Talk:Fish for finance

Sensationalist speculation?
I'm a bit concerned that undue weight is being given to the sensationalist reporting of the opinions of a couple of non-notable individuals in the "Violence and civil unrest" section, especially with it not being adequately attributed there and with it being mentioned in the lead. I removed it from the lead, but restored it. -- DeFacto (talk). 19:56, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I moved the three cites that support this up. I differ with you both on the notability of one of those quoted (Barrie Deas seems to be one of the top fishing lobbyists in Britain; I could argue that he's notable on that basis whether or not we presently have an article about him, and he has given evidence before Parliament and been widely quoted on fishing after Brexit) and whether that notability matters (obviously, in the course of writing articles, especially long ones, we're going to have to quote the opinions of people who might not themselves be notable; there is AFAIK no requirement that everything in an article be sourced to the statements of a notable person). In fact, in this case I would take the informed speculation of some fishing industry lobbyists, especially against the background of the Cod and Scallop wars (the latter flaring up as recently as two years ago) as more significant than what some notable political commentator or politician might say. Also, on this subject, I do not know why we have to have such a detailed summary of the Internal Market Bill's position in the intro, particularly since this is not the article about the bill. I think that per summary style it is enough to mention that it is still not a dead issue, and leave how it has gotten that way to the appropriate place, since the important issue is that it's a dealbreaker for the EU. Daniel Case (talk) 06:37, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , it's the weight given to these minority personal opinions that I'm concerned about. Sure fishing industry lobbyists, especially if from one side of a trade dispute, will give an 'informed' opinion, but we must remember that is all it is, basically a biased opinion, and, if we decide to keep it, we must fully attribute it and explain the holder's role, so that readers can weigh it up for themselves, and we probably need to balance it with alternate views from those from the other side of the dispute and from those who are informed and neutral.
 * If there is anyone saying in a reliable source that they think violence between UK and EU fishermen in the event of no deal after the end of this year is a remote unlikelihood, I haven't found them, and I have looked a lot more sources than I actually used. As I think I should write an essay about, just as Wikipedia is not the real world, the real world is not Wikipedia and is under no obligation to neatly accord with our editorial policies. Daniel Case (talk) 17:42, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * As for scallop 'wars'; weren't they just two brief angry confrontations - one on a day in 2012 and the other on a day in 2018 - when a few French fishermen tried to illegally interfere with some British fishermen working legally? The press, particularly the British, enjoy bigging-up and comically sensationalising and caricaturing any cross-Channel trade disputes involving the French, and headlines will inevitably use the word "war" in them. I think that if we refer to those confrontations in this article we should use neutral language - such as 'dispute' or 'confrontation' and not copy the most egregious media headlines.
 * I made a point of scarequoting these commonly-used terms in the article for that reason. I think if we refer to the "Scallop War" using our article title across all other articles (something there is no policy requiring) readers might be confused, and while of course we could say "just click the link" one of the regular themes of the MOS is that we must be mindful of readers who for whatever reason cannot follow the link (i.e., reading on hard copy). (I note also that the Francophone Wikipedia has no problem basically calling it that). Daniel Case (talk) 17:42, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we need to apply summary style to all the paragraphs of the lead, there is plenty of other content there which is superfluous to the role of the lead. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:13, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Accuracy of 'EU membership era' section
The UK joined the European Communities on 1 January 1973, not as a result of a 1975 referendum as asserted in the article. This changes the whole premise of the discussion. The UK joined the EC during the 2nd "Cod War", and nearly 3 years before the start of the 3rd. And as far as I know, the 200-mile zone continued to exist until sometime in the 2010s. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:54, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Reworded to remove reference to the referendum. As the article makes clear, while Britain may have stated an intent to declare an EEZ (which can only reach the full 200 miles off the west coast of Scotland in any event), it used different limits depending on what they applied to (i.e., fishing had one set, oil exploration another, and so forth). At the end of the section, the article makes clear that the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 required the government to formally declare a full, standard EEZ for everything. That's probably what you're thinking of. Daniel Case (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Addendum: OK, I went back to my sources and found clarifying material and added it to the article. Parliament did create an exclusive fishing zone that is coterminous with Britain's current EEZ; since Britain has now formally declared an EEZ that legislation is sort of superfluous. Daniel Case (talk) 15:19, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , ok, that seems better now, so I've removed the tag. -- DeFacto (talk). 18:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

UK? Britain?
I can understand the desire for consistent usage even where I think most readers would understand the writer's attempt to spare the reader the monotony of one term or other being banged repeatedly into their skulls and recognize "UK" and "Britain" as being more or less synonymous for the purposes of this article.

