s Green Paper on CFP reform, which has just begun its legislative passage, offers a glimmer of hope. The Commission has admitted that its management policies have failed. The Green Paper points the way to radical initiatives that will devolve control of fisheries management from the Brussels bureaucrats, handing it over to the stakeholders, the fishermen themselves.

Wary of opening their rich fishing grounds to Europe’s fleets, Iceland’s politicians are calling for a special deal hoping compromise can be found that will exempt Iceland’s fishing sector from the CFP.

I can assure Iceland that many of us in Brussels will follow negotiations with great interest, because any concessions given to Iceland will also be demanded for Scotland and the rest of the UK.

In this respect Iceland can act as a trailblazer. If Iceland joins the EU without having to sign-up to the CFP, then the UK can surely make a case for opting out of the CFP too?

Sheep tagging

The Standing Committee for Food Chain and Animal Health announced it has agreed a number of concessions to the proposed electronic sheep tagging. These concessions include the electronic readings to take place at markets and slaughter houses instead of at each farm, saving farmers a considerable amount of money.

The concessions are a step in the right direction but clearly do not go far enough. The scheme remains impractical and drives a large number off the hill and upland areas of Scotland. The scheme should be voluntary or abandoned altogether.

Those in favour of electronic sheep tagging (EID) argue that EID is necessary in order to protect against the spread of diseases such as foot and mouth, despite the fact the current batch system of identification has been proved to be a success.

It is not too late to abandon the scheme before a large part of the sheep sector is destroyed.

Sheep tagging concessions simply do not go far enough

The Standing Committee for Food Chain and Animal Health announced it has agreed a number of concessions to the proposed electronic sheep tagging. These concessions include the electronic readings to take place at markets and slaughter houses instead of at each farm, saving farmers a considerable amount of money.

The concessions are a step in the right direction but clearly do not go far enough. The scheme remains impractical and drives a large number off the hill and upland areas of Scotland. The scheme should be voluntary or abandoned altogether.

Those in favour of electronic sheep tagging (EID) argue that EID is necessary in order to protect against the spread of diseases such as foot and mouth, despite the fact the current batch system of identification has been proved to be a success.

It is not too late to abandon the scheme before a large part of the sheep sector is destroyed.

There are other alternatives to overhead powerlines

The decision by Holyrood’s economy, energy and tourism committee to give the go-ahead to the Beauly to Denny power line is extremely disappointing.

Overhead powerlines were first utilised by Stalin during his race to roll out the industrial revolution in the USSR. It seems ridiculous that more than a century later we are still allowing power companies to wreck our landscape and put people’s health at risk by using old, cheap and nasty technology like this.

I recently chaired a meeting which heard evidence from leading EU cable experts that the cost of underground cabling is only around five times more than overhead powerlines, not the fifteen to twenty times more the power companies claim. The EU cable experts estimate that undergrounding 25% of the Beauly to Denny route in the most sensitive areas would add around £1 to everyone’s electricity bill in the UK, a small price to pay for such an enormous national benefit.

Or, is the answer an undersea cable right down the West Coast from Ullapool to Ayrshire?

New report shows extend of seal damage

The myth that Scotland’s burgeoning seal population has little or no impact on dwindling fish stocks, has been blown out of the water by a new scientific report.

The International Convention for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the main scientific body advising the European Commission, admits in a new study that “Grey seal abundance has increased from 32,000 to 40,000 (in the) west of Scotland over recent decades. Seals are known to feed on cod, amongst other species, and the mortality of cod due to seal predation is likely to be significant. This may impair the ability of the cod stock to recover.”

In the North Sea, the grey seal population has been allowed to grow to around 200,000. Each individual seal will eat approximately 2 tonnes of fish a year, resulting in 400,000 tonnes of fish, including cod, being wiped out annually by the un-checked seal population.

IRANIAN PROTESTERS MAY FACE EXECUTION

News has filtered out of Iran that the theocratic regime has set up a special 3-man tribunal to deal with the thousands of detainees arrested during recent protests. An estimated 2,000 students and other protesters were detained during the uprising that took place following the fraudulent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fears are growing that many of the detainees face torture and even execution at the hands of the tribunal as the oppressive mullah-led regime tries to re-assert control. This follows demands made by Mullah Ahmad Khatami, a member of the mullahs’ Assembly of Experts, who in a sermon on June 26, said those arrested had “waged war on God” and should face execution.

