When John Cabot first sailed to Canada (c1497) it is recorded that as he crossed the Grand Banks off the coast of our Maritimes the progress/speed of his ship was slowed in the water by the density of cod & other fish in the water.
The Canadian moratorium on fishing for cod in what was prime areas is now more than 2 decades old with no end in sight. Global warming is disrupting fishing as the water temp rises off Maine & maybe eventually the Gulf Stream shifts.
Let`s Fish until the last fish is caught (eg the big Blue Fin Tuna in the Med Sea) and then start a buggy whip factory ?
We are so short sighted that you might guess that we work on Wall St.
8
Our ideas of patriotism comes from England. These people are a proud lot and are Unwilling to give up their Identity without a fight Good for
Them, they see the sea as the history of the U.K. and are not willing to just flush it all away for cheap labour. Sorry elites, pick on another country
5
Britain was a seafaring nation indeed. Has it not been for all the ready fishing boats and all, would it have been able to save so many lives from Dunkirk?
Younger generations are made with softer hands and easier lives. This is true not just in UK but around the world. God forbids, if we were to face down the abyss with another World War, UK would not have 1/100th of a Winston Churchill to lead the nation, never mind the rest of the free world. Heck, there isn't even 1/10th of a Margaret Thatcher in sight. These days, it's all soft skins, no (back)bones, and alas, nary any grit.
So, trading yes, and it brings good life, but if they're not careful, it's a deal with the devil. Viewed from that lens, perhaps Brexit could not come more timely. It's time the people learn some grit again.
8
The fundamental driving force for Brexit is national pride or rather national vanity. The worse-off people are, and the more badly educated, the more they feel this, and the more they dislike the EU. There's nothing new here. About 1810 (so it's said) the townsfolk of Hartlepool, along the coast from Grimsby, lynched a monkey in the belief it was a Frenchman.
11
Everything worth knowing can be learned by hard physical labor. Just ask a donkey, since they have labored more (and hence know more) than anyone who believes the first sentence.
6
Fishermen in Grimsby, coal miners in West Virginia, steel workers in Pennsylvania, all grasping at what was, all voting for a past that has passed. None voting for their future or their descendants’ futures.
I’m not that old, and I remember when we looked to the future to make things better.
Brexit and Trump remind me of when I bought my first new car. This lower- middle-class man and his wife came in the door after getting out of their old car. The older man was looking over a Sterling (a bad joint venture of Acura and some UK make). A con man sales guy wit greasy hair walked over and said “I’m going to put you in one of these!” Game over. The poor guy left after putting down a big deposit and extending his Liam to 7 years. I hope it was worth it...
3
The Brexit camp played the race card over and over again. Promising British jobs for the British. More money for the NHS. Lies after lies. Brexit voters know that they were lied to but are to ashamed to admit it. Its the 48% who are trying to sort this mess out while the 52% live in a fantasy world.
11
Maybe they are not idiots. Why does the world need more processed fish processed by underpaid laborers shipped in to Grimsby from EU countries from the eastermost regions? So what if it costs more to make fish sticks? Oceans are overfished anyway. Maybe a village supporting a regional fish industry composed of British sailors in British waters would lead create something communal, or good, or, dare I say it, more beautiful than a collection of warehouses gutting fishes flown in from god know where. A locally oriented fishing fleet would create the need for local craftpoeple, boatwrights, mechanics, catering, and many other 'knock on' industries that would create an interdependant community. Sometimes economic efficiency is not the best or only objective in life. Who knows. I don't.
8
Abolishing the EU is actually a good idea, regardless of the fish industry. Brexit voters probably saved themselves thousands of dollars per year by ridding themselves of this senseless bureaucracy and government.
1
So a bunch of fools thought they'd make Britain great again without realizing the self-defeating foolishness of their vote.
Familiar story, same regrettable outcome.
6
The UK's future lies with America, not the European continent.
"The species in Britain’s waters are scallops, crab, lobsters and other delicacies that have never been popular in this country."
What? This is such a strange and inaccurate thing to say, it makes me wonder about the rest of the article.
1
Well, all those species are found in British waters, and there are fisheries for all of them, so... I assume you object to the part about them not being popular?
I can't speak to the popularity or lack thereof of those species to the average Brit, but it does seem that most of the shellfish caught in Britain are exported. Isn't that the main point of the passage to which you object?
7
The Brexit vote is being investigated for the hand of Putin’s intervention. He would have Russia’s empire and swagger return by the demise of the West.
4
I believe Parliament has asked Facebook several times to investigate and each time the answer has been that there are no traces of Russian influence in Brexit. Each Parliament has told them to look again.
2
These comments all seemed right on to me. The ones that explained how the ocean just gets into your blood and stays there, and the ones that point out how crazy that is.
3
“Europe needs the U.K. more than the other way around,” said Ian Thompson, a Grimsby resident and former merchant marine, having a drink ." Looks like Ian had one too many.
18
"There were three score and 10
Boys and men,
Were lost from Grimsby Town..."
Our herring boats, our trawlers,
Our fishing smacks as well,
They long to fight the bitter night,
And battle with the swells"
1
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
No more need be said.
2
In England, just like in America, we are learning that voting has consequences beyond one's own imagination or wishes. MAGA/MBGA!
4
"Were the manpower problem solved, others would persist. The species in Britain’s waters are scallops, crab, lobsters and other delicacies that have never been popular in this country. "
So what is wrong with fishing for the delicacies that other eat and selling those to those who eat them? Surely a market exists for them and it would put some to work.
Here we import some of these items from Asia because we can't fish enough of them locally. Britain is so much closer.
The problem is that most of the boats doing the fishing aren't British, they're EU. Also that the quotas might be too large and so its depleting the stocks.
3
While I certainly agree with the equivalency most comments find between Brexit and Trump, I do not agree with the presumed equivalency between fishing and coal mining. Fishing predates the industrial revolution. Fishing and fish are cultural assets. A willingness to blindly cut away these cultural assets to meet some economic idea of globalized optimization should be offensive to everyone, even if the local catch is exported and the local dish is imported.
5
I was struck by the last paragraph: “Europe needs the U.K. more than the other way around,” said Ian Thompson, a Grimsby resident and former merchant marine, having a drink under one of those sepia-toned photographs. “We will prevail.”
