Debenhams and fishing

Since January 2020, the UK Government and the EU have been discussing fishing.

Fishing rights.

Judging from press releases and leaks this week, it seems almost no progress has been made in those 11 months.

For the UK Government is a totem on which is is detirmined to hang the rest of the UK economy from. As we have discussed before, 80% of the fish the UK catches, it exports, and 80% of the fish it eats, it imports from the EU. Including almost all cod.

Notwithstanding that, a number of UK registered fishing vessels have sold their registrations to foreign captains and/or companies. So when the UK talks about UK fishing fleet it is likely it is not all the vessels that fish in UK waters or even sail from UK ports.

In total, approx 12,000 UK citizens work in the fishing industry, on ships, ports, markets and processing plants. The UK Government is prepared, and has done, hold the rest of the economy to ransome to protect the livelihood of these 12,00 people. That is 70 million people and the businesses where they work.

All for fishing.

Just by chancem in a week of High Street failure, Debenhams has entered administration and likely will not survive. It also employs about 12,000 people, the Government hardly said a word.

How the livelihodds of one 12,000 set of people is more important than any other group of 12,000 let alone the rest of the country is another thing. But it seems that the Government is willing to throw all other areas of the economy, including services and financial servies under the bus to protect fishing, an industry that doesn't supply us with the food we eat, just what we export, and the rules of either a deal or no deal make such exports uneconomical.

It is madness.

Even writing it down just makes clear how mad all of this is.