Defra and the sausage saga

Northampton Commentary                                      June 29^th 2012

There was no Commentary for the Strasbourg week of 11^th - 14^th June due to my return home early on the Wednesday; reason, sausages! I have been trying to help the Lincolnshire Sausage Association to obtain Geographical Protection status for their product but their application has been turned down. So on Thursday 14^th I was in London at Defra arguing the case. The Lincolnshire people have appealed and it is now under review; wait and see.

Following day, a visit to a farm near Uppingham. All in the name of engaging with that important sector of UK life and very informative for me. Quite a busy week.

The following Tuesday was Leicester, talking to the Ambulance people about the new regional system. I have been concerned that response times in Northants have been below national average. The officers I spoke to were confident that the two year old East Midlands Service would improve things. We shall see.

A great deal of time recently has been with the fishermen of Boston. I highlighted their problems in the first of my monthly Lincolnshire Echo columns three months ago. Due to the wretched EU Fisheries Policy, the CFP, up to June 3^rd they have had only 3 days work since August. Not having quotas for white fish, except for some sprat quota borrowed from Germany, they are reduced to shell fish. To their great frustration there are 30,000 tons of covckles in the Wash, ready to harvest all that time. Their lack of work is a total loss to them, insurances and finance for their boats still need paying, as well as house keeping.

In addition, across from their moorings is a factory which takes all their cockles for canning, selling to a ready market in Portugal and Spain. So these workers are also out of work while the country loses foreign exchange. We are supposed to be in debt!

After several visits talking to the EIFCA (Eastern Inshore fisheries and Conservation Agency) we had success, noted in a letter in the Boston Standard very generously giving me thanks. Then disaster. Perhaps you caught the TV news in the East, early last week, of a vandal releasing 5000 litres of Pesticide in Peterborough on Sunday evening, 17^th June. This found its way into the River Nene and went down stream. The Dept for Food Standards promptly closed fishing in the Wash. If you think that’s appropriate action then know this.

First, when I called the Environment Agency, which advised the Food Standards people, the officer I spoke to knew nothing of it! That was on Wednesday morning as I waited for my flight to Brussels at Birmingham airport. Second call, Wednesday evening with an informed officer, the pesticide had got as far as Wisbech. That’s 25 miles in three days, with another 10 miles to the Wash. As I have previously discovered, the Env Agency are very well versed in river flows, speeds and times of arrival at specific points.

So, the fishermen could have been fishing for at least three days, why stop them early? After all, if the cockles were to be contaminated best to get as much in as possible before that happened. Now that seems to be common sense, but we are dealing here with an agent of the EU which operates the “Precautionary principle”. If it looks dangerous ban it. Then examine it and perhaps allow continuance under a regime of rules, regs and red tape.

And that is why the Boston Fishermen have such a problem, like all the fishermen around our coasts. Just survey the agencies they have to deal with; EIFCA, Natural England, MMO (Maritime Maintenance Organisation), Environment Agency and Food Standards Agency.

And so to last Friday and another trip to Kings Lynn for a bigger meeting of fishermen EIFCA and all. This time it was an allegation of marking the sea bed, fishing have been resumed on Monday of that week. What does it matter if a boat marks the sand or fishing gear cuts a hole, the next tide or two smoothes it over again. But at least they were able to go on fishing this time. My contribution was, I hope, common sense. “If that has happened”, I said, “it is due to a careless fisherman and you can’t punish all for the sake of one or two. Answer, send inspectors out unannounced, without warning, and check out boats at random. Any guilty parties found can then be dealt with”.  I didn’t bother to say that, as a teacher, that happened to me. I had my share of School Inspectors dropping in without notice, usually in the middle of a lesson. No complaint, that’s as it should be and, no, I got no adverse reports. 

By the way, EIFCA takes a serious view of marking the sea bed. A short while ago one fisherman let his boat rest on the sand an left a mark about a yard wide, 10 yards long, I’ve see n the photo. For that he was fined, - £50,000 !! He got away with it because he refused, went to court and found a magistrate with sense who quashed the fine.

 Finally, you may find this speech by Senator Ron Paul of interest,-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rCvfwoRGMg - Ron Paul, Floor Speech, Jun. 19 2012

Derek Clark   MEP                                            Northampton  1^st July 2012

Lincolnshire members may well have seen my column in the Lincolnshire Echo. I have a once a month spot, Roger Helmer likewise, in alternate fortnights. My first column three months ago was to highlight the problems of the Boston Fishermen. At the end of a non-Brussels / Strasbourg I think it right to provide some further detail to illustrate the great difficulties they have.