I suspect he is wrong - just like I think people who support Trump are wrong that he will improve this country or our standing in the world. In both cases, Brexit and Trump, I feel like we all just have to wait to see who turns out to be right. Each side feels correct, I certainly will not change my opinion of Trump any time soon, it seems pointless to keep discussing - time will tell.
20
Apparently Europe desperately needs the UK or it wouldn't ship so many migrants there. In all the stories about Brexit, I have never read one that focuses on what will happen when the Eastern Europeans are sent home, not to mention the migrants from Africa, the Middle East and the Subcontinent who would end up stalled on the mainland. All of Europe could turn into a Calais-style migrant camp that would be very hard to deal with.
2
The EU also needs the money Britain contributes. They are, I believe, the 3rd largest source of funds.
‘A car crash in slow motion is a cliché but that’s what Brexit is like here in the UK' A dumb idea being implemented in adumb way. It has thrown many weaknesses in the institutions, governance. and perhaps culture, of Britain into sharp relief
The roots of this disaster are complex but are led by right wing press fantasises driven by pure ideology and financial self interest , a poor electoral system and an over mighty executive branch . Mostly years of failed polices in industry, economics, infrastructure and the role of the state have left people like those in Grimsby poorer and feeling ignored. The referendum was mostly seen as a chance to stick it to the man . Boy did they choose the wrong man!
Fantasises of Empire, sometimes referred to, are NOT one of them but the influence of that history has influenced many especially older votes into a slow realisation of our 'reversion to the mean’ world status now. That’s a bigger Holland or a smaller Germany with some valuable legacy benefits in soft and hard power from prior status. Like it or not we're are an island off the coast of Europe not of N America ( and I’m passionately fond of the US & Can.)
In leaving we become a poorer more marginal, less influential country with fewer opportunities for the young and a diminished international reputation based on being an unreliable partner with poor governance . We – or an independent Scotland 1st? - will likely rejoin within 20 years with a worse deal and less influence.
22
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I have always loved the UK, and have visited several times. I dream of going again someday. I am deeply saddened and scared by what has become of my country. I know yours is facing similar frightening changes. I wonder, though, why you love the US? I'm so disheartened and disappointed in my country. I would love to hear anything positive about it from an outsider. Maybe it would give me some hope.
8
One of the understated aspects of this piece is that British people don't eat much fish any more. Beyond the mainstays of the chippie and perhaps the odd kipper, much of the catch goes to continental Europe: TV chefs' calls to eat more eels or skate or odd-looking seafood are mostly ignored. So for all of the nostalgia, it's an industry that relies upon exports.
13
James Meek wrote on this topic in The London Review of Books in 2015. LRB allows their writers a lot of space and this is a very detailed piece:
"In Grimsby, you can see the effects of two old disruptions that had unintended consequences. Thatcher hoped that privatisation would create globe-straddling British companies owned by small British shareholders, but instead most of the privatised firms and their small shareholders have been bought out by foreign governments and overseas pension funds. Thus Associated British Ports, which owns the ports of Grimsby and Immingham, as well as Hull and many others around the country, used to be publicly owned, then was owned by anyone with the means and the desire to buy its shares on the stock market, and is now one-third owned by the government of Singapore and one-third by the pension fund of former municipal employees of the Canadian province of Ontario, with a quarter just bought by the Canadian national pension fund and the remaining 10 per cent snapped up by a British investment house, Hermes.
"The second disruption was the set of changes brought about by Blair’s Third Way. They were supposed to force new ideas into health, education and social housing. Instead, they were seized on by the Conservatives in 2010 as the vehicle to separate the welfare state from the state that created it."
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n08/james-meek/why-are-you-still-here
21
spot on
1
Some of us are reluctant to stay in the European Union because we see a corrupt, opaque and undemocratic organisation geared to protecting German industry and French agriculture.
13
The European Union isn’t perfect. But it’s better than the misguided irrelevance which Britain opted for when its electorate voted for Brexit.
14
And British banking and financing UK research. Oh and what about all the farmers in Suffolk.
4
And then there are other British people who are aghast at the ignorance which led us to such an egregious act of self-harm. Emotion and pride are all well and good, but as this article indicates, they won’t lead the UK to a better place - or should I say plaice?
2
While I understand the critique of British people who support Brexit when it is contrary to their own interests, I am nevertheless disturbed by the comments suggesting these folks should just get a software job. There is a pride that comes from accomplishing difficult, dangerous work, which most of us desk jockeys have rarely if ever experienced. Fishermen and coal miners don't need to shell out good money for extreme sports.
13
"Fishermen and coal miners don't need to shell out good money for extreme sports."
Which probably is a good thing as neither is likely to earn "good money" in the foreseeable future.
12
Appparently, the youth of Britain are rejecting the pride that comes with difficult, dangerous work. Facing reality is seldom romantic but it is part of being an adult.
25
I am always amazed at how people vote against their own best interests. Cambridge Analytical at work? Whatever happened to plain old common sense?
28
"...where the legacy and the romance of a declining industrial past often eclipse the interests of new and expanding businesses." Oh. You mean where the interests of older people conflict with those of the young. Old people vote. Young ones don't. End of story.
20
Stupid is as stupid does. These idiots deserve what they get.
17
I do not like what you have done with the photographs accompanying this article.
3
So sorry to see you so hurt.
The story of Brexit and the election of Trump -- stupidity and emotion over common sense and attention to facts.
The same howling nonsense spewed by Trump was howled in Britain in the lead up to the vote on Brexit. Blame the "other," blame the immigrants, etc. the fact of dead industries -- like coal in the US -- run by murderous greedy men who encourage others to crawl down into an unsafe mine or rape and strip the land to pull out one of the most dirty, damaging fuels on the planet.
I find it interesting that of the employees in the fish processing warehouses are immigrants. Appears to be another case of t
35
Having seen it for myself, here in the United States... I've learned under Trump: Stupid-is, as Stupid-does. Let them choke on all the winning and greatness, while I get paid!
18
...said Alfred the Butler to Bruce Wayne/Batman:
"Some men just want to watch the world burn"
20
I'm not going to use the word 'idiots' as the headline does, but if you vote with your heart and the result is self evidently against your own interests, then don't be surprised if people hold your vote in contempt.
