Chris Worfolk's Blog

Cafe Paris is an informal restaurant based in downtown Reykjavik. Why it is named after Paris is unclear. The menu seems fairly Islanic rather than French. Perhaps it reflects the general hustle-and-bustle of the French capital.

The food looks a lot better in real life than it does in photos. Specifically this photo…

Presentation could do with some finesse. However, it gets good marks for taste.

The portions were massive. Elina’s creamy seafood soup felt bottomless. No matter how much she ate there was more seafood hiding at the bottom of the large bowl.

Today is of course referendum day. Many of you have postal voted already, but for those voting in person, now is the time!

I am very much looking forward to today being over so that I can talk about something else! I have some great posts about Iceland coming up, starting Saturday.

Some reasons to vote

Sometimes it might feel like it is not worth voting. However, there are some great reasons to make the effort today.

First, the result is on a knife edge. It is predicted to be incredibly close; closer than any vote we have seen foe a long time. With such fine margins, you vote will make more of a difference than ever.

Second, everyone else is doing it. YouGov are predicting we could see one of the highest turnouts for any vote in the last few decades (save the Scottish referendum). As a society, we really are all making the effort to get out there and vote.

Third, the consequences of this are huge. It is not just five years of one set of politicians before we vote again. It would be a most uncomfortable feeling for the future of our society having gone the other way than you wanted it, without having a say in it. At least if you vote you can say “don’t blame me – I voted x!”

Still undecided?

If you are still not sure which way to vote in the referendum, that’s fine. But consider this: if we vote remain, we can always choose to leave at a later date. A vote for leave is far less reversible.

If you are inside a Vagrant box and want to SSH to the host machine, you will need to get the default gateway. Or, maybe you just need the default gateway for a completely different reason. Either way, the following command should do it.

netstat -rn | grep "^0.0.0.0 " | cut -d " " -f10

This is really useful if you don’t have ifconfig installed.

This poster caught my eye. It was used by the Remain campaign and it is easy to see why: Churchill is seen as a cornerstone of English patriotism and a hero, especially among Conservatives. If he had been here today, his view would be worth a lot.

But is it true? Was he a founder of the EU? Would he support it today?

In the case of whether he was a founder, it could be argued that he was. Here is what his Wikipedia page says:

In 1956, after retiring as Prime Minister, Churchill went to Aachen to receive the Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to European Unity.[278] Churchill is today listed as one of the “Founding fathers of the European Union”, a claim which in Boris Johnson’s view contains “a very large dollop of truth”.

In 1946, he used the term “United States of Europe” during a speech in Zurich. This shows his support for a more-united Europe was clear.

We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living.

This suggests he was clearly in favour of the EU. However, it is one quote that I have not included in the context of. Can we surmise, taking an overall view, that Churchill was in favour of the EU? To do that, we would need to weigh up all the evidence.

Journalist Jon Danzig has done just that. The conclusion? Churchill was not taken out of context in the above quote. He supported “the Union of Europe as a whole” and, if alive today, would almost certainly be voting Remain.

Here are some of my favourite memes from the past few days.

On our skills shortage

Damn those immigrants, coming over here, saving our lives.

On the economy

One thing we have struggled to have is a evidence-based debate on the economy. The truth is, a lot of it is unclear. However, when we are talking about hard evidence, we do have this. The pound is already plummiting, just on the threat of Brexit.

On free European healthcare

On scaremongering accusations

On the so=called breaking point

This one I did not enjoy. The whole affair has gone too far.

On Thursday 16 June, Jo Cox was attacked in her parliamentary constituency of Batley and Spen. She died from her injuries. There can be little doubt that we are all horrified by this event. Such a thing happening here in Yorkshire seems almost unbelievable. The attacks leaves a family without a mother, and a constituency without a tireless champion of the vulnerable.

Sadly, we may simple be seeing the reflection of the values we have built. As BHA chief exec Andrew Copson put it:

This is the whirlwind we reap if we sow hatred and nationalism in our country. https://t.co/3Sz6qBZsuk

— Andrew Copson (@andrewcopson) June 16, 2016

So what do we do? How do we respond to this event as a society? The quote that comes to mind the most is that beautiful Martin Luther King quote:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

The way we recover from this is not by seeking revenge. It’s not by becoming angry or further dividing our society. It is by coming together, to re-build and re-affirm our values of tolerance, respect and openness.

When you make it to the finals of Euro 2016, you are allocated to one of six groups. The top two teams from each group, after three matches, get a pass into the round of 16. An additional four teams also make it through.

But should we expect to see there? One way to calculate it is to work out how tough each group is. By taking each team’s world rankings and averaging them, we can see how tough each group is.

