AN ISLAND NATION

AN ISLAND NATION

1. Island Nation or EU satellite state?

Last night Jeremy Paxman, on the 19th May 2016, presented an objective view of the European Union. It is clear that the EU intends becoming a federal state and that the United Kingdom would become subsumed into that bureaucratic nightmare. I give you an alternative - the open sea  and the Commonwealth. We are an island nation off Europe but not part of Europe.The Commonwealth needs us and we most certainly need them - they are the World. It is not a pipe dream, the building blocks are still there - just - and it is predicated on the following :-

“The Charter brings together the values and aspirations which unite the Commonwealth - democracy, human rights and the rule of law - in a single, accessible document.

The Charter expresses the commitment of member states to the development of free and democratic societies and the promotion of peace and prosperity to improve the lives of all peoples of the Commonwealth.

The Charter also acknowledges the role of civil society in supporting the goals and values of the Commonwealth.”

It will be recognised, of course, as the preamble to the Commonwealth Charter signed by our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth II. Head of the Commonwealth, on Commonwealth Day, 2013.  Ironic, is it not? The Charter puts democracy as the prime value - the very thing that membership of the EU would deny us. Let’s be clear, the Commonwealth has been around since 1867 when Canada became a confederation and an independent nation with the then British Empire and has evolved ever since - why abandon that?

2.Demographics suggest the Commonwealth.

In my mind there is no question, we must remain with the Commonwealth. The fifty-three countries of the Commonwealth that span Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Pacific and are diverse – they are amongst the world’s largest, smallest, richest and poorest countries. Thirty-one members are classified as small states – countries with a population size of 1.5 million people or less and larger member states that share similar characteristics with them. All members have an equal say – regardless of size or economic stature. This ensures even the smallest member countries have a voice in shaping the Commonwealth.

Let’s cut to the chase, we are talking of a population of approximately 2.3 billion versus the EU with its population of 508 million. The Commonwealth is said to have a nominal GDP of $10.5 trillion  with the EU’s nominal GDP $16.22 trillion. Therein lies the rub, with a Commonwealth per capita of $4,445 and the EU GDP nearing $32,000 per capita it is immediately apparent that the Commonwealth has some of the poorest nations and populace in the world. We can change that, that is a key part of my vision, but we certainly cannot do it whilst continually constrained by the EU. We do not have the freedom to act.

3. The experience of 50 years seafaring..

Before I go on to give you this vision let me make it clear as to who I am. I am not some young LSE graduate or apparatchik with the cradle marks on their arse pontificating about things that they have never seen or have actually experienced. I am quite simply an Old Salt who sailed away in 1954, started learning about the world from seafarers who had been at sea during the war, seen the world at its worst, seen companions die, seen what it is to be a prisoner of war, and all held dear two things Family and Country. And they gave me more, these men, by their example they taught me how to learn and how to be a shipmate. It is easier for me to tell where I have not been than where I have been. I was in the Soviet Union when Nikita Khrushchev was in power, in Goa [it was still Portuguese] when Salazar was in power, in Egypt when Gamul Abdul Nasser was leader, in Yugoslavia when Tito held those disparate states as one, in America when Joseph McCarthy had his witch hunt. We did not visit sanitized cruise ports with Holiday Inn and Costa Coffee we berthed in the industrial ports close to economic heartbeat of the nations. We often berthed close to poverty, disease, deprivation, and death. Often though we were not alone, so very often there would be another vessel flying the Red Ensign, the British Merchant fleet was to be found everywhere that trade took place. I have lived and worked with men of all nations in offshore oil & gas exploration. I have operated one of world’s largest fishing companies off Newfoundland & Labrador, operated a ferry company key to the economic and social life of the Shetland Islands. Now that I am old I have a great family and many of those who faced the challenges of life remain my friends. I have real experience of life.

4.The real inconvenient truth - it’s a scam.

If this nation of ours reclaims its identity then it should bring back the industrial revolution but this time extend it to the Commonwealth that need it and thereby give them all the benefits we have and take so much for granted. It all depends on power. If we look at this planet at night then where there is light there is health & wealth, fresh water from taps, hospitals, industry, and , most importantly  - education for all, no slavery, childhood is protected, women have rights, and pollution is receding. Where electric light fails or is non existent then the devil moves in and all the evils proliferate with hunger and disease leading the way. Bacha Khan said “If you wish to know how civilised a culture is, look how it treats its women.” In my experience the probability of finding that is where you find light.