I am deeply concerned that a humanitarian tragedy is unfolding before our eyes in Iran. The violent crackdown on protesters, combined with the arrest and subsequent criminal charges against some of the Iranian workers from the British Embassy in Tehran, all point towards a regime that is struggling to save itself through the unleashing of a wave of killings and executions, aimed at spreading fear and terror throughout Iran.

Information leaked from inside the regime points to the fact that Ahmadinejad has appointed a tribunal of executioners to oversee the punishment of the arrested protesters. I have been informed that Mullah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, the notorious head of the regime’s Judiciary, has set up a three-man committee consisting of Prosecutor-General mullah Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, General Inspection Organisation Director Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi and First Deputy Judiciary chief Ebrahim Reissi.

This new committee is eerily reminiscent of the “Death Committee” founded by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988, which in the space of a few weeks ordered the execution of 30,000 political prisoners. Pour-Mohammadi and Raissi were both members of that “Death Committee”. Pour-Mohammadi, a former Interior Minister under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was at the time of the 1988 massacre, a deputy Intelligence Minister and played a central role in carrying out Khomeini’s order for the massacre of political prisoners.

Dorri-Najafabadi, a former Intelligence Minister, is responsible for many killings and crimes under the current theocratic regime, including the serial murders of political opponents in the late 1990s which took place while he was minister. All three members of the new committee have committed crimes against humanity.

I am calling on the UN Secretary General, the UN Security Council and the EU to condemn the crimes of the mullahs’ regime and refer the criminal file of those responsible for executions, killings and suppression, which include Ali Khamenei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Shahroudi, Dorri-Najafabadi, Pour-Mohammadi and Raissi, to an international tribunal.

BREAKING THE COSY CONSENSUS IN BRUSSELS

A little bit of history was made in Brussels last month. The inaugural meeting of the new European Conservatives & Reformists Group (ECR) was held in the European Parliament. 56 MEPs from the UK, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary and Latvia, met together to set up a new and powerful voting bloc in the parliament.

The meeting effectively marked the birth of the official opposition to the cosy federalist consensus which has seamlessly bound the main parliamentary groupings from left to right for decades. Suddenly, the millions of people in Britain and throughout Europe, who are tired of the relentless drive towards a federal united states of Europe, have an official voice.

Born out of David Cameron’s pledge to take Conservative MEPs out of the main centre-right EPP-ED Group, the new ECR bloc will be the fourth largest group in the European Parliament, bigger than the Greens (where Scotland’s 2 SNP MEPs sit), and will wield significant power. Under the complex system for allocating key parliamentary posts to groups depending on their size, the ECR will be entitled to one Vice President of Parliament and two senior committee chairs. They will also have members in each of the main committees, giving voice to their pledge to pursue free enterprise, free and fair trade and competition, with minimal regulation, lower taxation and small government, as the ultimate catalysts for individual freedom and personal and national prosperity.

Interestingly, such was the catastrophic setback for Europe’s left-leaning parties during the recent Euro elections, that the ECR’s 56 Euro MPs, together with the 264 MEPs in the centre right EPP-ED Group, will have an actual overall majority in the house. They will be able to outvote the combined might of the socialist, green, communist and liberal democrat groups put together. This places the ECR in an important position as power broker, holding the balance of power in the European Parliament and ending the need for deals to be struck between the right and left. Cameron’s 26 UK Conservative MEPs are now in a hugely influential position as founding members of the ECR Group, together with Poland’s Law & Justice Party and the Civic Democratic Party from the Czech Republic. For example, the ECR’s support could be the crucial factor in deciding whether or not Jose Manuel Barroso is re-appointed as European Commission President.

Of course the creation of a new Euro-sceptic group has attracted criticism, not least from some of the more integrationist newspapers, particularly in Britain, who have gone out of their way to smear some of the participants in the ECR. Lurid stories of Polish homophobes and Latvian supporters of the Waffen SS have poured out from those who see the ECR as a threat to their dream of a European superstate, where the nation states are stripped of all final sovereignty and power is vested in the hands of un-elected bureaucrats in Brussels. In fact, the new bloc will contain two former Finance Ministers, a former senior Commission official, and prominent figures from parties either in government or aspiring to government from ten EU Member States.

The new group is committed to the urgent reform of the EU based on openness, accountability and democracy, in a way that respects the sovereignty of nations and concentrates on economic recovery, growth and competitiveness. They place great emphasis on the need for a strong transatlantic relationship and a revitalised NATO. They demand effective controls on immigration and an end to the abuse of asylum procedures.

There is no question that the old federalist mould has been broken. The anti-federalists are on the march.