What Is The British Government For?
Considering the geographical location of TheEye, it may be easy to dismiss this post as parochial, but it is far from that.
Recently the Spanish government made claim to all of Gibraltar’s territorial waters under the pretext of environmental protection. When presented with the fait accompli by the EU, the British Government said the political equivalent of “Ooops, buggerit, didn’t see that paragraph” and have now resorted to legal action to challenge legitimately signed EU documents. To this day, Spanish armed fast patrol boats nip in and out of Gib waters, chased off by the Royal Navy, to test our resolve. This was all covered very well on A Tangled Web.
But the British Government have been sitting on their hands and DONE IT AGAIN.
From The Chronicle: Britain has been side-lined from a proposal to change the mandatory reporting system for ships sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar, despite its jurisdiction over Gibraltar and the surrounding waters. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) gave preliminary approval to the joint initiative by Spain and Morocco and delegates from over 50 countries – including the UK itself – agreed that the changes would help improve navigational safety in this area.
But for British officials there was one important problem with the plan: it was drafted without their input. In effect, Spain and Morocco failed to acknowledge Britain’s voice in maritime issues affecting this region.
Although the focus of the proposal is purely technical, there are underlying political issues at stake. The Gibraltar Government, which had raised concerns with the UK about this proposal, is keeping a close eye on developments at the IMO, the United Nations’ maritime body.
At a meeting last July, British officials told delegates at the IMO’s Subcommittee on Safety of Navigation that Britain should have been consulted while the proposal was being drafted.
They said there had been “no effective cooperation” between the three governments which each had “a common interest” in this area, according to the official record of the meeting. The UK asked Spain and Morocco to withdraw the proposal and draft a revised, “fully collaborative” version with British input.
But Spanish officials countered that the UK had had seven weeks to comment on the proposal prior to the meeting and had not done so, choosing instead to flag its concerns at the final plenary session. They said the subcommittee’s remit was purely technical and that in this respect, the proposal was sound. The subcommittee agreed and approved the scheme as presented by Spain and Morocco, noting the UK’s reservations.
It will now be rubber-stamped at a full meeting of the IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee next year, though changes are possible between now and then. “We hope to have our concerns properly reflected in the text,” one British official told the Chronicle.
“Concerns reflected”, eh? How about “huge bloody cock-up fixed”, sunshine? So they missed this one as well, and Spain shot at another open goal. What does our Government actually DO, then? What are they for?
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