Toby on Tuesday 

“Fish ‘n’ Ships twice please”

 

Filey is the jewel in the crown of Britain’s East Coast.   Last October the Guardian wrote, “What’s going for it?   What a bay!   What a beach!   The Costas don’t have anything like Filey.   Koh Samui pales.   Malibu?   Pah!”   Yet the days are long gone since Princess Mary, the old Princess Royal, came with her family from Harewood to spend their Summer holidays in a resort that was as fashionable as San Tropez and nowhere near as tacky!   Now something really radical is needed to restore Filey’s glory days.

Last week, I wrote about UKIP’s policy of recovering the 200-mile limit on our old North Sea fishing grounds, so wantonly abandoned by Ted Heath’s government in 1972.   Nearly 70% of Europe’s fishing grounds were given away in return for 13% of the EU fishing quota.   Now almost £3 billion a year of seafood – some 2/3rds of our annual consumption – has to be imported, much of it cod and haddock from Norway and Russia.   Vast international factory fishing fleets have colonised our waters and decimated our remaining stocks, yet we are powerless to do anything about it.   Extricating ourselves from this scandal would be the catalyst for the regeneration of Filey.

On Thursday I had the privilege of meeting two exceptionally determined and committed Filey campaigners, Tony Green and Peter Bradney of Fight4Filey, who have given many years and much thought to rebuilding the fortunes of their lovely town.   We talked about the distinct character of Filey and the need not to be overshadowed by neighbouring Scarborough, their plans for an all-weather visitor centre which could well be themed on the many links to the old Baltic trade with Sweden, Finland and Russia, the wish to create the kind of modern gastro culture which has served Padstow in Cornwall and Whitby up the coast so well, and the hope of returning boat building to Filey with all the other trades that would service it.   We agreed that one precondition for all these things and much else besides would be for Britain finally to bid farewell to the disaster that is the Common Fisheries Policy.   But even as work starts on achieving this goal, there is no reason why the preliminary steps cannot be put in place for Filey immediately after May’s General Election, not least by restoring the town’s many Baltic links.

You can find out more about Tony Green’s and Peter Bradney’s superb campaign for the place they love if you google Fight4Filey or www.fileybay.com.   They recognise fully the need for a vibrant new future for Filey once Britain has withdrawn from the clutches of the EU, but they know too that the work of regeneration must start now.   When we joined the EU all those years ago Ted Heath, in his graceless and curmudgeonly way, declared that the only people who could possibly oppose his terms of entry were “just a few fishermen.”   Well I can say to the ghost of Ted Heath, wherever that may be, that he underestimated the courage and determination of people like Tony Green, Peter Bradney and all the other good men and women of Filey.   My hope is that after 7th May next I can join with them and help to achieve their dreams!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

“Fish ‘n’ Ships”

 

Everyone loves ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ and everyone loves Len Goodman, Britain’s nimblest 70-year old.   Mind you, Brucie is Britain’s nimblest 87-year old (on 22nd February!), but that’s another story.   In George Orwell’s ‘1984’, Room 101 was the torture chamber in the Ministry of Love.   So it’s appropriate that it’s also the name of the BBC One comedy show in which celebrities share their pet hates.   This programme definitely has it in for UKIP and, to give you a flavour, a charming lady called Ronni Ancona recently declared, “Where do you stand on Nigel Farage – on his windpipe preferably,” while our Len Goodman was accused of “sounding like a UKIP candidate” for his views on food.

To me “sounding like a UKIP candidate” is the ultimate compliment, so I thought that I’d investigate a bit more.   What our Len said was, “Sushi?   No.   Cockles and mussels and maybe a winkle.   Lovely jubbly.   We would all be healthier, fitter and happier if we could go back to the days of fish and chips.”   But thanks to the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, the days of plentiful fish and chips are long gone.   Even though the UK has almost 70% of Europe’s fishing grounds, we now have only 13% of the allowable quota and need to import nearly £3 billion a year of seafood, while our own resources are literally being given away.   The Conservative Party once acknowledged this scandal and, under Michael Howard’s leadership, had a policy of repatriating fishing policy.   Almost the first thing that “Dave” Cameron did on becoming leader was to ditch this commitment.    The first UKIP Government would make the recovery of our fisheries an absolute priority.

We would start by introducing a 200-mile North Sea Exclusive Economic Zone under UK control and a 12-mile limit for UK fishermen only.   We would then introduce development funding for fleets, harbours and shipbuilding for Fishery Protection.   We would legislate for seasonal closure areas to aid spawning and replenish stocks, and for voluntary closure areas and no-trawl zones to protect shellfish grounds.   We would create fishery protected areas with no energy/aggregate exploitation and introduce ‘land what you catch’ self-management with regional control and selective fishing gear for accurate species targeting.   Above all, we would ensure that, with the scandal of discarded fish now illegal, the new scandal of fish over quota going to landfill would be prohibited.

