@shadowen Said
Do I automatically trust pollies or bureaucrats? Hell no.
Anyway...
Civil servants are answerable to their elected ministers. Their role is to:
* offer advice
* help prepare and draft new legislation under direction from the Government and
* to help the Government run the country according to the legislation passed by Parliament.
So civil servants do effectively makes promises. For example they effectively promise to carry out the expressed will of the government of the day.
That's an...interesting view of the role of civil servants in a democracy. I'm not necessarily saying that all the things you list aren't part of being a civil servant, but to then argue that the promises of the politicians, which they have no control over whatsoever, are then their responsibility is a bit of a stretch IMO.
What you're basically arguing here is that if the politicians promise something unreasonable or unfeasible, the civil servants are at least partly to blame.
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I never said to have faith in TM and her team. I have explained many times in the past why i thought they were doing such a bad job at negotiating with the EU and getting Brexit done as per the expressed wishes of the people.
I never said that you said to have faith in TM and her team. What I said is that you said to have faith in general. I got the impression that you were talking about the overall process in itself.
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No I don't as you can make as many preparations as you like but you won't know for certain whether or not you effectively covered every possible contingency until after the fact.
When people normally say 'their preparations are complete', I was of the understanding that it meant that they are done preparing and do not plan to do more of it. Not that they are omniscient and have planned for every possible contingency. If the Government is done preparing then fine, but they have, to my knowledge, made no indication that they are, and thus are not done with all the preparation they would like to do.
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Nope. I have never said nor implied that the French fishermen are morons. Unlike you they understand the conditions of the contracts they signed with their national government.
Of course, which is why French Fishermen are incensed over their potential lack of access to UK waters. Clearly all of this fighting over fishing very clearly shows that both sides understood the 'conditions of the contracts' the same way.
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I know you don't understand how the CFP works. In this instance you seem to be of the opinion that French fishermen sign contracts with the UK government if they are fishing in UK waters. They don't. That's not how it works. That's not how the CFP has ever worked.
No, I never said that's how it works. I simply said that I don't know how it works and can find no source, even from pro-Brexit sites, on how it works, so your assertion that it works a specific way
without evidence is suspect.
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Only it is here or there as 'close proximity' was an important part of your original statement.
Ok so we can obviously add not understanding the cod wars to not understanding the CFP. The three cod wars all took part BEFORE the UN's laws of the sea decreed that coastal states had exclusive rights to waters up to 200 miles from their shore. During the cod wars there was no internationally recognised EEZ. So the British fishermen were NOT violating Iceland's INTERNATIONALLY recognised waters.
During the course of the three cod wars Iceland kept on expanding her claims to territorial waters. They did this without any international agreement being in existence. The UK didn't recognise Iceland's ever expanding EEZ. Nor did almost all European countries.
The tensions caused by the cod wars did however play a major part in the UN finally deciding to specify the EEZ of coastal states. As stated, this was done AFTER the last of the cod wars.
I don't recall ever saying that Iceland's borders were internationally recognized? As you point out the UN didn't weigh in on international water territory disputes at this time, and I don't remember saying anything differently.
Why does whether or not Iceland's water borders were internationally recognized before the cod wars matter at all here?
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Who says an increase in illegal fishing in UK waters would be inevitable? Certainly the UK is not, and would not be okay with any illegal fishing in her waters.
So are you saying that all of the bad blood being accumulated between EU fishermen and UK fishermen at the moment won't result in an increase in poaching?
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In all three cod wars it was NATO and NOT the EEC/EC (now EU) who acted as mediator btw Iceland and the UK. In reality NATO forced the UK to accept Iceland's conditions. Each of the three cod wars resulted in an undeniable victory for Iceland.
And what about the access agreements agreed upon between the two parties? If NATO 'forced' the UK to accept Iceland's conditions, why were there any access agreements between the two to begin with in the negotiations? Why, for instance, does the UK get access for a specified number of trawlers within Iceland EEZ if the UK were forced to accept everything?
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Big differences. During the cod wars British fishermen for example were operating in waters that were claimed by Iceland but NOT internationally recognised as such. At the time the UN's Law of the Sea didnt exist. That is no longer the case.
I don't understand how that matters in the slightest. I'm literally drawing a blank on why that matters here.
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The RN will only be used to protect the UK's territorial waters if there is a significant number of foreign vessels illegally fishing in her internationally recognised EEZ. Again, i know you love to try and compare the cod wars with the UK exercising control over her internationally defined and recognised EEZ but the two situations are just different.
And who gets to decide what is considered a significant number of foreign vessels?