If Aesop did not write a fable about it, he should have. Consider a farmer reduced to nearpenury by the most difficult and barren times, but who continues to make great efforts with pitiful crops because he has been assured that sacrifice, hard work and respect for the land will bring back the good times. Consider his neighbours, who work thir land relentlessly until it is unable to support them and whose solution to their self-inflicted predicament is simply to cast thir eyes on their neighbour's land and demand the right to farm that into obivion, too. The careful farmer is entitled to feel aggrieved.

So it is with United Kingdom fishermen, aghast that UK fish quotas apply not to UK fishers but to UK waters. This means, in effet, that other EU nations which have exhausted their own quotas may simply take the fish which UK fishers' sacrifieces have made possible. UE fisheries commissioner Emma Bonino's statement that she is "aware" of the opinions of British fishermen is simply not enough. Listening to points of view is paltry when the unfairness of quota-hopping is plain to all who care to see it.

Mrs Bonino is to visit the North-east this weekend. She will be given a rough time by plainspeaking "farmers" of the sea. Without more-concrete proposals than she has mooted thus far she will deserve it.

It is time for an open mind and action,Mrs Bonino.