In this way, Britain could restore herself as a maritime nation once more, instead of being a mere adjunct of a dying Continent.   And our Len Goodman could enjoy all the lovely fish and chips he wanted, even when he has seen as many glorious Summers by the seaside – hopefully in Filey – as our Brucie!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

'Revolutionary Acts'

 

To live on the North York Moors is to be blessed with some of the loveliest landscapes on the whole planet.   And when the winter snow comes, the days that follow with bright sunshine over the white ghylls are worthy of the finest of artists.   We have had some of these days here in the past fortnight, to the delight of the grandchildren as they hurtled down the slopes on their toboggans.   One day, I went with some old friends to a nearby dale called Scugdale, deep in snow and the paths sheets of ice.   Two of our group slipped badly, one bruising a shoulder and the other spraining an ankle, but with no lasting damage.   As I helped them to their feet, I chuckled to think of all those articles in the Guardian and the Independent during the climate change hysteria of ten years ago, warning us that we would never, ever see snow again!

In his ‘1984’, George Orwell wrote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”   Along with the EU, our climate change alarmists have been among the very greatest perpetrators of universal deceit.   It was the 2008 Climate Change Act, which an incoming UKIP Government will repeal, that committed Britain to reducing carbon emissions by 80% before 2050, the only country in the World to do so.   Ed Miliband was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change then, but he was strongly supported by the dismal duo of Cameron and Clegg, both desperate to jump onto the bandwagon.

In fact, the only way to reduce carbon emissions by 80% before 2050 is somehow to eliminate humanity itself.   Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium and oxygen, and in the human body it is the second most abundant element (18.5%) after oxygen.   Just when the oil price is collapsing, it is worth remembering this while you pay your energy bills as they are rising by around a half to pay for all those “green” measures under the 2008 Climate Change Act.

Last week a 328 foot tall wind turbine buckled and collapsed on a hillside in Northern Ireland, despite only medium wind speeds.   It was one of eight opened in 2011 at a cost of £26 million and the remaining seven were shut down pending an investigation.   Through their bills, consumers have been paying for these monstrous structures, all based on the universal deceit of the 2008 Act.   As one by one they all need to be dismantled and removed, it is vital that those who profited from this folly should fund their disposal, but the sad truth is that the poor old customer will almost certainly be called on to pay for this too.   To paraphrase George Orwell, UKIP will never cease telling the truth about these and other disasters, however much a revolutionary act it may be!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Monkeys… Mondays… erm… Tuesday.

 

 

A very happy New Year to you all!   These holidays are a time for laughter and during the past week I’ve read two of the funniest pieces of fiction enjoyed for a long time.

The first was a political satire called ‘Melincourt’ by the early-19th century humourist Thomas Love Peacock.   Anticipating Charles Darwin by half a century, he tells the story of a naturalist’s experiment with putting up an orangutan as a candidate in one of the old pre-Reform Bill rotten boroughs.   All goes well and the monkey is duly elected until, in the excitement of the moment, he goes berserk and rampages through the constituency until “in a few minutes the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote was reduced to ashes.”

An even funnier piece of fiction was “A contract between the Conservative Party and you” sent out by our Dave Cameron shortly before the 2010 General Election.   In this our Dave wrote, “We go into the general election on 6 May with trust in politics and politicians at an all-time low.   And I can understand why:  the years of broken promises, the expenses scandal, the feeling that politicians have become too remote from the people – they’ve all taken their toll…So this is our contract with you.   I want you to read it and – if we win the election – use it to hold us to account.   If we don’t deliver our side of the bargain, vote us out in five years’ time.”

Now, here are some of our Dave’s broken promises:

• “Control immigration, reducing it to…tens of thousands a year.”

• “Act now on the national debt.”

• “Give you the right to sack your MP…to get rid of politicians who are guilty of misconduct.”

• “Cut the number of MP’s by ten per cent, and cut the subsidies and perks for politicians.”

• “Cut ministers’ pay by five per cent and freeze it for five years.”

• “Give local communities the power to take charge of the local planning system and vote on excessive council tax rises.”

• “Take immediate action to start cutting government waste – things like…the millions given in aid.”

And here are some of the things Dave did not tell us he would do:

• Try to bomb Damascus in an unholy alliance with ISIS and risk a Third World War against Syria, Iran and Russia, a blunder which only a vote in the House of Commons prevented.

• Create an existential threat to our country by trying to bring Turkey, with its porous borders onto Iran, Iraq and Syria, into the EU and its policy of free movement.

• Introduce same-sex marriage without making civil partnerships available to heterosexual couples.

• Squander some £12 billion a year on overseas aid while our deficit with the rest of the world, at 6% of GDP, is the very worst since records began.

• Squander around a further £20 billion a year gross on EU membership while our National Debt is rising by some £100 billion a year.

• Fiddle our official statistics to include revenue from illegal drugs and prostitution in our GDP figures, something that even the French do not stoop to do, and pay huge additional EU contributions as a result.

• Force millions into fuel poverty through a deeply-flawed energy policy.

Now Dave, I’m a great believer in the sanctity of contracts and yes, let’s stick to the terms of your offer.   You’ve treated the British people as fools, you’ve failed on your side of the bargain and on 7 May next we’ll vote out your tawdry, dangerous and decadent government and replace it with something more honest and vigorous in the form of UKIP, the great new force in British politics!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby