Big Shots, But Not Fishermen

Ronald Reagan said that there are no eight words more terrifying than “I am from the Government and I am here to help.” This is being verified on their own scales by fishermen in the United Kingdom, who have suddenly found themselves with a directive that prohibits them from going to sea to fish if their body mass is more than 35 and they do not receive a medical certificate that establishes that they are They are in perfect physical shape.

Fatophobia has reached the world of fishing. “It is for the good of the workers in the sector, for their safety and for those who work alongside them,” says the Government, which, despite Brexit and after a five-year moratorium, has applied the World Organization Convention of Labor about the requirements for one or one to be able to earn a living (and perhaps risk it) going out with a boat in search of lobsters, hake, cod or whatever.

The British fishing industry has been losing weight for three decades and Brexit has made things worse

The rule will apply from next November, and fishermen from all over the country have gone on a diet and signed up for gyms, they are seen running with their tongues out on the roads of coastal cities such as Whitby, in North Yorkshire, the capital world of fish and chips . Others have rebelled and, instead of lifting weights, eating a few lettuce leaves and driving miles like crazy, they have gone with their kilos on their shoulders to labor law firms shouting “discrimination!”.

The political climate is not conducive to the cause of overweight fishermen (or indeed anyone), because a report has just determined (true or not) that fat people (if the word can be used without offense) cost healthcare public twice as much as those who do not blow up the needles of the scales, due to heart problems and diabetes that doctors (true false) attribute to excess kilos. With state medicine on the verge of collapse, eight million Britons on the waiting list for operations and empty coffers, the oven is not for buns and no doctor who lends himself issues a certificate of good health just like that. Not even in exchange for some smoked herring, some monkfish medallions or a box of chocolates, because what doesn’t kill you makes you fatter!

“Even if we have a few extra kilos (who isn’t!), we fishermen are in good shape, otherwise we couldn’t do our job,” says Mark Wheeler, 56, who has been earning his living at sea for two decades and has never had an accident-. Life is about it, and we all want to return home for dinner at the end of the day. The new regulations are clearly discriminatory. There is no evidence that being overweight puts safety at risk. May it be applied to officials who spend hours sitting in their chairs, lest they fall out of them! The problem is the bureaucrats, who think they know everything”.

British fishermen are an aging workforce, with an average age of over fifty, many of whom neither want nor feel able to lose weight because the government requires them to. Many say that before going on a diet they will retire and join the 700,000 British workers who have stopped working since the pandemic and further reduced the country’s productivity (one of the lowest in Europe). “You have to have a cheek to accuse us of endangering the lives of others by having a bit of a tummy, when if you have a heart attack and call an ambulance, it takes hours to show up, surely after you’ve already died! Now that is criminal”, asserts Peter Pearson, who almost every day of the year goes out with his boat to look for sole, and whatever he catches.

The one that has been increasingly rickety for some time is the fishing industry in this country, which only constitutes 0.03% of the country’s economy and employs 11,000 people (and another 18,000 indirectly). In the last thirty years it has been reduced by half, and the landscape with a fish and chips in every corner is a thing of a romantic past that no longer exists. The industry used to blame the EU and its quotas and eagerly fell into the arms of Brexit, but things have gotten even worse. Although the British can fish more in their territorial waters, the positive impact has been more than offset by trade barriers, tariffs, a new VAT, the cost of gasoline and reduced exports.

“Leave us alone, the problem is the big shots of the Government and not the big fishermen!” That is the battle cry when going out to sea.