The way to bring back a 21st century Industrial Revolution, this Renaissance of Capitalism,  is to cease the greatest scam in the history of mankind - Climate Change. For the love and honour of God, it is not about a gas that is less than half of one percent of the atmosphere. This is about fostering irrational fear enabling the creation of a fiat currency, it is about the destruction of capitalism as we know it. The “religion” of Climate Change has been adopted lock,stock, and barrel by the EU because it fosters their concepts of central control and one state. Climate Change must be an anathema to the poorer Commonwealth Nations because energy costs are beyond their pocket and they are condemned to begging bowls and continued under development, and, worst of all they lose their best sons and daughters to the West. How shameful is that?

5. A Renaissance of Capitalism.

So how can this new Industrial Revolution be started?  It requires two key ingredients - power at reasonable cost and basic education. The beauty of this vision is that we, the English speaking nations, have the blueprint for this revolution, our heritage, our experience. It has to be simple to start as is the seed or grain of corn. Give a village a simple generator of electricity and they will do the rest. But the most fundamental part of this is education. Recently I interviewed an African seafarer from Cape Coast, he might not be able to continue his career at sea. His grief was palpable for he had 5 sons and would not be able to pay for their education. That is a true measure of their problem.

One of the major issues with a poor nations becoming educated is that they then might lose that trained and/or qualified person to the richer nations. The classic example of that is to be found in the NHS where well qualified doctors, nurses, and technicians are found within from poor countries. My wife has been terribly ill in these past months and she has been tenderly cared for by nurses from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Kerala, and so on. I know that those places have lost a most important person and we benefit from their loss. But perhaps there is an answer and that is found in looking at the activities of a modern hero in medicine, Sir Magdi Yacoub who is Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. The following is a quote from that hospital - “Sir Magdi has an active interest in global healthcare delivery with particular focus developing programmes in Egypt, The Gulf Region, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Jamaica.  He is Founder and President of the Chain of Hope charity, treating children with correctable cardiac conditions from war-torn and developing countries and establishing training and research programmes in local cardiac units.”   This great doctor, who given hope and life to thousands, is signposting a way to create new doctors and this wonderful knowledge of medicine.

6. Power for the Third World.

But the very first step is power, not the illusionary power of politics, real power, electrical power that gives the village its freshwater, gives the doctor or nurse a refrigerator to keep the serum or the drug that will save the lives of children and their mothers, enable x-rays and the whole range of things that we take so much for granted but deny the Third World. In Britain, Holland, and the Commonwealth there were three names that figured in the first part of the 20th Century and they are Petter, Blackstone, and Lister. They are not unsung heroes, not to men and women who have done real jobs, they are famous. These are the men whose companies made the robust diesel engines that provided power throughout the land. Sir Robert Lister died in 1929 at the age of 84, and in the same year the first of Lister's own design of "CS" (cold start) diesel engine was made. With one cylinder and producing 9 horsepower (6.7 kW), it became known as the Lister 9-1. This was quickly followed by other engine sizes. Lister engines were traditionally painted a mid-range shade of Brunswick Green which continues to be used today by Lister Petter.  The CS is a slow-running (600 rpm) reliable engine, suitable for driving electric generators or water pumps. CS type engines gained a reputation for longevity and reliability throughout the Commonwealth.  Some CS engines ran practically continuously for decades in agricultural, industrial and electrical applications. By 1936 Lister was producing 600 engines across a range of 80 different sizes and types of diesel and petrol models, most of which were small at around 1.5 to 3 hp. These could be bought stand alone (many were used in the construction industry), or powering a complementary range of pumps, churns, cream separators, autotrucks, generating plant and sheep shearing equipment. This is the stuff of a real new revival of an Industrial Revolution, And this step is using robust, proven diesel power, a thermal efficient source of energy not the flimflam of giant windmills wasting materials or vast arrays of invaluable materials. No the diesel captures the explosive power of hydrocarbons to work with mankind. Rudolf Diesel understood thermodynamics and the theoretical and practical constraints on fuel efficiency. He knew that as much as 90% of the energy available in the fuel is wasted in a steam engine. What was true in the late 1890s is true now. By the way, are you aware that the wind generators have to have a diesel generator backup for the periods when the wind does not blow or is the wrong strength? It is an almost kafkaesque situation that is so typical of socialist planning.