The fishermen of Boston are only allowed to fish by the Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Agency (EIFCA). In turn this unelected body is advised by Natural England, with the marine management Organisation (MMO) also putting their oar in. Following EU rules and regs, under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), Boston is but a shadow of its former thriving fishery. I have made several journeys to Boston and Kings Lynn trying to help and you may also have seen the letter of thanks to me in the Boston Standard from the Chairman of the Boston Fishermen’s Association

Boston Fishermen have been reduced to shell fish as the quotas for white fish are virtually non-existent for them. True, they got small quota recently for Sprat, but that was by borrowing from Germany. Although there are over 30,000 tons of cockles in the Wash ready to harvest most of the fishermen have only had 3 or 4 days fishing since last August. After much effort the cockle fishery was opened to them from June 7^th, on a scheduled basis, day by day. They have an allowance of 2 tonnes per boat per day, which is enough for decent living.

Then a near catastrophe struck on Monday 18^th June, cockle fishery closed again. This was due to the vandal who caused 5000 litres of pesticide to run into the River Nene at Peterborough. You may have caught this on Eastern TV for it killed many fish in the river. The Food standards Agency, acting on information

 

  

Brussels commentary June 20/21

Brussels Commentary     Employment Committee            June 20th- 21st 2012

Events were enlivened on Wednesday afternoon by the Committee President, Madam Pervenche Beres, a French Socialist. You should know that the Commission send these issues out to Committees who then appoint a Rapporteur to write a report on it. Committee members are then invited to submit amendments. At the end of any debate the Commission are invited to make comments. In this case the Commission representative made comments on the desirability of certain amendments. That, said Ms Beres, is out of order. "Your job is to not comment onour amendments, that is not your business, stick to what you are supposed to do". That, of course, is her way of establishing the primacy of Parliament. That sounds OK, Parliament being the only democratically elected element in the EU. Problem, the majority of MEPs are there to serve the EU and regard the Commission as the fount of all wisdom.

We actually got down to discussing how to reduce the regulatory burden, at last. We'll see how this comes out at the vote later on. Here, you may have seen, on my web site, the video of May 23rd when I was asking for exactly this kind of action. This produced a "Blue card" question, also on the same video. My questioner asked what I meant by "Red Tape", and this became more extraordinary when I realised, afterwards, that she is a member of the Employment Committee! My video of May 31st in committee actually sees me agreeing with the President who has initiated the report on reducing Red Tape, as noted above. Unfortunately, my blue card questioner, Jutta Steinruck, left the committee just before I spoke! But please do not think that Jutta Steinruck is lazy for she is rapporteur for, "EU Program for Social Change and Innovation". Therefore she had to put together the amendments submitted, all 392 of them, plus a lot more from other committees as "opinions".

We voted on this today, 61 pages of amendments. It took nearly an hour and only that quick because many of the amendments had been compressed together into "compromises".

We also debated a "Statute for a European Mutual Society". Would you have believed that the EU has to promote Mutual Societies, known in the UK as Friendly Societies. Many countries do have them, why can the rest not learn from others like us and go out and do it, their style? And if they don't want to, well, let them go on without.

But then, I think we all know that the EU is not about enabling people to do things their way. Nor is it interested in encouraging people to adopt good ideas seen elsewhere. No chance, but then Europe was terribly backward before the EU took it in hand. I always think of farming and how farmers use the plough. Who invented it, where and when? No idea, except it was well over a thousand years ago. How did it spread, not by governments, that's for sure, there were no governments then, only Tribal Chiefs, War Lords, Village Elders. How did it spread? Simple, people knew a good idea when they saw one.

Right at he end of Committee today a report displaced from Wednesday was taken, to my surprise. It was, "European Maritime and Fisheries Fund", including spending more money on the CFP. So I took the opportunity to speak, it will be on my videos in a day or two.

Strasbourg Commentary Plenary Session 21st – 24th May 2012

Strasbourg Commentary            Plenary Session               21^st – 24^th May 2012

I try to complete my commentaries before I leave Strasbourg on Thursday, fresh in the mind. But flight times are such that I sometimes need to leave immediately after voting on Thursday, preventing write-up in the afternoon. Too late by the time I get back and Friday is catching up with the emails that have come in, hence the delay on this one.