33
This article encapsulates the difficulties of allowing people to vote on Brexit, or basically any subject that doesn't have a simple answer. Before the vote there was such confusion, lies, false promises that anybody not following it carefully really had NO idea what was going to happen. The result was a vote for the past, as the future looked so complicated and unsure. The folly of allowing people to vote on subjects like this has been made abundantly clear. Education and dedication are needed to understand these complex problems. Now the same idiots who gave us "leave" are in charge – heaven help the Brits!
27
People who damage others while damaging themselves are called... idiots.
19
So the elite want endless supplies of cheap foreign labor and regular people are "idiots" for wanting to keep their communities from being destroyed by the influx.
I'm with the regular people. This article demonstrates that the wise and the good still don't get Brexit.
11
Of course nobody wants that. Nobody wanted the effects of the industrial revolution either, but it was going to happen anyway. You can't take shelter from reality by hiding in the past. The best thing is to try to preserve what you love even as things inevitably change.
8
What’s to get?
1
Apparently you lack good reading comprehension. The influx of cheap labor you describe has nothing to do with the decline of the fishing fleet, which the residents hold dear as fact when it is now mythology.
4
The huge Asian fishing fleets are a challenge to our ecologies and economies and can only be successfully countered or controlled by unified action from Europe and the US. Voting to go it alone as the folks of Grimsby did is really monumentally foolish.
20
Interesting perspective, but what remains is a portrait of numbskulls who, like those in the American Trump world, long for “the good ol’ days” when June Cleaver greets Dad with a Martini after work. Worse yet are those American politicians who say that things were so much better during the antebellum South... when everybody knew their place. This silly looking backwards, as nice as it feels to some, will doom any country’s ability to face the challenges of the future. Now, let’s all sing the MAGA themesong.
24
Gee, bad choices made for bad reasons can have bad consequences!!! When did that begin??? Meanwhile, let’s bring back coal!!
23
Looks like we don’t have a monopoly on believing in exceptionalism amongst our less fortunate citizens wistfully looking backwards. Hopefully our British cousins won’t be subjected to MUKGA hats, doesn’t have quite the same tone as what trumpenstein foisted on our knuckleheads and boobs.
14
Do they realize they are shooting their own foot by reneging on the benefits of a globalized economy they depend on? I guess stupidity is in ample supply, as we tend to not appreciate what we have...until we've lost it.
21
Paging Dr. Chekhov, Dr. Anton Chekhov, please report to Grimsby for the subject of your next play...
4
I don’t know about Chekhov. I think Spock would find it hard to identify any logic in the decision to back Brexit.
7
She means The Cherry Orchard.
1
England doesn't need Chekhov. It has Shakespeare.
The problem with democracy is the stupidity of voters. People constantly vote against themselves and then complain about the results. You get what you vote for. Obvious really!!
12
Such false pride has brought down many of kingdoms. It looks like Cambridge Analytica did wonders!
3
I worked/lived in the Grimsby area for many years.
It's a sewer...
7
People are just naturally stupid. It takes constant hard work to avoid it. Even then, we all fall back into it.
7
Our memories are selective. “Everything was better in the old days” is probably the mantra of nursing homes. And it’s one reason why us old geezers need to give way to most of those who are younger (I said “most”—there are any number of young whippersnappers who need to be told to butt out). What’s really needed perhaps is for us old coots to get new career objectives and reexamine our old ones, for which the shelf life has expired.
5
"“Everything was better in the old days” is probably the mantra of nursing homes."
As a fellow "geezer" I can attest that the "good old days" were not really that good ... memory tends to get selective as time passes.
7
It's good to know that British voters are deep thinkers just like Americans!
7
Grimsby mantra: Don't confuse me with the facts; I know what I believe.
At least when the opioid crisis hits -- oh, wait, they've got all those pubs that need to be patronized -- they'll have national health care to treat all of the angry, depressed fishermen.
4
I'm sorry -- I understood from this story's lead-in that it was going to refute the prejudice that the Brexit/Trump votes were idiotic. Have I missed something? Is there a part II of the story somewhere?
2
finishing my thought -- The immigrants working in the fish processing warehouses once again appears to be the case of the immigrants doing the jobs that the natives of Grimsby don't want to do.
4
Next to the election of Donald Trump as President of USA, Brexit is the next best exhibit of the tomfoolery called Democracy. The epitaph of Democracy based on popular vote is best scripted by the scientist and non-believer Richard Dawkins. When asked about his opinion on the Brexit vote: “How should I know? I don’t have a degree in economics. Or history. How dare you entrust such an important decision to ignoramuses like me?” Around the world voters in so-called Democratic countries cast their vote based on emotion and opinions, not facts and evidence. They either disregard or are ignorant of the famous warning of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your own opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." This is the age where the liar-in-chief calls legitimate reporting by reputable newspapers "fake news". White is the new black. The collective delusion about supremacy of Democracy America-Style should be demolished and soon. It's not about giving up on freedom such as access to accurate information. It's not to endorse oppression and injustice. China's one-party rule is not the only answer. Yet the evidence of a political structure managed by technocrats with proven track record yielding strong performance cannot be ignored. Ronan Farrow's new book "War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence" is yet another example of how experts are hollowed out of important institutions under the Democracy con game. Sad!
2
I recently heard a podcast about an American woman who was swindled a few years back by a deceptive online lender charging over 900% annual interest. The CFPB under Obama was suing the lender, with hopes of restitution for the woman.
The CFPB under Trump and Mick Mulvaney has dropped the lawsuit. How does the woman feel?
"Betrayed," she said. "I voted for Trump."
So, um, yeah, sorry but IDIOTS.
Brexit supporters, like Trump voters, are clearly not THINKING about what is good for their country, or even for themselves. They are taken in by liars who stroke their tummies and assure them that demonizing the "other" will help to restore a glorious mythical past when white people with one income could afford a house, college for their kids, and a two week vacation at Asbury Park/ Blackpool.
Never mind that if you really thought about it, you'd realize that Trump and the Brexiters want to exacerbate the terrible income inequality, and the cruelty that they prescribe for minorities and immigrants is going to slop onto poor whites too.
9
Where does the hubris of the right-wing come from? Be careful of someone who seems to have nothing to lose.
4
It´s beyond my comprehension how people buy and use Korean cars, Chinese phones, Bangladeshi t-shirts and Cambodian sneakers and then complain about globalized trade and manufacturing.
But who cares about disturbing facts, truth and reality if emotions can offer belonging, identity and meaning. Seems the age of reason is over...