7. More English.

The other requirement for this Industrial Revolution for the Third World is education and that too has to parallel the introduction of power generation by being direct, effective, and robust like the diesel generator. This is the three R's i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic, the fundamentals, the foundation. This simple dictum goes back to St Augustine of Hippo in the 5th Century and it is still true now. The most important of facet of this is reading and that has to be English. It is the first truly global language with about 500,000 words in its dictionary with over half million technical and scientific terms and more to be catalogued. German has a vocabulary of approximately 185,000 words and French less than 100.000. But undoubtedly it is the language of technology and industry. The power of English is to be found in looking at the Philippines with its population of over 100 million inhabiting well over seven thousand islands. This disparate burgeoning nation functions because it has English and Filipino as its official languages. The economy is heavily reliant upon remittances from overseas Filipinos , which surpass foreign direct investments as a source of foreign currency. Remittances peaked in 2010 at 10.4% of the national GDP, and were 8.6% in 2012 and in 2014, Philippines total worth of foreign exchange remittances was US$28 billion. This is reflective of the huge diaspora of approximately 12 million Filipinos. Who has not encountered them in the UK in the NHS? I too have encountered a great many at sea. All of this would not have been possible without competence in the English language.

Again if one wants to see the magnificence of English then look no farther than the giants that have emerged in Asia - India and China. India is a burgeoning economy and becoming an equal power in the arts. It is also a key member of the Commonwealth.[ And they are pretty good at cricket too.]  China will shortly have more people speaking English than the United Kingdom. The thing is this, when a person learns English they are bound to encounter Shakespeare and incorporate that into communication with all the nuances of emotions and other less tangible factors that count.

8. Oceanum nostrum

Mare Nostrum (Latin for "Our Sea") was a Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea. In the years following the unification of Italy in 1861, the term was revived by Italian nationalists who believed that Italy was the successor state to the Roman Empire. Oceanum nostrum is Latin for “Our Ocean”.  And now to the open sea for we are a maritime nation. Let me make it clear, I am not referring to the current quotation circulating attributed to Churchill - that is in error, it is Winston Churchill in a spat with that most irritating of 20tn Century Frenchmen - Charles de Gaulle. [Yup, the fellow that Canada helped enormously and was then repaid  with a kick in the teeth in 1967.]  However I would rather refer to another comment made by Churchill in 1930 - “But we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.”

9. The UK’s EEZ and related issues.

I am advocating returning to what we were, a maritime nation with brothers, sisters, and family  throughout the world. And the start point? The recovery of the United Kingdom’s EEZ. The United Kingdom's exclusive economic zone is the fifth largest in the world at 6,805,586 square km. It comprises the exclusive economic zones surrounding the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies, and the British Overseas Territories.

Map of the British Isles showing UK waters. The UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is in red, EU member states' EEZ in blue and other EEZs in green.

The Marine Stewardship Council is an international non-profit organisation established to address the problem of unsustainable fishing and safeguard seafood supplies for the future.

In the early 90s the impact of overfishing on the marine environment and on seafood supplies was of increasing concern to many around the world.  This concern was heightened by the collapse of Canada’s Grand Banks cod fishery in 1992 which led to over 35,000 fishers and plant workers from over 400 coastal communities losing their jobs. I was one of those men and one of the 18,000 who had to leave Newfoundland.

In the autumn of 1995, representatives of WWF and Unilever met to discuss what they could do to curb the problem. The resulting organisation needed to be independent of both the WWF and Unilever, hence the birth of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). A statement of intent was signed on 26 February, 1996 to announce the launch. Now MSC  has offices in the USA, Canada, South America, Asia, South Africa, Australia and throughout Europe.

In 2004  Brendan May, the former Chief Executive of the Marine Stewardship Council made the following statement:

“The European Common Fisheries Policy is a laughing stock in many parts of the world. People … don’t understand how Europe could get something that should be so simple so badly wrong. The extinction of its own – and the world’s – fisheries is being presided over by people who ought to know better.”

Britain’s sea fisheries have been protected and controlled by authority of Parliament for nearly 200 years. During that time fish stocks have risen and declined regularly with the combined effects of nature and man. However now stocks have been under severe pressure, and efficiencies realised from improving technology and the high demand for fish have led to overfishing, which has placed grave pressure on fish stocks.   In 1973 the UK became a member of the European Economic Community (EEC); subsequent agreement to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), signified compliance with Community legislation regarding vessel safety and fish stock regulations. The United Nations Law of the Sea states: “The exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines” but when the UK joined the EU its fishing rights were reduced by the EU to a mere 12 miles.