However ... I do think that when we discuss the EEZ we ought to consider using "Britain" to refer to that portion of the EEZ bordering on EU member states' EEZs ... the UK EEZ, after all, includes the waters around most of the overseas territories, where there isn't really going to be an issue with French or Belgian boats. Daniel Case (talk) 19:27, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , would you talk about "America" or "the U.S." if the article was about US fishing? How would you avoid repetition of "the Netherlands" if it was about fishing deals relating to the Netherlands? -- DeFacto (talk). 19:44, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Does the Netherlands claim the waters around Aruba, say, as part of its EEZ? I'd try to rephrase, as I've been doing. How does "the waters around the island of Great Britain" sound? Wordy but ... unambigous. Daniel Case (talk) 20:51, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , Great Britain doesn't include the fourth country of the UK, Northern Ireland, so is incorrect. -- DeFacto (talk). 21:27, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "the waters around Great Britain and Northern Ireland", then. Daniel Case (talk) 22:21, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Terminology confusion: "UK", "EU", "continent" and "Europe"
Only about half of the countries on the continent of Europe are also members of the EU. We must also remember that the UK is a country on the continent of Europe too, and remains there, even after leaving the EU.

So we need to try to clearly distinguish what we mean in phrases like:
 * "Ideally the City wishes to maintain the level of access to European markets it has enjoyed during the UK's membership in the EU" - is that just EU member markets, or markets in all of Europe.
 * Daniel Case (talk) 17:12, 9 October 2020 (UTC)


 * "Popular with continental consumers" - does that include the British, or is it all of Europe (including those countries not in the EU) but excluding the UK? Or is it just EU consumers?
 * It's probably fairest to say that the fish abundant in British waters but not on British plates are most popular in the "Coastal Eight"—the EU countries whose fishing fleets are currently allowed to fish that portion of the UK EEZ around Great Britain and Northern Ireland—but not as much in the EU countries with only Baltic, Black Sea or Mediterranean coastline, to say nothing of Austria and Hungary, the two landlocked members. And as for that "Coastal Eight", maybe it should really be seven ... I'm not sure the Irish have any greater taste for pollock and plaice than the British. I'm sure statistics on fish consumption by species in each current EU state are available, but I couldn't find them and didn't feel it necessary to look. Daniel Case (talk) 17:07, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * by clarifying it to "France and Spain", which is more specific and supported by the article. Daniel Case (talk) 17:12, 9 October 2020 (UTC)


 * "In 2017 more than twice as many workers in the City were European-born than on average for the UK" - does European-born include those born in the UK?
 * "natives of non-UK EU member states"". Daniel Case (talk) 17:17, 9 October 2020 (UTC)


 * "Meanwhile, British and European negotiators both agreed" - is it "British and negotiators from the rest of Europe" or "British and EU negotiators"?
 * "negotiators on both sides" Daniel Case (talk) 17:17, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