4
Amen
2
Ironic that these Brexit-voting fisherman fear
immigration when in fact they should dread the impact
of global warming on their industry.
8
Change always has a villain to take the blame. In Grimsby the EU, in W Virginia the EPA and in lots of places immigrants.
3
There was a time when eating fish was a bit of a luxury. When the world had 30-50% fewer people. Now we have a world that thirsts for fish and exotics and wants them daily. Tuna are disappearing, whales are going extinct, and the schools of fish that were so abundant that no one thought they could disappear are in peril.
There was also a time when fishermen fished with small nets or fishing poles. Now we have industrial fishing where everything is taken at the heights of breading, and fish caught that weren't intended are killed and tossed or left to drown.
Asians in particular have tastes that boggle the mind. Shark fin? Kill a shark for a little fin to make fin soup?!! Kill elephants to take a tusk to make a trinket or grind to make a powder that is supposed to make you live longer?!!
I feel for the older fishermen in this town and hundreds of other towns, but there is no bringing back quaint times when there are 7 billion and growing.
6
Couldn’t help but notice that the Grimsby fishing industry is dominated by white men, similar to the coal mining industry in the US. These are the same people that complain about being left behind when they never even bother to show up at the bus stop. White male privilege won’t bring back fish or coal. I used to type 75 words a minute on a Smith Corona but that ‘skill’ does me no good today when I can use voice recognition to ‘type’ my emails into an iPad. Get on the bus people, life can’t be lived in the rear view mirror.
8
My otherwise intelligent Brit friend goes postal whenever I mention how stupid Brexit is. “They need us more than we need them”, “We will rule ourselves again”, and so on. I end by saying how interesting it will be to watch the experiment run it’s course. There is also the preparation for when it fails, “They aren’t being reasonable” or “They are trying to sabotage us”. So tiringly sad.
The good old days were rarely good, but always old.
I have also noticed in the past that when attempts are made to slow or stop change the effort ultimately results in faster and more radical change.
Perhaps there should be an upper limit to the voting age as well as a lower limit.
8
A good post. And we all know that Brexit supporters - irony of ironies - will blame the European Union when the UK is left vulnerable, marginalised and irrelevant.
8
Uh oh; snap! There goes the 21st century! Hadn't thought of that.
There, in Grimsby, it's fish processing. Here in the retrograde Trumpian land of America, it's coal mining and heavy manufacturing.
This is the price to be paid for constantly looking in the rearview mirror when the world has long since shifted out of reverse.
6
Great article & comments!
4
It's a shame these fisherman, (and coal miners), haven't grasped the basics of capitalism. Compete and adapt - or die. Nostalgia and hope are no match for economics.
4
Capital moves faster than men.
The last comment was "we will prevail". Actually you won't. You will lose. And the processing industry that was created will go away.
5
The New York Times can only seem to produce soppy, sentimental, and tendentious articles about Brexit. No where does this article mention that the EU's Common Fisheries Policy has been described as a “environmental, ecological and financial disaster.” Because the right to fish in UK waters has been handed out to other EU countries on the basis of patronage and mollification, the EU has had an abysmal record in conserving the stocks in British waters. From a scientific article: "The success of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has been diminished by two factors: the progressive enlargement of the common pond and the precedence given to the political need for relative stability over the scientific imperative of resource conservation."
As managers of their own exclusive fishing area, the British will do a lot better in conservation of what little the EU has left in the fishing waters.
7
I guess Brits are as easily fooled and blinded by sentinel hogwash as Americans. When are decent people - I have to believe most folks in the world are basically good; otherwise, it’s far too depressing to consider the alternative - going to stop listening to politicians and their fear mongering propaganda about foreigners stealing jobs and their nationalistic way of life (which hasn’t always been as good as those strolls down memory lane might suggest) and start THINKING before they vote?!
7
A Grimsby resident says, quote, " Europe needs the UK more than the other way round" It is this imbecility that has led my country Scotland out of the EU at the expense of the little englanders who still think they are some sort of world power.
7
Substitute coal for fish and you have Trump's America. Who wants to dig coal in a dark, dirty, polluting, dangerous and dying industry when you can be developing software apps and new technology, and enjoying an affluent mobile lifestyle? Which of those two groups are we going to choose to define and lead America?
8
Excuse me but I thought that coding was a distinct occupation not available to all.
Mining in he other hand, requires no great intellect or training.
2
"Mining in he other hand, requires no great intellect or training."
Wrong. Coal mining today is highly automated using very complex machinery; coal miners need to be highly skilled machine operators and mechanics. The days of pick, shovel, and bucket are long (decades) gone.
This just boggles the mind.
The worst thing people can do, in my opinion, is live in the past.
Two generations ago, the men of my mother's family worked the railroad and the coalmines. They lost limbs and died of black lung, but their children didn't cling to that way of life, and neither did their children, and we're all the better for it.
16
The North Sea fishing ports, of which Grimsby is one, fished the North Sea for huge stocks of herring. Once the herring was over fished to extinction the ports were obsolete. I believe fishermen were paid money to scrap their boats.
Another inconvenient fact for Grimsby is that the European Union has invested a lot of Regional Redevelopment money into North East England. This money will be no more. The EU for all it faults is relatively impartial. The UK Government will be swayed by politics. A Conservative Government will subsidize Farmers. A Labour Govt will probably subside Industry such as car makers. Fishing will have even less chance of subsidy post-Brexit than now. But any remaining fish in the sea will be the winners.
18
I was born in the 70s so I hold no nostalgia for the so-called hey days of modern humanity in the mid-20th century. From my perspective, the "hey-day" was a time of man's unchecked human arrogance that I pray to God we never see again. Man thought he could rape the oceans and land of all he wanted and it would continue to be glorious for him for infinity. Man thought acted as though his chemical creations were gifts from God and spilled them forth into the planet without a thought for the consequences. It may have been a hey-day for a few at the time, but generations forward have to pay the consequences.
Read the NYT article about Poland's current health crisis from burning coal. Why is that something we would ever want to return to when wind and solar energy exists? Look at the damage oil-spills have done. Look at the damage over-fishing has done. Look at the damage clear-cutting forests has done. Look at the damage human "ingenuity" has done in the form of plastic pollution, chemical pollution, climate change etc. I feel for all the people who are nostalgic for the days when their incomes were strong and life was good. But we can't go back, and nor should we. We need to move forward in a way that is sustainable and smart. We need to evolve. I have no choice but to put my confidence in my children's generation who will have to grapple with the harmful effects of this generation's so-called good-life.