The European Union is the world's third-largest fishing power after China and Peru, with a fleet of vessels more than 97,000 strong. Europe wide, some 260,000 fishermen are directly employed in catching fish, generating more jobs in processing, packaging, marketing and transportation.

Greece has the largest fleet, with more than 20% of European Community vessels, followed by Italy (19%) and Spain (17.5%).

10. THE COMMON FISHERIES POLICY - THE BUSTED FLUSH

I quote from Debating Europe - “CFP was supposed to protect fish stocks without killing fishing communities. It has failed on both counts. Despite 42 years of the CFP, three out of four of the major commercial stocks are overfished, while the EU fleet is still at least double the sustainable level. Without change, 90 percent of stocks will reach unsustainable levels within 10 years. Quota hopping within the EU enables big commercial fisheries from countries like Spain and Denmark to grab the others stocks. The quota system favours big industrial trawlers while penalizing small, sustainable inshore fishing communities who are denied quotas.”

Rory Broomfield reported  -There was study in 2010 by the University of York and the Marine Conservation Society. It found that in England and Wales, 19th century fishermen were landing four times as much as today. And in 1937, at the peak of the UK's fishing industry, the catch was 14 times what it is now. This study  by Ruth Thurstan, Simon Brockington and Callum Roberts, illustrate that the UK fishing industry has been in dramatic decline, and that the UK's modern fishermen must work 17 times harder for the same catch as their sail-powered Victorian counterparts. It states, worryingly, that the availability of bottom-living fish having fallen by 94 percent.  

In contrast, Norway is now the world's second largest seafood exporter  – Europe's largest – and produces the equivalent of 25 million meals worldwide. Being able to control its seabed has allowed the Norwegians to produce over 600,000 tonnes of farmed fish and shellfish each year, employ 30,000 people in the industry – 14,000 of whom work in fishing – and effectively double the export value of fish to over £3.5 billion per year.

11. THE SPANISH ARMADA IN THE 21st CENTURY.

My own experience of the fishing industry was gained in Newfoundland for over a decade in the 1970s where I was Fleet Operations Manager. My boss, Gus Etchegary, the President of Fishery Products, gave an address to Convocation in June, 2008. This is an extract from that event, it is so relevant to the crisis we now face in the fishing industry of the United Kingdom :

“This series of events has had a major impact on the economic and social lives of the people in Newfoundland & Labrador since 1949.

When we entered Confederation, Ottawa, under the Terms of Union took over management responsibility of our fisheries and did so largely for the purpose of jurisdiction and the application of regulatory measures and enforcement regimes. Our fishery at that time was so large, important and valuable that it actually elevated Canada from 14th to 6th place as a world fish-exporting nation. Because of its size and diversity of this great resource, it attracted that newly-constructed fishing armada from war-torn Europe and by 1960, 11 years after Confederation, there were over a thousand trawlers and 50,000 men from Western European and East-Bloc countries were fishing off the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Grand Banks. Unfortunately for N&L, they were allowed to fish in an uncontrolled and unrestricted fashion from Labrador to the Grand Banks to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

It’s very important to understand here, most people don’t, that foreign overfishing, that we faced for over 40 years, the failure of NAFO and Canada’s failure to manage our fisheries affects N&L only it does not have any impact on the Maritime Provinces fishing industry. This accounts for the fact that we have been alone in our battle trying to get something done about overfishing a problem since 1978.

Extension of jurisdiction, in 1978, by Canada to two hundred miles came far too late and did not provide protection for migrating fish stocks since it did not encompass the total Continental Shelf. Renowned DFO scientist very well know here at MUN, Dr. Wilfred Templeman, and many others, had publicly warned the Trudeau Govt. in 1971 that our fisheries were already at that time in sharp decline and effective conservation measures were essential to halt the massacre. Ottawa paid no attention to these warnings and mismanagement of the diminishing resource continued for the next twenty years until it finally collapsed in 1992. Then the Federal Govt. announced a two-year moratorium to give the resource a rest, but it applied only to Canadian fishermen with foreign fishing nations continuing their destructive fishing practices on the Grand Banks by the way, those destructive practices are as prevalent today as then and don’t let DFO’s propaganda, through its Communication Branch, try to convince you otherwise.”

12.The Rape of the Oceans.