In fact it was a rather odd week with not much serious business. Debates on, for example, Civil Liberties, Euro coins, Gender equality, Bluefin Tuna, EU and China Trade, The Ukraine, Youth Opportunities, Homophobia, and, calling for quotas on permits for EU people going to reside in Switzerland. What business of the EU is that? It makes one wonder if the EU machine is grinding to a halt, or working up to a deluge of intrusive measures.

Among all that were Debates/ votes on some real issues,-

Another raid on the fisheries of emerging nations, this time granting licences to plunder the waters of Mozambique, was carried by 566 – 89 votes.

A report to beef up EU powers to investigate UK affairs, like summoning witnesses, was defeated. It will come again.

However, be alarmed at the Podimata report, establishing the Financial Transaction Tax which will destroy the City of London. We supported a Tory amendment to reject, lost by 112 – 557 votes. The report was then passed by 487 – 152. You may have picked up adverse comments about Godfrey Bloom and Marta Andreason about this. Vicky Ford, Tory MEP Eastern, speaking in the House, slated them both for being absent from committee when this was adopted, prior to plenary. She was completely out of order. First she said that the final vote in committee was 22 all, in which case the report fails and it would not have come to plenary. But Marta had sent in a substitute (commonly done) to vote for her and, in any case, the final committee vote was 32 – 10, so our two MEPs made no difference anyway. The 22-all vote referred to an amendment debated in an earlier meeting. Was this an error on Ms Ford’s part, or did she think we were not listening ?      

Finally, a letter of mine which has appeared in several regional papers and quoted in the London Press Summaries which appears in the EU emails every day, this one 20th May

Remploy workplaces- 'Closure of Remploy will drive people out of work' (Letter from Derek Clark MEP to Derby Evening Telegraph, p. 14): "I hope that many people are as appalled as I am at the recent comments by Iain Duncan Smith as Work and Pensions Secretary. He proposes to close a number of Remploy workplaces and thus drive disabled people out of employment. His scathing comments about the work ethic of these people is beneath contempt. Disabled people at Remploy have the dignity of going to work, rather than calling on the benefits system - an example to us all. If that was not bad enough the Foreign Secretary William Hague now tells us we all have to work harder (...). In any case, many British people cannot work any harder. Does the Foreign Secretary of all people not know that we are in the EU? We are subject to the 'Working Time Directive' which limits employees to 48 hours per week. How then, can they work harder?"

I enclose this one following our very good day in Chesterfield, Sat 26^th, to promote the UKIP candidate in a council by-election, July 5^th . Our candidate is ex-Lib-Dem Councillor, Keith Lomas, one of four Lib-Dems in that branch to have joined us. A fine candidate, he deserves to do well and I was very pleased to see the support of local branch members, including the recent recruits. Just down the pavement from our stall was the Socialist Workers Party, fixing placards to lamp posts denouncing the Remploy closures! I tried to engage the placard-fixer-in-chief in conversation saying how much I agreed with him over that, if on nothing else. No reply! They packed up an hour before we did!

Derek Clark MEP                               Northampton, in lieu of Strasbourg, June 3^rd 2012

Brussels Commentary Employment Committee 30th - 31st May 2012

Brussels Commentary   Employment Committee    30th - 31st May 2012

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in the European Parliament on Wednesday evening. Organised by a Tory MEP British MEPs were invited and of course I went, as did Roger Helmer and many of our assistants. A lot of people there but I did not see many Lib-Dems or Labour! The Minister for Europe gave an address, followed by the Ambassador to Belgium and Sir John Hutton. In the middle of the Parliament the National Anthem was sung and glasses were raised to the Queen!

Wednesday  Bernadette Segol, General Secretary of the ETUC, was present in Committee and the questions included one on today's Irish Referendum. She said that the ETUC was against this Budget Treaty, but were aware of the position of the Confederation of Irish Trade Unions. She did not wish to interfere in Irish affairs.

The committee was happy to vote to spend a lot of money, eg 2.5 million Euros from the Globalisation Adjustment Fund to help Spain compete with China in footware production. No one ever offered that to Northampton losing its shoe makers to various countries. Of course I lost the vote, carried by 32 to 1! As I did on the European Statistical program, 300 million Euros, heavily defeated again; 41 to 2.