27
A very good article - though I do feel for the reporter, having to visit Grimsby...
It’s a similar story in every fishing village and town around our shores, but removing EU rights to our waters isn’t going to magically produce greater stocks or change trade quotas - especially in seas showing the effects of climate change, fish migration, overfishing and pollution. The EU is also the industry’s biggest market, and removing others’ fishing rights may have an impact on sales.
12
I remember seeing a documentary where a coal miner laments the lack of coal jobs for his 18 year old son. Cracks me up when folks want to keep their deadly jobs for their kids. Much like the coal miners and their black lung, who wants to go away at sea and never return. Would rather my kids go away to to school and get another job. Especially in England where the cost of college is a fraction of what it is here.
16
Yes, college is much cheaper, but it's much harder to get in, especially if you're a working class Northerner. Do not underestimate the power their class system has over British people's lives.
4
Saw the same documentary and clearly recall the line spoken by the coal miner.."My grand pappy dug coal, my daddy dug coal, I dig coal and my boy wants to dig coal" ["but those terrible liberal environmentalists want to destroy our lifestyle"]. No we want you to have the opportunity to have a good healthy and long life, with better jobs, making more money than you do today, in a less damaging, growing industry like healthcare services. Yes...we do want to destroy your (old) way of life.
3
To a degree, I get it. My parents had an industrial tool shop back in the 1980's, when many hand and power tools were still made in the U.S. Half the work they did was repairing tools under warranty as an authorized repair location.
They sold the business when manufacturers started ordering them to throw away brand new tools rather than fix them. Cheap foreign-made tools, still being sold for hundreds of dollars like their previous generation of domestically manufactured ones, weren't cost effective to repair.
Cheap imports of lumber from Canada, plus clothes, appliances, tools, and housewares from Mexico, decimated the manufacturing sector in this country. China has taken it to a whole new level. That's the downside of globalization.
With that said, how many small-town Americans, decimated by manufacturing job losses, buy everything at Walmart? They had a chance to pay more at local merchants, and they didn't do it.
They shop at Walmart because it is cheaper.
What the United States (and the UK) need to do is invest in education, to drive the high-paying innovation jobs that will keep the countries affluent. Forget about the minimum wage jobs that didn't pay a living wage and made people sick. There's a benefit to being in the first world, rather than the third world. Pining for the good old days of dying in a coal mine is insane.
62
Our local vocational training school is dropping carpentry from the curriculum.
1
Sounds very similar to coal miners, pining for the good old days when men died from black lung at age 50!
The past can be very seductive - the problem with nostalgia is that we only remember the good parts. I also understand that change can be scary, but Hillary Clinton had the right message when she told coal miners that their way of life was over and that better jobs could come...too bad the press only focused on her emails.
38
I recall reading a recent article in the Times decrying the foreign trawlers decimating the fish stocks off the coast of a West African country. Pictured were the humble small boats of fishermen & the small catches now available in the outdoor markets. The article elicited much sympathy & rightfully so.
Perhaps the residents of Grimsby will learn to consume the sea stocks present along their own coasts & hire promoters to pitch the delights of lobster on the dining table to the nation. The dwindling cod belong to Norway & Iceland. Practice what you preach, Grimsby.
16
While the EU has its problems, Britain will be better off working from within to change things than drifting alone with its sepia tone memories of the past.
17
The EU is about one thing: bribing Germany with a multinational currency (impervious to exchange rate adjustment) in return for peace on the Continent. Everyone in that Union is complicit in that travesty. I am extremely proud of Great Britain for once again being almost alone in standing up to German bullying (this time, so far, in mercantilism rather than militarism). The cycle of history repeating itself is just a few years loner than the cycle of forgetting history.
8
These Second World War comparisons are not unhelpful and ridiculous. For years the politicians in the UK, from both the leftward the right, have used the EU and Germany as a lightning rod for all of the problems that it generated and could not solve. We are reaping the results of this, in my opinion. But rather than offer sensible solutions that would be applicable to the future, people like you fall back into jingoism. And FYI - you weren’t alone in Europe in the Second World War. Just ask the thousands of people who died in Poland and the Eastern Europe, that the U.K. swiftly abandoned in the immediate aftermath...
11
Mr. Becker's short exposition of insularity and xenophobia sounds like simple trolling. If so, then he would be aware of how provocative he sounds. Actually, I fear that Mr. Becker not only believes what he is writing, but also has been living in a cultural bubble where such nonsense is never challenged.
I a US citizen born in the US Midwest, but I have spent time both on the Continent and in the UK. I hope people know that Germany really, really, wanted to keep its Deutschmark. Many Germans still think that instituting the Euro was a mistake. The notion that the peace-loving rest of Europe is bribing Germany to keep it from another military escapade is laughable. If anything, Germany is so pacifistic right now that many people think it is not paying for its proper share of European defense. France is MUCH more militaristic than Germany right now.
I hope that at some time in the future, Mr. Becker and those who agree with him will break out of their bubble.
4
The article reminded me of my own experience in California. I am descended from fisherman who came to Monterey & San Francisco from Sicily to fish 100 years ago. For decades fishing was good enough for my father to make a good living fishing & my mother worked in the canneries. Author John Steinbeck even memorialized the era in his novel Cannery Row. As fishing declined their offspring went to college & never looked back. Monterey & San Francisco are now world renowned as tourist destinations, capitals of finance, cutting edge technology, education & BTW great seafood restaurants. Change or die.
58
I don't see Grimsby as a tourist destination somehow. However, as the article correctly notes: the town has changed and developed a significant fish processing industry. The irony, again well noted by the author, is that all that are left are the very few older fishermen who can't or won't change. They are plainly wrong, but they deserve a little sympathy. We aren't all so rational that we can shake off the past entirely.
8
"I don't see Grimsby as a tourist destination somehow."
What, you can't see the beauty in miles of brown mud flats?
2
Change happens.
5
Love isn't the only emotion that is blind. Voting with one's eyes closed is like driving with one's eyes closed. A bad bet.