In the UK, the rest of Europe in generally termed "mainland Europe" and just the EU countries are "EU member states".-- DeFacto (talk). 07:26, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. We really need to have something in the MOS on this, since anyone reading sources on this finds a lot of these terms just casually tossed around interchangeably. Daniel Case (talk) 16:57, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Crystal balls
The lead currently states "Fish for finance[1][2][3] is a possible trade-off that may be considered ..." This seems to be a massive breach of WP:CRYSTAL. The negotiations are naturally involving all the industry and trade sectors that are important to the parties but speculation of this sort seems quite improper for an encyclopedia as it's contrary to WP:CRYSTAL; WP:NOTNEWS; WP:SOAP; WP:SYN. As we'll find out soon enough what deal is done or not done, the page and its DYK hook comes across as a form of lobbying. Per WP:OVERKILL, the use of multiple citations for the lead phrase is a tell-tale sign that it's fishy. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:28, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's "possible" in the sense that Britain could at least theoretically eat its cake and have it too by getting its way on both issues: a huge increase in catch allowances for British fishermen and continued access to financial markets in the EU on almost the same terms as now. IMO not so qualifying it as "possible" at this point would be POV as it would imply that the UK has no choice (which it probably doesn't, but as you said the negotiations are ongoing (at least for now)). The three cites in the lede are there just because I have had too much experience with editors who want proof that an article that a common phrase used as an article title is not a neologism or (worse) protologism, and aren't impressed with a single source using said term. The point is simply to establish the use of the phrase. Daniel Case (talk) 17:29, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Phrases that have more substantial notability and currency do not need such support. When one searches Google Books for the phrase, one doesn't find much and it's mainly about the transition of Iceland's economy from fishing to finance before the crash of 2008.  It appears that there was a brief flash of usage in the press around January 2020 arising from comments by negotiators.  But if you look at more recent coverage such as this, we see that fishing is still an issue but the other big one is now state aid, not the finance industry.  The hypothetical trade-off seems to have been discussed and it hasn't happened.  The negotiations have moved on but the topic hasn't.  It's using the future tense for a brief might-have-been which is now in the past.  It should be folded into a more general history of the talks which is best written when they are actually completed. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:47, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "Phrases that have more substantial notability and currency do not need such support." That hasn't worked with those editors in the past. And the concept is what's notable ... plenty of sources discussing the talks mention this and link the two but do not use those exact words. Finance isn't as front and center an issue as fishing, lately anyway, because everyone on both sides understands that industry can take care of itself and adapt by moving, whereas fishermen don't have that option (also why the financial industry hasn't lobbied so hard for its own interests in the trade talks so far). But for the EU it's leverage on the UK since it's the mirror image of the fishing situation. Daniel Case (talk) 18:14, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Trade negotiation between the UK and the EU with Fish for finance
The hypothetical trade-off is being given undue weight. There was some brief talk of it around Jan 2020 but it has not lasted -- there is no recent coverage. The main article about the trade negotiation has a section about the fisheries issue. It mentions some other possible trade-offs and that's the best place for a balanced treatment in context. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:22, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Just because there has been more contention over fisheries lately than finance doesn't mean the latter issue is resolved, or not an issue ... it's currently at an impasse, and was described as a major issue by the Financial Times as recently as a couple of weeks ago. The main reason fishing is getting so much attention now is that time is running out to reach a deal on an area where both sides have basically taken up irreconcilable positions, and the EU (or at least the Coastal Eight) insists that without a fishing deal (i.e., one that allows their boats continued access to British waters) there is no deal on anything else—not finance, not state aid, not level playing field (an issue which actually has a great deal to do with finance). Daniel Case (talk) 18:42, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Addendum: Oh, look! What did Reuters report just this very day?:"The EU has warned, however, it will not leave fishing rights to be settled last and they must be part of a wider deal together with issues like financial services where London has a weaker hand." Seems like they didn't get the memo that this was supposed to be a dead issue. Daniel Case (talk) 18:50, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That item doesn't say "fish for finance". It says "it will not leave fishing rights to be settled last and they must be part of a wider deal together with issues like..".  A wider deal means a bundle not a specific one-for-one swap.  The trouble with this article is that it is focussed too narrowly on a hypothetical bit of horse-trading and so is not balanced with the other issues mentioned like dispute resolution and fair competition which, with fisheries, are listed as the three contentious issues.
 * And the main outcome of the summit seems to be that the time for negotiation has been extended. It's the usual brinkmanship in which the parties cling to their red lines until the end.
 * Andrew🐉(talk) 19:08, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: I think that the Fish for finance article was originally split from Trade negotiation between the UK and the EU because it was taking up a disproportionate share of the article. Its economic significance is not much more that a rounding error, who would have thought that it would be immovable object in the end? [apart from Gove, whose hobby horse it is, obviously]. But today, see Brexit: UK 'must not lose jobs over fish in trade talks' (BBC Wales), Macron insists there is no margin for negotiation over French fishing rights (Gurdian, subsidiary headline).--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:01, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The topic was covered in multiple reliable secondary sources so it's notable. I don't think a merge would do this topic justice; fish and finance remain key topics in the negotiations and a potential trade-off. There is an article on the whole trade negotiations which can cover everything in balance, including dispute resolution and fair competition, but Wikipedia allows sub-topics to be covered in detail in a standalone article. Whizz40 (talk) 20:17, 15 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I think a full merge is unrealistic as both articles are very long. This one could do with a prune to remove the WP:FORKed content, making it clearly subsidiary to the main Negotiations article (from which it was hived off a few months ago as taking up a disproportionate amount of space for an issue that, in economic terms, is small change. So who would have expected Brexit: UK 'must not lose jobs over fish in trade talks' (BBC Wales) or Macron insists there is no margin for negotiation over French fishing rights (Guardian, secondary headline) today?). This one is going to run and run.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:45, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't hive it off from the main negotiations article ... I started it in draft space back in, yes, March, and only moved it to main space a couple of weeks ago when I felt it was good enough. So nothing's really a fork. I suppose if the main negotiations article had dealt with this in a more substantial way, this wouldn't be so long. Daniel Case (talk) 21:00, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Part of my concern with the article is that it's so huge. I've added a section sizes template above to assist in understanding this.  It goes on at great length about the history and potential impacts of Brexit on the fishing and finance industries when these are really distinct and separate topics.  The ostensible topic here is a hypothetical quid pro quo but it's being used as a coatrack for all this other stuff.  Here's some numbers which show the disproportionate weight being given to this detail of the negotiations


