The Tories have a new strategy – blame absolutely everything on someone else. How can anything be their fault? I mean its not like they’ve been in government for 12 years! Basically, their mantra now is the same as the lyrics of a certain Shaggy song. And they can get away with this because they know the tabloids will cover for them (hell even the BBC doesn’t ask awkward questions anymore….unless they are interviewing labour, in which case they’ll bring up beergate for the millionth time). And Tory voters have the attention span of a goldfish, so they will swallow these lies without question.
One of their recent problems has been the soaring price of fish and chips. What used to be a cheap working class supper, is now going to cost you £12 (so £40+ to feed a family of 4…definitely breaking that 30p per meal price then!). This is adding to the cost of living crisis. And it is in part a consequence of brexit related factors, as well as the war in Ukraine (as most of the cod the UK uses comes from Nordic, EU or Russian waters). But of course, the Tories can’t admit to any of that, so what do they do instead? Well, according to Jacob Rees Mogg, its all down to offshore windfarms. Oh and he’s a supporter of fracking btw. How true is this?….well the TLDR is its bollix!
As noted, the UK’s cod supply is imported, mostly coming from EU, Nordic & Russian waters (Russian waters more and more because the UK boats have been run out of Nordic and EU fishing grounds since brexit). This is largely because of past over-fishing by the UK fishing fleet in UK waters, as well as climate change causing fish to migrate north. This is why the Nordic countries are reluctant to join the EU and its common fisheries policy. Its not because they wanted a lassie-faire free for all (as the brexiters will have you believe). No, they wanted to be able to more strictly regulate what is for them, a vital industry. While fishing is less than 1% of the UK’s economy, its 8% of Norway’s economy, 17% of Iceland’s and 50% of Greenland’s. And even these figures ignore the fact that up in the more remote northern parts of these countries there’s often little to no arable land, or anywhere to build anything but a small fishing port. So fishing is vital to these communities.
As for Mogg’s allegations, even if we were catching the bulk of the UK’s fish in UK waters, it still doesn’t make any sense. A standard 3MW offshore wind turbine has a blade diameter of 137m. As a rule of thumb you want to keep a wind turbine about 7 times its diameter apart from one another in the dominant wind direction (it varies from between 5-9 times, but 7 is about in the middle) and about 2-5 times in the other direction (so we’ll split the difference at 3). This means we need an area of 394,149m2 or about 0.4 km2 for each turbine (or about 100 acres…you know how the Tories like imperial units!).
The capacity factor of offshore windfarms ranges from 40-57%. We will take a figure of 42% as that’s a bit more of a reliable average figure. That means our turbine will generate about 11 million kWh’s per year. The UK total electricity demand is about 350 TWh’s per year, so we’d need about 32,000 to power the whole of the UK (we will ignore the practicality of this, presumably we’d be using other energy sources too, but this about establishing an upper limit for offshore wind). This would require a sea area of about 12.5 thousand km2. The total sea area of the UK’s exclusive economic zone is 774 thousand km2. So these turbines would take up 1.7% of the UK’s total sea space.
Granted long term we might want to look at generating even more power, e.g. not just electricity but also generating hydrogen for winter heating, powering vehicles, etc. But even multiplying this figure by a factor of 5 we are still using up less than 10% of the UK’s sea space. And, as mentioned, it would be kind of stupid to rely entirely on offshore wind for all of our energy needs. And this also ignores the possibility of operating tidal and wave energy systems within the same sea space, increasing output per unit area.
Certainly, yes there are parts of the UK waters that are unsuitable for certain types of fishing. And with current technology, there are limits to where we can put wind farms, although the development of floating wind farms means this condition might not apply for very long. A study by the EU has pointed to areas of both conflict but also opportunities for co-operation, where wind farms and certain types of fishing will work well together. For example, wind farm structures tend to promote the growth of sea life such as crustaceans making them ideal spots for shellfish farming and fish farming. On the other hand, you can’t exactly run trawlers through the area occupied by a wind farm. Although, given the state of fish stocks in the UK waters, that might actually be seen as a good thing, as they will provide a series of safe havens free from overfishing.
But, either way, this is just an example of how the Tories operate. They pray on desperation and ignorance. They made fishermen their lackies with brexit because they knew fishermen were desperate enough to believe anything they said. And that most of the UK population were too ignorant to know that most of the fish the UK eats comes from outside UK waters, while most of what is caught in UK waters is exported to Europe…or at least it used to, as brexit sort of ruined that trade (oh the irony!). In fact its worth noting that the UK’s overall trade performance is now the worst since records began.
If anything, we have a good example of where lies get you from the plight of the UK’s fishermen (good documentary on this from Germany’s DW news here). As one retired skipper once told me, it is at least partially the fishing industries own fault. They overfished seas around the UK for decades. And when the government, and the EU, tried to do something about it, they largely ignored the warnings and often broke the rules and under reported their catches. So, say they’d land 100 tons, but only declare 50 tons (and thus get out of paying taxes on the other 50 tons).
Alarmed by declining fish stocks eventually the EU decided to bring in quotas, allowing enough fishing to keep the industry alive, while lowering catches to protect fish stocks. So the fishermen got told, ok from now on you can only land, say 45 tons (plus we’re going to bring in tighter monitoring to stop people cheating). To Brussels (and London) this looked like a modest 10% cut compared to what they’d been landing, when in truth it was more like a 55% cut (which they fishermen could hardly own up too, as they’d be admitting to fraud!). And a few years later it went down another 10%…..and so on.
And while yes we have to apply some of the blame to the EU for this, its also worth noting that, while in the EU, the UK controlled held 5 out of the 50 seats on the EU’s fisheries committee that decided on fishing quota’s (including the chairmanship at the time the UK left). And one of those members was Nigel Farage….who attended only one out of 42 meetings regarding fish quota’s. So a lot of the blame for the mess has to go on the British as well for these EU decisions (hence why the Nordic countries aren’t terribly keen on letting British boats into their waters!).
My point is, the UK’s entire post-brexit strategy on fishing is completely flawed. And eventually your lies catch up with you. And the longer it goes on for the worse the consequences are likely to be.
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