28
Listened to a broadcast on BBC news last week reporting on the challenges in store for British farmers and fowl producers with businesses which export a high percentage if not all of their produce to the EU. They are stunned, if not in shock, at what they are facing. Their businesses will be drastically impacted, perhaps to the point of failure. Just figuring out how to comply with new export regulations will be a significant challenge in time and money. And apparently, they don't, as in the case with Grigsby, have the option to market to local UK markets. UK folks don't want to eat what the farmers are exporting.
Have to say I wonder just how much the Cambridge Analytic group had to do with influencing the Brexit vote, since true economic fact/reality seems to have been drowned out in the "Leave the EU" chorus.
30
I don't think Cambridge Analytica had much to do with it. There are sections of the media that have been beating anti-European drums ever since the campaign to join 45 years ago. In fact even in the 90s (when I left the UK) it wasn't uncommon to see anti-German headlines that borrowed from WW2. Some people found it offensive, but to others it was a reminder of British superiority being held back by Brussels.
I completely agree with you about the economic impact of Brexit, but mention it to 70% of the people in Grimsby and you will be dismissed as "fearmongering". Apparently the EU will miss the UK so much they will be begging for trade deals as soon as they realize the UK is serious about leaving. And the US will also be tripping over itself to trade on favorable terms with an independent Britain as a major policy priority. Yes, I've heard these arguments in Grimsby when I go back to visit.
Regarding produce, its not so much that the British don't buy local products/produce (although the comment in the article that in Grimsby, fish means haddock, cod, and that's it, is largely true), but that they are quite good at producing it, and export quite a bit. As you say, that last part will become much, much harder for small businesses.
11
Having lived and worked extensively in the UK, specifically near Grimsby, it is no surprise to me that the xenophobes in the Hull/Grimsby area have voted to cut their own economic throat.
Most of the brits I knew would vote repukkk liecan if they were US citizens...
3
Trumpsters here are MAGA. Brexiters in Grimsby are making Britain 'Great' again. Oh, what, you haven't seen all those factories opening up in the upper Midwest? You know, the ones with all the robots... .
3
I'm from Maine in the US.
Same talk here from the fishermen...and the pulp mill workers and log cutters.
We still have lots of wood/trees but no paper industry. But will these mill communities reinvent themselves with different industries(not wood related)? Or , God forbid, tourism?
Nope. They want the mills back. Ask them about their plan? It will be a short conversation.
57
The understandable desire to relive glory days isn't an answer to an economic reality. Having grown up in the Pennsylvania coal fields, I understand it, but the coal that was easily mined is gone. It's also not renewable, no matter what anyone says. Fishing is different, but stocks can be depleted to the point of no return as well. Stubbornness is no match for cold economic realities.
58
I work at an international camp for teenagers in ME. We have many counselors and campers from the UK. When Brexit passed an incredible pall descended on the camp that effected us all. One British camper said to me "they don't care about us" and he was right. The Brexit vote diminished his hope for his future and for the future of all young people. It is the old people with their nostalgia for the past who voted for Brexit just as they voted for Trump...and old people vote. I am an older person with no nostalgia for the 50's. Until we pass on, even though I am not ready to be 6' under, and leave the future to the young we face a tragic future or no future. The young must save us from ourselves.
124
In the case of the USA, if the young wanted to save us from ourselves, they should have turned out to vote. Those who were angry that Bernie wasn't the nominee and refused to vote for the "lesser of two evils" are the ones who will suffer the most, as they have the longest to live, and the damage from Trump will last their entire lifetimes.
28
I agree that the suffering to come has no precedent. We're so busy distracted by tweets that we can't see laws being gutted. We in the U.S. suffer a national disease. It's a complex one: one-third a-historicism; one-third racist xenophobia; one-third voter indifference. To date, a cure has not been found. If left untreated it will have as devastating an effect on the country as AIDS had on sub-Saharan Africa. What's your contribution to fund for research for the cure? If you think either American Gothic stoicism or feel good neo-liberalism has inoculated you, you are sadly mistaken. Remember what W's call for national action was? Go shopping!
Today's so-called leadership is even less equipped than that liar who had to invent a war to impress daddy. WMDs, anyone?
The percentage of Americans actually engaged in politics - local or national -- is minuscule. I don't agree that the populace gets the government it deserves; we merely are forced to put up with the one we have. Unsatisfied with it? Only radical adjustments in personal and communal priorities will correct the drift we are in. Its been nearly 50 years since the country rallied behind a radical idea (putting a man on the moon), and nearly 60 since a radical outcome in WH politics (gasp! a Catholic holding the presidency). Trump isn't a radical idea; he's the result of B613 (aka shadow government) and a lazy (albeit with frightened voters) electorate. Pogo was right: We have met the enemy; he is us.
1
“Europe needs the U.K. more than the other way around,” said Ian Thompson, a Grimsby resident and former merchant marine, having a drink under one of those sepia-toned photographs. “We will prevail.”
Illusions still intact
132
This ties in with the Trump voters who weren't as much disaffected lower middle class voters who were experiencing economic anxiety. These people are voting to preserve their position in society.
As the UK, and the US, become more multicultural and open, people who don't fit that model or who are uncomfortable with it feel like they have no choice but to vote for things that would put things back like they were.
But you can't put the genie back in the bottle so they'll have quite an awakening when they realize not only are they not at the top of the social order but in fact are sitting at the bottom because of their delusions and obstinacy.
84
“These people are voting to preserve their position in society.“
Well put.
31
Yes! US Trump voters, just like Brexit 'leave' voters were voting to return to a non-existent past in the vain hope of restoring all that they have already lost -- our industrial manufacturing past with bountiful employment for minimally skilled workers on factory lines and doing other basically unskilled work. We are far past the point of 'no return.' The USA will never again be a large manufacturer on the scale of China (or, India, Brazil, etc.). These unreasonable beliefs are the kind of magical thinking that leads people to 'hope' and 'pray' for change or improvement. Nothing changes for the better unless we take actions to implement change.
6
You may find similar sentiments in Ireland, where Killybegs – still the country’s main fishing port – is a shadow of what once was, with Donegal and Irish fishermen heading out to compete with Spanish and other EU forces fishing their EU-designated share within Ireland’s territorial waters.
However, you’ll find none of that ‘The EU needs Us more than We need Them’ outlook in Ireland which appears to have blinded Grimsby fisher folk.