Other insidious measures were debated. "Optimising the role of territorial development in Cohesion policy", means strengthening the Regions at the expense of the nation state. Hello, East Midlands, goodbye England. Carried, 38 to 1.

Couple that with, "Establishing a European Neighbourhood Instrument", which means creating bonds with non-European Countries. Hello Turkey, Georgia... goodbye  Western democracies. Carried again, 32 to 1.

Thursday  Agenda included several items on SMEs, for once helping them. I had to agree with the President's report and question to the Commission and you can see my contribution on video soon.

Finally, thank you for helping in the football tournament held here Wednesday. An Astroturf pitch had been laid out between the Parliament buildings close to the main road. Surrounded by a wire fence, team tents and portable stands several teams of five-aside, all in professional kit, did their stuff. The pitch surrounds carried advertising but I doubt that would have been sufficient and you, the E taxpayer, no doubt made a contribution. Thank you for your generosity.     

Derek Clark    MEP                                                    Brussels  31st May 2012.

Listen to the debate on energy on The Voice Of Russia

 

I took part in an interesting debate today on wind farms on The Voice of Russia - it will be on You Tube soon.

 http://www.youtube.com/user/VoiceOfRussiaLondon and it should be ready to listen to in the next few days.

 

The discussion will be played at 16.30 today. You can listen to me here - http://player.streamtheworld.com/liveplayer.php?CALLSIGN=RUVR_ENG or by tuning into DAB 23/7

 

You read it here first!

Northampton Commentary                                                             3rd May 2012

A brief round-up of two Parliamentary sessions.

Strasbourg Plenary session 17 – 20 April

A strange session. Strasbourg Plenary is usually Monday to Thursday, this time it was Tuesday to Friday since Monday was the Greek Orthodox Easter. The organisers evidently knew this would be not too well attended for the agenda was very light on real EU business. There were debates on Human Rights, Mali, Syria, Burma, the Black Sea, World Security systems, Jordan, biometric passports, Women and Climate Change, biodiversity. There was no business at all on Friday afternoon when there is on a normal Thursday last day.

Employment Committee 23rd – 24^th April

 Monday  At least the Employment Commissioner, Lazlo Andor turned up. You would think that portfolio holders would be frequent visitors to their committees, but not so. This is only about the fourth time that Mr Andor has turned up since acquiring the brief in 2009, while the committee meets once a month. He came only to, “Exchange Views in the context of the Structured Dialogue”. That was an hour and a half, then he was gone. This was followed by the,”European Social Fund”, - more of your money, “Youth opportunities”, but not removing the red tape that makes it so difficult for employers to take on youngsters. Then more money on “Pre-accession assistance”, “Social Partnership Funds” and “Social Investment Pact”.

Then the big one, “...Minimum training of seafarers”, with contributions from MEPs of land-locked countries!

I hope you like the convoluted language of the titles, but if I have to cope with it I thought you might like to experience it.

Tuesday    Finally, for me, “Exchange of views with the Commission on Free Movement of Workers from Bulgaria and Romania”, without Commissioner Andor. Transition arrangements which have been used to reduce the inflow of workers from these countries will come to an end in Dec 2013. Following which, quote from the official text, page 1, para 1.3,-

“...a Member State must always give preference to Bulgarian and Romanian workers over workers who are nationals of non-EU countries as regards first access to the labour market”.

Thus do they now intend to discriminate against people from the British Commonwealth who wish to come here. Discrimination is against the Lisbon Treaty! But see the video of my intervention in this debate, on my web site.

Also see my letter, on my website under News, which was published in several local papers. Interestingly my own local paper wanted proof of the quote before publishing, no doubt because they think this is really hot stuff and so it is. You read/ heard it here first.

Derek Clark   MEP                                                         Northampton 2^nd May 2012 

Northampton Commentary 5th April 2012

Northampton Commentary                                             5th April 2012

My website shows a variety of Letters I’ve sent to the press over the last week or so, most of them via Nick many of them have already appeared in the Local Press.  Please note the variety of topics, one of which is the ‘FairFuel Campaign’ .

Dear FairFuelUK Supporter

Petrol and diesel have dominated the news headlines over the last few days. This email update is to let you know our take on the situation and to ask you for a little help.