 * With about four times the prose, the fish for finance article gives the impression that the negotiators talk about little else but the negotiation article and press coverage indicate that there are plenty of other hot issues.
 * Andrew🐉(talk) 21:41, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't recall the precise sequence of events so when I say "hived off", that doesn't have to mean a wp: split. There was a consensus at the talk page of the main article that the amount of space being devoted to fishing was wp:undue and it was pruned heavily. So presumably that means you started again in another article? Well for sure we don't want all that clutter back in the main article so, on that basis, I would certainly oppose a merge. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:41, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The discussion at the main negotiation article seems to have been quite limited – Too much weight on the "Fisheries issue" – and was focussed on fisheries rather than the slogan of "Fish for finance". The table above shows that we have massive bloat here.  The extraneous content should be split between several articles such as Fishing industry in England and  Financial services in the United Kingdom, which are currently stubs, while the "Fish for finance" title should redirect to the fisheries section in the negotiation article, where it only merits a paragraph, at most. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:16, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a rather different proposal but a rather more sensible and realistically more doable one. I support this idea. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:53, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * There is a lot of very good quality content in this article that would be worthwhile capturing in those and other articles. Whizz40 (talk) 13:16, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I had looked all those articles while creating this one and was rather unimpressed by how little, it seemed, anyone cared. I don't think the fact that this article is so much longer necessarily means it's bloated; rather I take it that the other articles have not been properly researched and written (I mean, really ... no article at all on Fishing in the European Union? Really?) It basically trashes a lot of months of work I put in, but if it improves the other articles so much the better, since I have gotten my DYK out of it (In fact, I had already more or less copied the section on the possibility of the closure of UK waters leading to clashes on the loughs at the ends of the border to the appropriate article. Fishing industry in Scotland is actually a little biased IMO in favor of the viewpoint that the CFP is responsible for the difficulties its subject has faced; an infusion of content from this article would help move it closer to NPOV. Daniel Case (talk) 15:24, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Addendum: I think there's also a need for History of the fishing industry in the United Kingdom, some of which could be based on content in this article. Daniel Case (talk) 15:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I should confirm formally what I have written as a comment above: I strongly oppose a merge. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:12, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I heard a debate on BBC Radio today. This addressed the fishing issue but the rival industry with which it was compared was motor vehicles, not finance.  This further demonstrates that "fish for finance" is being given undue weight.  I note also that just about nobody is reading the article.  The readership is a fraction of that for the trade negotiation page and they are both tiny when compared with the main Brexit article.  Daniel Case complains about his "months of work".  It's puzzling that one should work so hard on such an emphemeral topic. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:27, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * So you heard one debate on the radio ... well, that just about settles it then! Meanwhile I see the thrust of this article reiterated in Philip Aldrick's Times column from last month, in which he basically says the government has chosen fish over finance, and more recently this piece from The Banker, with a non-passing, non-trivial discussion of the subject that observes: "Anyone apart from a Brexiteer must therefore be mystified as to why fish not finance is centre stage in the current very tortuous Brexit trade negotiations." "It's puzzling that one should work so hard on such an emphemeral topic." First, it's ephemeral. Second, I would be careful that I'm not living in a glass house before I throw that particular stone. Third, if people didn't show that level of interest in ephemeral or peripheral topics, Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is. Daniel Case (talk) 18:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Well I for one would certainly not make light of this topic. All the signs are that the HMG are heading for no-deal, they've worked out that the only deal possible is so thin that it won't be worth the grief. So they will want someone else to blame - "EU intransigence" in general or France in particular - and they need a cause celébre to crystallise it around.  Fishing is the obvious candidate: "Our fish" (!),  "our waters", Cod War II,  "our island nation", send out the Navy to see them off like Iceland did, and a bit of Churchillian [well, Evening Standard"], "Very well then, alone!" (via Reddit).
 * So when the ardour cools in a few months time, I can see a great deal of interest in this article. It is valid on its own merits, it just doesn't belong bashed into the broader negotiations article. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It is easy to find more recent coverage of the car industry compared with fishing. For example:
