If we wish to preserve fish stocks in the oceans there can be no other way. There has to be control and management over how much and how different fish species are caught. For this to be effective, good data needs to be collected and kept regarding catches of fish while the overall activity must be subject to regulation.

Now it is well known that the most significant catches are registered by industrial concerns. They account, more than any other way of catching fish, for the serious depletion of stocks in the seas. In second place, well behind, come “traditional” fishermen who anyway, in many cases are being absorbed by industrial fishing.

Then comes recreational fishing, conducted by individuals as a sport or as a pastime. It is claimed that in the Mediterranean for instance, this too needs to be regulated. A problem here is that there is no clear agreement regarding how to define recreational fishing. Should an old man deploying a fishing rod by the waterside be put in the same balance as one who goes out with his boat not so far out the coast, as a past time – or as some yacht owner who occasionally goes out to catch dorado?

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Public jobs?

One might find it worthwhile when analysing employment data, to go beyond employees in the public administration and consider all those who in one way or another, even if in private employment, carry out work that is underpinned by public funding.

It’s been a long while since only people directly employed by the public sector accounted for state funded jobs. A different situation first developed when “parastatal” entities were created if and as they operated  on the  basis of subsidies through the public budget. Then there came private companies to carry out work that was formerly done by the government with its own workers. Later, new service and consultancy jobs among others emerged and got automatically hived off under government contract to the private sector.

How many government “sponsored” jobs are there in the Maltese economy which lie outside the purview of the public administration? – that would be the question.

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Discontinuities

When a discontinuity occurs in a political situation, time will have to elapse before things settle and events resume in an intelligible manner. Till this takes place, crisis will be the order of the day.

The question arises as to whether matters will then follow patterns set in the past, or whether some new model is going to be established for how things should be done – whether the changes that follow on a discontinuity are revolutionary in scope, or whether they amount to a move which does not fundamentally alter the parameters that apply to a particular situation.

Right now, the West looks like it’s experiencing a major discontinuity. Will it lead to a fundamental change or is it just a short term blip till everything goes back – or almost – to how it used to be previously? We shall see.