1. The real ‘fuel crisis’ is not the current particular dispute between the tanker drivers and their employers. Important as it is to see this dispute resolved fairly and quickly, the real ‘fuel crisis’ is the scandalously high price that families and businesses are having to pay for petrol & diesel. This will be made worse by the fact that the Government waived through in the Budget another 16p a gallon in fuel taxes to hit us all this summer.
2. The reaction to the possible disruption to fuel supplies has surely showed the Government one thing …. PETROL & DIESEL ARE ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO FAMILIES, BUSINESSES AND THE ENTIRE ECONOMY. Our argument is that forcing up prices by increasing fuel duty is hurting families, damaging business and holding back growth. All our polling shows that fuel tax is the nation’s number 1 priority and recent figures have showed that Britain’s economy is hardly growing at all. The Government is investing hundreds of millions of pounds in ‘job creation’ to fight unemployment. As well as truly understanding the suffering that high petrol & diesel prices are causing, they need to listen to our research which clearly shows that CUTTING FUEL DUTY is the most effective way of creating jobs and boosting growth. If you have not done so already, please see the evidence at http://fairfueluk.com/cebr.html

Some people have asked why FairFuelUK doesn’t support the idea of hauliers and farmers ‘blockading’ refineries and stopping the flow of fuel to protest about high prices. Please go to this link for a review of the Campaign's position.

Over the next few weeks, we will be fighting in Parliament to see the 16p a gallon increase, waived through in the Budget speech, scrapped and to make the Government see that it should be cutting fuel duty, not raising it!

We need your help to give us the power to make the politicians listen. We are fortunate to be supported by the RAC, the Road Haulage Association, the Freight Transport Association and The Fuelcard Company. On top of that, we have over 235,000 individual supporters like you. That figure of 235,000 is impressive – but it needs to be so much higher! This is where we need your help. There are 30 million motorists in the country. We need to spread the word to those millions of potential supporters that they don’t need to go and ‘blockade’. What they need to do is sign up to www.fairfueluk.com so that the Government realise they are facing a massive and growing movement of public opinion.

Please, as a matter of urgency do these three simple things:

1. Please ask everyone you know to sign up to www.fairfueluk.com – every extra signup (it’s free and only takes a few seconds) really does make our argument more powerful. There’s a simple copy and paste email below that you can send to your address book.

2. Help us spread word of the campaign by a powerful showing of our ‘CUT FUEL DUTY NOW’ sticker campaign. You can order them here http://fairfueluk.com/sticker___donations.html

3. Please post your experiences and comments on our blog at http://fairfueluk.com/quentins_blog.php so that we can see how the price of petrol & diesel are affecting you.

We had some success last year defeating over 9p per litre of rises in fuel duty. We were hugely disappointed that the chancellor ignored our calls in the recent Budget but with your help and support, the fight goes on!

Kind regards,

The FairFuelUK Team

You will also know that I am in a long running battle to try to save the livings of the Boston Fishermen.  I’ve just picked this up from Nigel Farage’s office, yet another self-appointed, big business orientated, body interfering in one of our traditional industries.

Marine Stewardship Council?

The pronouncements of the "Marine Stewardship-Council" (MSC) are frequently quoted by EU-agencies as "independent evidence" of the wisdom and benevolence of the EU's (utterly disastrous) fishing-policy; but what is the MSC?

The MSC was founded in 1997 by (a) the "World Wide Fund For Nature" (WWF) and (b) Unilever plc/nv - see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Stewardship_Council

(a) The founders of the WWF, included (1) Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who also founded the "Bilderberg-meeting" (a recruiting-ground for the Council on Foreign Relations of New York, which exerts political influence on behalf of several hundreds of the world's largest corporations) and (2) Godfrey A. Rockefeller, scion of the family, which owns several of the USA's Federal Reserve-Banks, and which founded and leads the Council on Foreign Relations of New York (CFR) The CFR was instrumental in setting up the United Nations Organisation and the European Economic Community (forerunner of the EU)

(b) Unilever is one of the world's largest corporations and a member of the CFR. It is also an "economic partner" of the EU-Commission and a leading proponent of the EU's legislation on replacing fossil-fuels with "bio-fuels", mainly palm-oil, whose consequent over-cultivation has led to widespread deforestation and food-shortages in poor countries. Unilever is also one of the world's largest producers of palm-oil.

It would appear, therefore, that MSC represents big business, at its most intrusive and exploitative, and political structures, at their most anti-democratic and presumptuous. The EU's quoting MSC as an authority is thus like quoting, as authorities, its own agencies and backers

Derek Clark MEP                            Northampton                       5^th April 2012