 * UK negotiators handed their EU counterparts plans to scale back European fishing quotas between 2021 and 2024 in an attempt to give foreign fleets more time to adjust to the post-Brexit changes. The offer came as it emerged British car manufacturers could still face higher export tariffs...
 * There are fears the car industry is being sacrificed to protect UK fishing in Brexit talks
 * ''Why are cars and fishing so essential to post-Brexit trade?
 * fisheries account for only 0.12 percent of GDP. But the industry has attained a patriotic symbolism and political strength more inflated than that of the car industry or the City of London.
 * The common point that most agree on is obviously that fishing is a big obstacle while being a small part of the economy. But whether the other parts of the economy which will suffer are finance, car manufacture or whatever seems to vary in emphasis depending on the author.  Naturally bankers and financial journalists focus on their vested interests while other lobbyists such as the SMMT focus on theirs.  But this article singles out just one pairing rather than presenting a balanced view.
 * Andrew🐉(talk) 23:54, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Because it's the pairing that keeps coming up because they're basically yin and yang to each other. Fishing: Britain is where the fish are so everyone else who can fishes in British waters, and would like to keep doing so even though Britain is leaving the EU in large part on promises to dictate its own terms on who gets to fish them. Finance: Britain's highly evolved industry uses the EU market the way EU fishing fleets use British waters. Britain wants to keep it that way; again the EU says, well we'd like to have you access our markets but only on our terms if you're not going to be in the gang anymore. If you can find as many "cars for finance" as there are "fish for finance" sources, I'll consider your point. But I doubt there are that many. Daniel Case (talk) 06:59, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't keep coming up. For example, I just went to the BBC's politics page for the current Brexit news.  They have an item about the motor trade and an item about fishing but finance doesn't get a look in.  The common factor in those stories is the different rules which will apply in Northern Ireland and this seems to be looming large in other contexts, such as relations with the forthcoming Biden administration.  There's a lot going on but "fish for finance" is a footnote now. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree with that analysis. When I said above that this article is going to get a lot more attention in a few month's time, I was thinking of the fish and fishing aspect more than the finance aspect. As Andrew says, a broad spectrum of industry is being sacrificed in favour of this totemic issue. May I make a rather radical proposal then:
 * recast and rename the article as something like Fish and fishing in the UK/EU trade negotiations (which can be linked from the negotiations article using broader).
 * reduce the "finance" aspect somewhat and add the many other sectors that are to be adversely affected by the miles of red tape that are implicit in the new hard border between the UK and the EU.
 * Does that help any? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I suppose we should defer any final decision on this until after the New Year, when the game will have fully changed. If "fish for finance" isn't getting much traction right now, it's largely because as the sources I have recently added have indicated the financial industry has pretty much given up on the government caring about them, perhaps because they're still politically unpopular even 12 years after the 2008 crisis and it doesn't cost you votes to defecate all over them, no matter what the potential long-term effect on the economy (What is it now? ... (£1.2 trillion, at least, in assets moved to the EU? So long, and help yourself to all the fish, I guess ...). My guess is that in January, negotiations will pick up again because they will have to, and because both sides will have gone from wanting a deal to needing one. However they still won't be going any faster. But in that context it's possible the idea of a deal that directly links financial concessions to fisheries concessions might yet be revived, especially with the EU less likely to lose out on the former as the City empties out and the balance of power shifts to them. We shall see. I actually think "Fisheries and fishing industry in the UK/EU trade negotiations" would be a better title if we do decide to create that article (and attendant to it should also be Financial industry in the UK/EU trade negotiations, since that's still an issue with unique wrinkles. Daniel Case (talk) 06:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Doing a quick scan. I see a short synopsis in a balanced article about a short period of 20th century history, and a massive article with a history going back to fish wars in 1414. Surely the approach is to change the see also to main and the job is done. ClemRutter (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The point of that fishing-history section is to focus on the disputes between Britain and other nearby countries that have emerged over fishing; it's not an issue that has suddenly come up although the media too often writes about it as if it did. As I said above, if we had an article on the history of British fishing, that section would be shorter. Daniel Case (talk) 03:23, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Fisheries Act 2020
We don't have a Fisheries Act 2020, if anyone is feeling energetic. What effect does its passage have on the Trade Negotiations in general (two fingers?) and the F4F issue in particular. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:21, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