Greenpeace produced a report in 2010, for me this report is plus c'est la même chose because you will note that Gus Etchegary refers to an “armada” in his speech - the majority of the vessels that he was referring to were Spanish trawlers. Here is an extract from that report :

Despite its many reforms, the CFP has failed to ensure sustainable and profitable fisheries. This is largely the result of political decision-making that favours the short-term, economic interests of the fishing industry over science-based governance and sustainability. It is also a consequence of the fact that EU governments have failed to meet agreed objectives for the protection of marine species and habitats and the establishment of a network of marine reserves. Responsible are the governments of the 27 EU states. The EU’s most dominant fishing nation, Spain, is also one of the most politically powerful in terms of influencing fisheries decisions. Spain’s government oversees a fishing industry that:

■ Controls the largest fishing fleet in the EU in terms of so-called gross tonnage (GT) - a quarter of the EU total, more than twice the size of the entire UK fleet, which is the second largest fleet in the EU, three times the Dutch and more than 10 times the Swedish fleet.

■ Receives almost 50% of the EU’s fisheries subsidies, four times more than the next largest recipient, Italy, five times more than France and almost 10 times more than the subsidies that the UK received.

■ Uses around a quarter of its subsidies to grow and modernise its fleet, which in terms of vessel construction is three times more than all other countries combined.

■ Includes a number of notorious (pirate) fishing vessels, some of which fished in prohibited areas, hid catch information and targeted protected fish species.

■ Operates some of the largest and most powerful vessels in the world – Spain’s 12 largest vessels have a combined gross tonnage that is larger than that of the entire Swedish fishing fleet. If you were to line up all Spanish fishing vessels, bow to stern, they would stretch for a distance of 123 kilometres. Their reach and destructive impact, however, is global. This report illustrates the scale and impact of the Spanish fleet and reveals that the development of excessive and destructive fishing practices are in fact politically and financially supported by the Spanish government.

14. THE LOOMING CRISIS.

In general, people in developing countries and especially those in coastal areas are much more dependent on fish as a staple food than those in the developed world so Spain’s assault on West African fish stocks is criminal. I have received anecdotal reports from Ghana that this is indeed happening. The EU has done nothing about it and, in fact, has had the temerity to penalise some Third World countries for letting it happen!

“EU warns Kiribati, Sierra Leone and Trinidad & Tobago with yellow cards as they risk being uncooperative in the fight against illegal fishing. Sri Lanka reforms its fisheries system and is delisted.”

Kiribati is an archipelagic nation comprising 33 islands with a total land area of only 810 sq. km. but with a surrounding EEZ of about 3.5 million sq. km that includes some of the most productive tuna fishing grounds in the Pacific. All the islands are of coralline origin and are surrounded by fringing or barrier coral reefs. The country is divided into three widely separated island groups - the Gilbert Group in the west, the Phoenix Group in the centre, and the Line Islands in the east - each surrounded by their own discrete portion of the EEZ. Several islands in the Line and Phoenix groups are uninhabited. The distance between the eastern and western extremes of the EEZ is over 4 500 km. What is it going to do - call out its navy?

So the EU puts a penalty [cost]  on these poor nations for letting illegal fishing to happen and then gives more money to Spain [the leading offender] to do it again.

It is obscene - it is like rape taking place and then the rapist demanding money for the evil crime.

The reformed EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) that entered into force in 2014  was supposed to lay the foundations that could eventually lead to sustainable management of fish stocks in Europe. The CFP aims to restore and maintain populations above levels capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield. The MSY exploitation rate is to be achieved by 2015 where possible and by 2020 at the latest for all stocks. Following scientific advice is essential to achieving this goal. But unfortunately this will not be the case in 2015 because fishing limits have been set above scientific advice for several fish stocks. So we are heading for a East Coast Canadian scenario - an ecological disaster - unless fishing effort conforms to the advice given by scientists.

• It will be apparent to everyone that it would be completely wrong for any Government to allow the current situation in the Fishing Industry to continue i.e death and destruction of fisherfolk, fishing vessels, the demise of communities in rural areas of the United Kingdom.
• It would be completely wrong for any Government to allow the collapse of any resource to the point of extinction. It would be completely wrong for any Government to close its eyes to rape of the fishing resources of African nations and other Third World countries throughout the World.
• The EU has had countless opportunities to address the latter two points but failed miserably and even compounded the issues by funding those causing the problems.

15. Will the Commonwealth welcome the United Kingdom?

If you listen to the Economist, the Guardian, and all the prophets of doom that call themselves the intelligentsia of this land, then to put any stock in gaining support from the Commonwealth if we leave the EU is a lost cause. The Economist headline reads -“The ultimate Eurosceptic fantasy: putting faith in the Commonwealth.” Actually that is a distortion of the truth, quite a few Commonwealth nations are really angry with the EU, and since  we have been a member since 1973 they tar as with the same brush - imperialist bullies.

