The European Union as it currently stands is an irritating parody of what it could be, but it is not completely useless.
Or it wouldn't be if anybody there had any courage to do what is obviously the right thing.
Cod is, in practical terms, extinct; but does Europe stop it being fished? No. Instead they decree that the fishermen can still fish for cod but that they must use nets with a mesh-size that allows younger fish to slip through.
Except the younger fish won't get through: that wide mesh will be blocked by their elder relatives within the first few moments of the trawl. Using a wider mesh in the nets will make no practical difference to the number of cod caught.
The European Union is the ideal body to control the fishing of the North Sea and the Eastern Atlantic and yet it seems incapable of bringing itself to do so. It would, admittedly, be painful for the fishermen if they were prevented from going to sea - but it should be remembered that fishing is not the quaint business of the seaside postcard. They're not called factory ships for nothing.
If nothing is done they will be unemployed anyway because there'll be nothing left for them to catch.
And then it will be chips and chips. Do you want that, European Union?
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