A lower number represents a tough group and a higher number represents an easier group. This suggests England is in one of the easiest groups: only group A has a lower average world ranking, and this does not factor in the home-field advantage that France has.

We can then compare the team ranking to the average group ranking to see who should find it easiest to quality.

I have shown the top and bottom four here. The other home nations do not find themselves at the bottom of the table, which is positive news too. Having said this, the difficultly of the group makes little difference: all of these teams are in the same order as if you had just taken the world rankings. So how tough your group is, is probably not a factor.

I made a video about why I am voting Remain. It is unlikely to make the Oscars shortlist, but I hope it is at least honest.

We are only seven days away from the EU referendum, so you might feel like it is too late to do anything to help the campaign. It really isn’t. Here are some practical things we can do to help secure the future of our country.

Tell your friends and family

Maybe your friends and family do not know how important it is. Or maybe they don’t realise that the result could be decided by lower voter turnout rather than people getting the result they want. Talk to them about it.

Donate

Both sides are spending big on advertising and media. It might be too late to pay for new billboards but there is plenty of time to buy more advertising in a daily newspaper or targeted online advertising on Google, Facebook and Twitter. You can donate to Stronger In or the Lib Dem campaign INtogether.

Helper people get to the polling station

Know anyone who might struggle to get to the polling station and cast their vote? Offer to help them.

Phone people

You might think that the campaign cold-calls are done by professionals at some big offices. They’re not. They are made by people at home. Using the Lib Dem system, all you need is a phone and a computer. Contact me for details.

Put some posters up

Stronger In offer posters you can print at home to put up in your house window, car window, at your office desk, anywhere you think people will see it. There are a lot of Leave signs around, simply because the Leave campaign has been more vocal, which gives a distorted picture of the support they have.

Today, Nigel Farage made a big deal about being on the Thames protesting EU fishing quotas. It is a serious issue. So lets pretend for a moment that Nigel Farage genuinely cares about the UK fishing industry, rather than just using this is an opportunity to press his own agenda. We have to pretend because we have the hard evidence to show he does not care, as exemplified by this meme.

That’s right, Nigel Farage was on the EU fisheries committee, but did not bother to turn up much, or vote, or really do anything. But suppose he genuinely did care. Are EU fishing quotas bad for Britain? The answer is no. Here is why.

We need to maintain fish stocks

Fish stocks have become dangerously low. We have quotas in place to stop fish going extinct. This would be bad because if fish disappear then it causes a huge problem for the environment. For example whales need fish to be there to eat. Whereas on the flip side, if fish were not eating their prey, they would cause over-population.

If you are not swayed by the environmental concern, consider that once there are no fish left, we won’t have any fish to eat. For me, that would be rubbish because I really like fish.

Fishing is big business

Are you imagining that the people complaining are small time fishermen who had a little boat to feed their family? To be honest, I was. And some of them are. But the majority of them are not. They’re big business. Here is Dr Chris Hassall from the University of Leeds…

Three large companies own 61% of all fishing quotas. This isn’t about Michael Gove’s father alone on a tiny boat in a stormy sea. This is an industry monopolised by millionaires who are fighting regulation, just like all other industries. Viewed in that light it is completely unsurprising that “Big Fish” has joined Farage, alongside his banker allies.

Fishing quotas help small fisherman compete against Big Fish. Unrestricted, big companies would fish the oceans clean, take all the dividend profits out of their companies and move on with their lives. Meanwhile small fishermen would suddenly find an empty sea, no way to make a living, and no huge profits to fall back on. Creating a sustainable industry is the only way to protect small fishing businesses.

Quotas protect Scottish fisherman

As well as allowing small fishermen to complete with the big corporate fishing, preventing over-fishing also protects those who genuinely do fish to feed their families. In the second episode of River Cottage: Gone Fishing Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall travels to the Island of Rona in the Hebredes to meet the island’s caretaker. He feeds his family on the annual mackerel catch. However, each year that gets smaller and smaller. By the time the documentary was made, he had run into a two week draught.

Fishing quota are good for British business

As well as protecting our small fishermen from big business and ensuring we have a sustainable fishing industry going forward, fishing quotas have one further advantage to British business: they open up the opportunity for innovative fish farming to meet consumer demand.

In the same River Cottage: Gone Fishing episode Fearnley travels to the island of North Uist to visit just such a fish farm. The strong currents around the island mean they don’t have to treat for any diseases such as lice and produces excellent-quality fish. It’s a wonderful example of a small British business leading the world in innovation, sustainability and quality.

Conclusion

EU fishing quotas are good for Britain because:

• They ensure there will still be fish to eat tomorrow
• They ensure a sustainable industry for the future
• They protect small fishermen from big fishing companies
• They open up new opportunities for British entrepreneurs
• They protect small communities that fish-to-eat from overfishing
• They protect the environment