"Reach of EU law"
believes that the lead should assert that the impasse is about "the reach of EU law". That is a second order perspective and it is POV to include it. This article should express the issue as neutrally as we possibly can: the issue at its most basic is about the terms under which the UK can have 'no quotas, no tariffs' access for goods to the EU Single Market (and EU access to the UK Internal Market, mutatis mutandis). All trade agreements have conditions for continued participation and the right to re-instate tariffs if one side ceases to comply with the agreed conditions: anti-dumping clauses, for example. As of the weekend, it appears that negotiation right now is whether the EU can apply sanctions when it decides that the UK is about to cut prices by lowering standards versus actual harm is being done. But I don't see how that question is relevant to this article. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:31, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , no, I do not believe 'that the lead should assert that the impasse is about "the reach of EU law"'. What I do believe though is that that is better than your version which incorrectly asserts that "access to the EU single market" is still an issue, when it is not the access (which will always be available), but the legal strings, that is the issue. I do agree though that neither wording is particularly relevant to this article, but if mention of the state of the negotiations is to be included, then it should be as accurate and as concise as possible, and not imply something that is not the actual case. -- DeFacto (talk). 13:26, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * No, what I wrote was terms for access, not just access. The impasse is over the terms as in "you may sell into our market with zero quotas and zero tariffs on condition that". Trading on WTO terms would mean access to each other's market with no 'level playing field' conditions attached but there would certainly be quotas, tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
 * I am trying to achieve a form of words that is neutral as we can possibly make it, saying as little as we possibly can about the positions being taken by either of the participants. If (as it seems) I haven't been clear enough that I meant "the terms", then I welcome it being rephrased.  --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:28, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , you didn't put the word 'terms' in what you replaced my text in the article with, but I'd be ok if it was changed to something like: "... the issues of continued EU access to British coastal waters and the terms for continued British access to the EU single market (the so-called 'level playing field') still unsettled.
 * But this discussion would be moot though if, as we agree it's not relevant to the article, we remove it altogether. -- DeFacto (talk). 15:53, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, my bad, I really thought I had used the word 'terms of', I must have edited and re-edited once too often, so much so that I didn't go back to check when you challenged. But yes, I agree that per wp:NOTNEWS and maybe WP:FORK, let's just delete the sentence. It's almost cod'n'chips wrapping already anyway. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:35, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, my bad, I really thought I had used the word 'terms of', I must have edited and re-edited once too often, so much so that I didn't go back to check when you challenged. But yes, I agree that per wp:NOTNEWS and maybe WP:FORK, let's just delete the sentence. It's almost cod'n'chips wrapping already anyway. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:35, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Fish catch