Understandably, of course – it’s easier to cleave to a certain, tough-but-fair nostalgia for yesteryear than to stare down the bleakness of uncertain present realities and an unknown future.
The rosy empathy for symbolic fishermen that the author alludes to is indeed on a parallel with American coal miners – both of which are important but diminishing trades which enjoy disproportional public and political focus than much more economically useful and relevant sectors (such as, indeed, the solar energy sector – but when has Trump ever said a word about that much, much more economically important sector rather than concentrating on coal miners, now teetering on the edge of joining coopers, millers, thatchers and tallow-makers?).
I feel sorry for struggling fishermen, but even without the absolutely crazy push for Brexit, the fishermen of Grimsby – or Killybegs alike – have to move with the times, even if the times threaten extinction for some hardworking, struggling fishermen and their down at heel communities.
41
It should be depressing when the grim, cold reality of Brexit comes down on those who voted for it with most enthusiasm. There is a certain schadenfreude however in knowing that they are indeed reaping what they sow and that those of us who embraced what we are losing the most closely will be the least badly affected by this act of self-mutilation.
I am always at a loss to explain to European friends and colleagues why we were - and why so many continue to be - so short-sighted and ignorant in voting to decimate our economic and trading prospects. I feel no sorrow for the fishermen of Grimsby, nor for the car-workers of the North East of England, or the farmers of Wales, all of whom are about to realize just how tough things are going to get.
Still they can wave their Union Flags, can't they...
104
I feel that their ignorance is in part the fault of all of the well-to-do voters who have not made good public education a priority. An undereducated voting public is going to make ill-informed parochial decisions. They haven't been taught how to do basic research, how to think critically, how to assess and question the news they are fed. They haven't been given the skills or the confidence to make career changes and adapt. They also haven't been encouraged to look forward to the future or to see new industries as wonderful things. The past is safe and the future is scary. That has not always been the prevailing mood but it surely is these days and that is reflected in how people are voting.
20
I have felt this is a huge part of the problem as well. People who have poor education being taught to the test with no reasoning capability, "news" programs that tell them what to think which tells them what they want to hear not what's real, and education that is so out of reach in terms of finances. You also have areas like the south where they are actually hostile to education and proud of their ignorance.
1
Well said, Alexandra Hamilton, though I find your description of a lack of informed decision making and critical thinking and analysis sadly fits the U.S. electorate to a tee -- regardless of the academic credentials (not to be equated with education) they have acquired. Quite frankly, public education never was intended to produce an informed, engaged electorate. Rather, it was to intended to create a more or less unified civic society; obedient citizens, if you will. The two are not identical concepts. Were questioning, rational inquiry, or even just plain curiosity encouraged in school or at home, there would be far more emperors (politicians of all levels) called out for having no clothes. 600-page tomes of nationalistic propaganda, aka high school U.S. history texts, would not be ingested as so much pablum merely to be evacuated by the time students reach 2nd year of college (I've taught at 4 institutions of higher ed--public and private).
I was fortunate to have engaged and thoughtful parents: that is where I got a foundation for critical thinking and questioning talking heads; not from school. An under-educated public is the only sort we ever have had in this country, regardless of who held the franchise. A desire for a well-educated, critically thinking public is not listed anywhere in the country's founding documents. Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights address such an idea. That is not an accident.
One of the key points of this article is that, like elsewhere, the local population looks back on some fictitious golden age which never really existed.
I grew up in Grimsby. At school in the 1970s we were told that Grimsby was the biggest fishing port in Europe, and it quite likely was. But did it really impact the town's economy like people now think it did? Probably not in living memory, although the older, bigger, houses around the town were built by trawler owners in Victorian times. Obviously most people weren't trawler owners, and most of the town has always been working class and not very well off, fishing or not.
In a town of 90,000 (not 27,000 as stated - maybe the correspondent had strayed into neighboring Cleethorpes when asking that question!) it was quite possible to have no contact with the fishing industry, and it didn't seem to generate much prosperity for the community in my life time, even in my boyhood in the 1970s. When the fleet was shrinking a lot of the blame was passed on to Europe. But a lot of British towns and cities, especially in the north, got economically left behind the south east around that time, so it's not just one industry. But Grimsby is pretty isolated geographically, and outsiders make good scapegoats.
Two more quick points: the photograph of "Grimsby's central shopping area" was very selective! For the most part it's clean and well maintained. But the photographer did capture the Grimsby sky well!
82
Have the fish been consulted on nostalgic plans for a five-fold increase in the catch? What is the term for fishermen who no longer exist planning to catch fish in quantities that no longer exist?
133
National heroes!
2
Their vote may have been emotionally satisfying, but soon it will degrade their quality of life as their local economy suffers. Sadly, that burden will fall not so much on them but on their children, who will either stay and accept poorer economic conditions or leave to find opportunities elsewhere, thus degrading the family ties they value so much. If only this could have been explained better at the time, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
88
"“Some industries that are economically insignificant have enormous public resonance,” said Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, an independent think tank in London. “And because of that, they have political influence that is way out of proportion.”"
A very apropos description of the American coal industry.
164
Coal mining employment has increased by 1400 jobs since Trump was inaugurated - 15 months.
That’s about how many jobs are created per work hour in the rest of the economy.
7
My great grandfather was a harness maker, my grandfather repaired typewriters and my father hand lettered showcards, signs, and trucks.
None of these trades exist on any scale anymore. In order to prosper you need to face reality and adjust your skills to the new economy.
213
This story could have been written from any of the groundfishery ports in New England: Gloucester, New Bedford, Portsmouth, Portland and many smaller ones. The cod are gone, but the fishers here have an irrational faith that the ocean teems with cod just waiting to be caught, if only those know-nothing scientists and government regulators would let them. They are completely blind to the effect their own industry has had on fish stocks: ever more efficient fishing gear and an unsatable thirst for larger and larger catches.
On the rare occasion when you get a local fisher to admit that the stocks are depleted they will invariably blame "furriners" whose factory ships are the real culprits.
They also claim the scientists don't know how to fish, simply because the scientists sample fish from all places, not just where the fish are abundant. But that is how valid sampling has to be done, so that you know not only the gross numbers, but the patterns of distribution of the fish, which must be expressed with real numbers, not statements like "we know there are no fish here and here and here so we didn't bother sampling any of these locations."
