If you have never seen it, I strongly suggest you check out The Current, a monthly tabloid format newspaper printed in St. John's.
It's kinda edgy, sometimes funny and perhaps is the only newspaper in the province gutsy enough (by local standards) to print Josey Vogels' column, My messy bedroom.
This month's issue has a couple of interesting features. There's a bit on Icelandic independence. Odd no one ever asks if Icelandic fisheries is a business or a social program to keep people in "traditional" ways of life. There's also a bit on Margaret Wente, but to be honest, she is getting way more ink than she deserves. To make matters worse, The Current piece is lame and way beneath their usual satirical standards.
What I thought was hysterically funny was yet another mock government call for proposals. This time it is for a process whereby this place can leave Canada and join the European Union. The last fake call at least made some sense. This one is about as realistic as Newfoundland and Labrador applying to hook up with Djibouti. It's also kind of disappointing given that one of The Current's writers is Greg Locke, staunch nationalist. Does this means he now advocates trading in Confederation for cuddling up with Malta and Latvia?
When you're finished with The Current, you might just want to visit the European Union website. We'd have some difficulty qualifying as "European" in any meaningful sense of the term so the whole scheme would be moot anyways. But more to the point, since everyone - especially the nationalists - likes to rant about foreign overfishing and blames Canada for what the Spanish are doing (Go figure that one), proponents of the EU option might just want to have a look at the EU fisheries page. Maybe it won't be foreign overfishing if the overfishing is done by our EU partners. We can then say we ended foreign over-fishing by making them not foreign.
That would sound like Gwynne Dyer's claim a few years ago that war as we know it was gone after the collapse of the old Soviet Union, even though there were still civil conflicts going on within states like Yugoslavia. Talk about semantics. Interstate warfare was over, therefore everything was peachy. Unless you were a Tutsi or a Chechin. But be happy knowing you were not slaughtered in a war. Nope, it was a civil disorder.
But back to the point, just to get a genuine taste of the EU fisheries policy, here's the main quote on the introduction page:
"The EU fishing industry is a major source of employment and food. It is therefore important to prevent over-fishing by some to the detriment of all. The European Union has a common fisheries policy (CFP) in order to manage the industry for the benefit of both fishing communities and consumers."
Hold on to your turbot-on-a- stick.
While you are surfing through the EU sites, just take a look at the other member states, not the new ones, but the ones with real clout. Like Spain.
And Portugal.
And France.
Now imagine President Danny Williams in Brussels trying to convince them to stop devastating a fishery that is - oooh easily half a freaking world away from them and a place they used to plunder when it was their colony.
You think we have troubles being heard in "colonial" Ottawa. Bring on the Mannequin Pisse!
Now, let me just check and see if the United Federation of Planets has an opening for new members.