 * Worth mentioning UK fishermen will get c.65% of the total catch in UK waters, comapred with current 50%. Whizz40 (talk) 21:23, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * True, but they see that as minimal given that the UK could now technically freeze the EU out of its waters completely. Daniel Case (talk) 05:43, 23 January 2021 (UTC)


 * The Scottish fishermen say that their quotas have been reduced. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:46, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Scope and sources
I see there was some discussion about renaming the article, but I think this may have been a reflection of a separate issue. I'm surprised to see that this article is dramatically longer than Fishing industry in England, Fishing industry in Wales, and infinitely longer than Fishing industry in the United Kingdom.

To avoid any confusion, I'll say that this is an important topic that deserves a Wikipedia article. The raw quantity of citations is irrelevant. There are more than enough sources to support the topic as a stand-alone article.

This topic is almost a perfect storm for Wikipedia, in that it's technical, political, and topical. (All that's missing is religion and pseudoscience.) It's understandable that the article needs a lot of context and nuance but I think this level of detail may have gotten to the point that it's interfering with readers abilities to understand it.

A specific example is that the very lengthy section on "Fishing and the United Kingdom" is mostly background information as it relates to the larger topic. This really, really seems like it should be its own article with a brief summary and wikilinks here for context. By placing info on Viking activity, the Napoleonic Wars, the Industrial Revolution, etc. in this article, we are using unrelated sources to lead readers into forming conclusions about this topic. This is a sign of WP:SYNTH, because many of these sources on historical topics are not about "a possible trade-off that may be considered by both sides in the trade negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) as they try to agree their future relationship following Brexit in January 2020". Likewise, many of those which are about the topic are providing this history as context, but that context is missing from this article. By using a source to explain a historical fact and then failing to explain why that fact has direct bearing, the article loses focus at best, and possible much worse. If sources don't make the connection, then it was likely a springboard using Brexit to talk about something else. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but editorial restraint is called for.

Comparatively speaking, this seems like an easy problem to solve, and it would benefit the larger topic. Split this off into its own article. The history here is interesting and encyclopedically important, but readers shouldn't have to stumble on this particular article to find it. Fishing industry in the United Kingdom is one option. History of fishing in the British Isles is another. The point is that if I were looking for info on this historical topic, I would likely read the first couple of paragraphs and then keep looking elsewhere. I doubt I'm the only one who would make that mistake.

On a related note, the only use of the phrase "fish for finance" in the article itself is in the first paragraph and infobox. A similar issue has already been raised, but my concern isn't the validity or the phrase. It would be very helpful to summarize a source on the phrase. This could be explaining where the phrase comes from, when it was coined, who's using it, who's praising the idea using the phase, who's criticizing, it or just something about the phrase itself. It's not a neologism, but a reader could be forgiven for thinking that, since the article doesn't explain the phrase at all. If no sources about the phrase can be found it's an indication that the article should be renamed, as discussed above.

The unusually large number of lengthy footnotes doesn't solve this problem. The encyclopedic connection between the info in footnotes and the attached information in the main article is sometimes merely implied, not directly supported. It's not enough that the connection is obvious to an editor, it's important that sources are making those connections directly. Otherwise indiscriminate info can overwhelm the article, and synth can creep in regardless of intentions. Grayfell (talk) 22:19, 18 October 2021 (UTC)


 * If more serious articles had been written/could yet be written on things like the history of British fishing, this article wouldn't need to have been so long in that area. As it is that section is honestly more like "History of fishing-related conflicts between the UK and neighboring nations", to help the reader understand that this has been a frequent source of conflict long before the Common Fisheries Policy and Brexit. I felt it was better to be specific than just say something like "Britain has a long history of low-level conflict with neighboring states over fishing, which comes into play in the post-Brexit negotiations." Readers IMO deserve better than that, especially when no one's taken the time to research and write the article that one ideally would like to link to as "main" and briefly summarize. A lot of the sources here are news media coverage, which make blanket statements like the one I could have made; again I think readers deserve better than that.