Consider the following article:

Tamil Guardian - October 2014

The European Commission announced a ban on imports of fisheries products from Sri Lanka, its second biggest importer in the sector, in order to "tackle the commercial benefits stemming from illegal fishing”.

Sri Lanka received a “yellow card”, a stern warning, in November 2012, as the country was not complying with international rules on illegal fishing and had inadequate control systems.

European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Maria Damanaki said that not much had changed since then, despite intense dialogue.

“The same problems are still there and are even getting worse. Sri Lanka is now authorizing huge vessels to fish in the Indian Ocean without marine GPS (VMS). This renders control totally impossible.”

“Sri Lanka is the second biggest exporter of fresh and chilled swordfish and tuna to the EU (74 million € of imports in 2013). In those circumstances we cannot tolerate not to know whether the fish they import into the EU was caught sustainably or not. EU citizens have the right to know what lands on their plate.”

“So today, the Commission goes to the next level: we are formally identifying Sri Lanka in the fight against illegal fishing. Fisheries products caught by vessels flagged in Sri Lanka will not be able to enter the EU market after three months' time from now. The Council will, by that time, have the possibility to confirm and extend the depth and scope of the trade measures.”

Sri Lanka last year claimed  the EU was happy about the measures it had taken.

Now fortunately Sri Lanka has a form of health care system and free education so the loss of revenue emanating from this action would not be as serious as say one of the West African nations. But, and it is a big but, this is very onerous to Sri Lanka and its effects would be the poor workers -those who can ill afford it. It is tantamount to bullying. You know Greenpeace, the MSC, and Canadian sources have consistently identified Spain and France as main offenders in these illegal operations since the 1960’s and nothing has been done. Sierra Leone and Kiribati have been issued with yellow cards as I stated above. Thoughtless, bureaucratic, incompetence, are all applicable adjectives that come to mind however when those actions are found to persist that there is one really nasty conclusion to be drawn and that is that the Commissioners consistently bow to the pressure exerted by Spain.

I have spoken on fishing, the industry that I know and understand, but it is my understanding that the EU and its agriculture policy is equally savage on Africa. The Guardian said this in 2011 “Proposals for reform of the EU common agricultural policy (CAP) will do little to reduce huge subsidies that hurt farmers in developing countries, according to trade campaigners.”

And the result ? The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)  an independent non-profit organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland.

“In general, with the possible exception of the sugar market, the changes agreed to the future CAP are not likely to have major implications for Africa (or, indeed, other third countries). Successive reforms have greatly reduced its trade-distorting impacts. High tariffs continue to block third-country imports, but with few exceptions (beef and sugar), EU farm prices are now close to world market levels. In any case, except for some sensitive products from South Africa, sub-Sahara African (SSA) agricultural exports enjoy duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market under the Everything but Arms (EBA) preferential agreement, interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) or (for South Africa) the Trade Development  and Cooperation  Agreement.  (Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo and Gabon receive preferences under the Generalized System of Preferences, but are not significant agricultural exporters to the EU.)”

And now for an interesting Canadian view :

NATIONAL POST

Conrad Black  | May 21, 2016

“Given British disillusionment with Europe and the end of American reliability as we knew it from the time of Roosevelt to the arrival of Obama, Canada could play a role in leading the development of an alternative bloc, though one associated with both the European Union and the United States. The U.K., the old dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and Singapore and India, as an economic group, would be as great as China, and probably, with recent developments in China and the settling in of the Thatcherite Modi government in India, would grow as quickly. In foreign and strategic policy terms, it would have, or at least could soon have, the second greatest combined naval and air force of any state or grouping, after the U.S. The member-states could broadly co-operate to whatever extent the constituent member states could comfortably agree. It would be at least as unitary a force as the present Europe of 27 states from Bulgaria and Estonia to Portugal.”

You know I think that the Commonwealth would welcome us - make no mistake.

CONCLUSION

I have written this on the basis of facts and experience.

I believe that we should leave this union because it prevents the United Kingdom from being a true maritime nation and sharing in the tasks of making the world a better place by fulfilling the Charter of the Commonwealth.

I do not wish to be part of the United States of Europe, I belong to the Commonwealth and the oceans.

Captain Mike Hogan.