But you can't convince a fisher of this. So they will continue to vote overwhelmingly for those who tell them what they want to hear ("We'll get rid of those regulations and your industry will bounce right back!") to the ultimate detriment of us all, including themselves.
Sad.
281
Liberal pals were against Brexit and I was all for it.
2
And how do you feel now? If you still support it, why?
6
Yes, it's true--their vote was, from a logical standpoint, extremely stupid. But people forget that these communities once had a bustling industry that they could be proud of and helped them believe that with hard work, they and their family could make it to the middle class. Now, with globalization and rising inequality, they have seen their hopes and dreams smashed and their industry gutted with nothing to replace it. They probably would have voted differently if they had other economic opportunities that didn't leave them stuck between a rock and a hard place.
15
The story is saying that there was an alternate economic opportunity - fish processing. The story mentions that 5,000 people are employed in this sector. Why aren't the locals getting in on this? Those 5,000 people depend on free trade to earn their living. The fishers rely on nostalgia.
19
I can't help think of the companion piece in the Times today about Trump voter intention being driven driven more by what was driven by was euphemistically termed "cultural anxiety" rather than more traditional economic dislocation--I wonder how much this holds true for the Brexit voter. From the tone and tenor of this piece, one can surmise many a correlation. No better way to convince someone to self-immolate than whip up the sentiments of status and respect amongst those susceptible to anesthetic nostalgia.
3
To answer your question, it's the same reason why the locals aren't working on the floor of the meat processing plants in the Midwest or the poultry plants on the Maryland shore. This is one of the types of jobs almost always done by immigrant labor.
3
I love it. “ there’s about 20 fishermen and most of them are dead.”
No Brexit. It’s so dumb it’s cute.
34
When my wife and I were in England last year, we were struck by how much the UK has become like the US, riven with bias based on emotion rather than fact. Often it was like talking to Trump supporters in terms of views on immigration. Yet all the shops had help wanted signs and many of the existing staff were foreign - mostly eastern Europe and Russia.
While some people see the stupidity of Brexit as the facts on the impact are becoming clearer, they seem not to be able to reverse course. They won't of course because they continue to believe in "fortress Britain", "Britain rules the waves" and all that. When the reality hits, it is going to be very ugly.
95
As a UK citizen I have to agree with your views. The right wing part of the Conservative government (which hid the real Brexit facts from the electorate) really believe that Britain will be economically & socially ‘much better’ without the EU. Sadly such ‘Rule Britannia’ ideology led 51.8% to believe them in the June referendum 2016.
If Brexit does really occur in March 2019, then the truth will really hit home to many of those who are going to be adversely affected.
This may be a subjective comment, but there are more than enough objective facts to support it.
43
One common thread the U.K. shares with the US on this is Rupert Murdoch’s news operation which has captured the minds of enough of the population to throw elections to favor the worst elements of the investor class.
101
This article omitted many dull but important points, presumably with the intention of dramatising the position of the fisherman. Here are a couple:
Fishing quotas are tradable assets and the reason why there are so few British fisherman is that many of them sold the fish quotas they were allocated and retired. It seems a little unfair to complain about the people you sold the quotas to coming to fish under the quotas you sold them after taking their money to let them do exactly that.
British fisherman so over fished North Sea cod back in the sixties and seventies they ended up fighting the "Cod Wars" with Iceland when they went to go and fish in still viable Icelandic waters instead. The EU has helped put a lot of this exploitive fishing and unfair competition to rest.
If you look at the whole picture I would add selfishness to stupidity when talking about these guys. And the rest of the country will be much poorer as a result.
243
Sounds a lot like the Gloucester-Rock Port area just north of Boston that I'm originally from. Fishermen over fished the area causing the fish stocks to plummet, yet finger point at everyone but themselves for why the fishing industry is dead. Fought other changes (like fixing 128) that would have allowed the area to enjoy the economic boom of the rest of the Boston metro area. Idiots is an accurate description.
118
"In other words, Britain exports most of what it catches and imports most of what it eats. Either the country will need to change its appetite or it will need to trade." That pretty much says it all.
55
Fascinating...
I think this speaks to the power that emotions have over logic. The Grimsby folks know that fishing is a bygone trade, and the fear that creates motivates fight/flight, ergo fighting to save a moribund industry.
As an American, I see the parallels with coal (as the author eluded to) as well the plight of Midwestern manufacturing. The emotional and cultural attachment to work is something to which we give little credence. It would do us well to do more to support communities that are on the receiving end of creative destruction in these ways.
41
Well in this case this town has a thriving fish processing industry that may now be destroyed. Some people just can’t be helped.
46
True, but I think the fact that despite a thriving fish processing industry they still voted to Brexit gives more weight to the emotional attachment people have to their traditional ways of life; this is continually the Achilles' Heel of liberals.
Conservative communities need to be engaged on a cultural level when it comes to change like this. Trump, IMO, is the product of this liberal disinterest in tradition (progress coming often at the expense of tradition). Progress is good, and we should progress as a culture, but we can't blithely roll over that which some Americans hold dear and then be shocked an appalled when they throw an orange-handled monkey wrench in the system.
2
A nation’s sovereignty depends on its ability to issue its own currency. This is apparently a fact that was unknown to the countries that joined the EU. Brexit offers national sovereignty to Britain. Cleverly, the architects of the EU built in social mobility when designing the EU to mask the poison.
Britain never abandoned the pound.
42
The British have their own currency, the Pound Sterling. The Brexit vote, like the Trump vote, is exactly as the article states. They are emotional votes void of intellect trying to retain or recreate the past at the expense of the future. Both were fearmongered into reality and both will haunt and cost their countries dearly for decades to come.
154
The pound is not entirely independent of the EU. It has requirements imposed by the EU that limit monetary policy does it not?
The picture of the graffiti which says “HOPE” says it all- no logic and rational thought behind the voting. And when they find that they voted down their own quality of life they will find someone else to blame - though apparently foreigners are already responsible, in their minds. All of our countries have to turn to education for a solution. And politicians who stop using fear to win votes.
136
Look at Kansas - education and enlightened politicians simply won't do it. When we under invest in people we produce ignorant voters. End of.
67
You won't get politicians to support education. The more ignorant the population, the more likely it is to buy snake oil.
9
Not sure I understand your point? Kansas does not have a good educational system or enlightened politicians. The Kansas BOE is a joke.
6