 * I would love to know the origins of the phrase, and spent a good deal of my increased amount of time at home last year while this article remained in draft space trying to, among many other things, find it. I never did. Someone with better search capabilities than I, someone perhaps actually in the UK, might be able to do a more nuanced by-date search and find it (Another problem is that it was used before Brexit in the context of the Icelandic economy's crash in the early 2010s, somewhat inaccurately as Iceland continued to maintain a healthy fishing sector. Sorting out when it started to be used in the British context, after the referendum, is too subtle a task for Google). But the point is that it has been used quite frequently; just because we can't determine yet who started using it that way is not IMO a reason not to name the article that. We have plenty of articles on widely-used neologisms where no one's sure who started using it first. In the Brexit context, we get about 69 uses of the titular common noun in Irish backstop without any explanation of who started calling it that, much less why. Per WP:WORDISSUBJECT I don't believe there's any reason to rename the article. Daniel Case (talk) 04:30, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think someone has taken the time to write an article on the history of fishing conflicts in the UK, and it appears it was you. Much of this content could be copy/pasted to a new article with minimal modification and it would make more sense, be more neutral, and be significantly easier for readers to find if it stood on its own. Readers deserve enough context to make proper sense of the topic, but context requires editorial restraint, because context should come from sources instead of editors and editor-selected examples. I think it would be better to make this spin-off article broad and left open to later expansion, but it could also more narrowly focus on fishing conflicts. Since I have no particular attachment to this topic, I would rather see a good start to a broad topics. Since we recognize that this topic is under-represented by the project, an incomplete article which attempts to give an encyclopedic overview seems like a better starting point for closing that gap.
 * Whether narrow or broad, either way, it would make things much more navigable. Another demonstration of effect of focusing on deep history for a very recent event is that, right now, the byte-count the article is twice that of Agriculture in the United Kingdom. By readable prose, this article is still likely below any hard-and-fast rules, but these limits are not only hard rules, but also guidelines for what the community expects, so it's still a helpful way to look at the larger picture and how this one article fits in to the project.
 * I see several issues here, but as I said, spinning this off to a new article seems like a relatively easy fix for many of them. Grayfell (talk) 19:32, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * What's the article? I didn't write it, but I would like to take a look at it. Daniel Case (talk) 06:23, 22 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Grayfell is correct, of course. The article is an absurd WP:COATRACK, "when an article's original author writes too much about background and loses sight of the title".  Compare Get Brexit Done, for example. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:09, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That comparison doesn't make enough sense to properly be called a comparison. "Get Brexit Done" was an explicitly political slogan that has no continuing relevance now that Brexit is done (And yet we still have no article on the most common Brexit slogan, the one that is covered in so many reliable sources, the one that I can find referenced in news coverage even now, almost six years on ... with that level of inattention to detail on the part of our British editorial contingent, we should not be surprised as to why Brexit happened in the first place. Perhaps once again it should fall to me to research and write it, from three thousand deep, cold and wet miles away). "Fish for finance", by contrast, is not a slogan, just a term the media used for what is really the center of the Brexit negotiations (and the ongoing post-Brexit non-negotiation negotiations) since the two sectors represent polar opposites of Britain's trading relationship with the EU. I'm not adverse to the article shrinking with time—as I wrote above, if a proper article on the history of British fishing existed, much less one about the British fishing industry (we have cursory Fishing in England, a Fishing industry in Scotland that is more detailed but seems to have been written in a parallel universe where Brexit never happened, but no articles on fishing in Wales or Northern Ireland or even the British fishing industry overall), I'd not have to have written all that. Plus I was writing and drafting as negotiations were going on, and now that they're supposedly concluded the immediacy of some of the material just isn't there like it was at the time. If someone wants my help in developing the non-existent or emaciated articles that should have a lot of that background material, all they have to do is ask (I may not be able to devote much time or effort to that currently, though, just warning people). Daniel Case (talk) 16:58, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * As someone who has contributed occasionally to this article (and disagreed with Daniel on a few occasions), I wish now to support Daniel's response as a being a fair and accurate summation of the status quo. I find 's attack on his good faith an extraordinary one and hope it was just a thoughtless kneejerk.
 * Yes, we should have an article about the British fishing industry and no doubt this article could be split and repurposed by someone motivated to do it. It may be that what is left behind about negotiations can be reduced; the reality does not (yet?) seem as severe as was forecast. Greyfell, I think you just volunteered to do the job! :-D --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:27, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

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