When I went to work in the European Parliament in the early eighties, I learnt that the Burns Night Common Policy of 1983 was designed to protect the job descriptions of Celtic MEPs as full time representatives of our own peoples, as full time representatives of our own biological species and as equal partners in the European dream.
Because the Brits tried to amend the policy’s fundamental founding principle and Spain’s entry terms on fisheries under qualified majority voting, Celtic MEPs were miraculously transformed into something other than full time representatives of our own peoples, into something other than full time representatives of our own biological species and into a new breed of underdogs in European Society: the under-dogfish.
They were transformed by British incompetence into part time representatives of the people and part time defenders of the fish that actually swam without a single vote being cast by fish in Scotland or Northern Ireland.
We went from having one MEP in the agriculture and fisheries Committee and seven MEPs in the other 14 Committees at the start of the Parliament of 1989-1994 to having four MEPs in a biased and incompetent fish committee, one MEP in the Agriculture committee and only two MEPs in the other 19 Committees in the Parliament of 2004-2009.
The Lisbon Treaty couldn’t have been binding on me because I am not a part time person and a part time common fish and my mother wasn’t a mermaid! If you know that your mother isn’t or wasn’t a mermaid and if you don’t wear fins, gills, scales or a fish tail, you’ll know why the Lisbon Treaty couldn’t have been binding on you.
I know that I had a “Tam o’ Shanter nightmare of a ride” witnessing the grotesquely perverse and ridiculous consequences for Celtic voters of the implosion of the Burns Night Policy within the biased and incompetent European Parliament.
And I know that the most important provision of old Community fish law was supposed to prevent us from ending up in our current predicament and to be resurrected if we did. It was found in a “golden ring” of Community law that was presented in the most important first section of the most important first fish(eries chapter) to be caught in the ‘85 Act of Accession and it was deliberately intended to put us Celts in mind of our ancient miracles of the fish that never swam!
If I were in Humza Yousaf’s shoes, I would impose a moratorium on all English and continental fishing in our waters pending a unanimous vote in the Council of Ministers on the possibilities and conditions of future access to our fishing zones and to the resources thereof that meets with the approval of the Scottish authorities.
Having incompetently relied on qualified majority voting to subvert, corrupt, circumvent and abandon the most important provision of old Community fish law and having incompetently forced us Celts to effectively share our MEPs with a lower life form than man, Westminster Governments have forfeited the right to pretend that they can be trusted to safely negotiate our vital national interests on our behalf.
British politicians seemed to think that the most important provision of old Community fish law had more to do with the fishing rights of the Canary Islanders who didn’t participate in the CFP than it had to do with the human and electoral rights of the Celts who did. They chucked the golden ring of Community law into the River Clyde and destroyed the Burns Night Policy which protected the job descriptions of Celtic MEPs as full time representatives of our own peoples, as full time representatives of our own biological species and as equal partners in the European dream. That’s how we ended up with part time defenders of the fish that actually swam.
By all of the power vested in me as a Scot who knows that he’s not a part time common fish, I command Humza Yousaf to resurrect Article 155.3 of the ‘85 Act of Accession!