Wow Gareth,
I certainly am accusing you of Franco phobia.
If you have seen one example of a French boat trawling through creels then you have seen what many Hull, Peterhead, Falmouth and even Milford trawlers have often done.
There is often a conflict between trawlers and creel men irrespective of nationality.
If you think that a trawler would purposely trawl through lobster pot fleets then you are showing that you have no idea about fishing. Do you realise just how much damage that a fleet of creels can do to a net?
I would re-phrase my original language and say that I've just seen an outburst of open racism in this thread.
Now as far as this crap about fine mesh beam trawls; Are you sure you are talking about the French or could it be the Dutch or maybe the Cornish. When I worked in Lorient it the fishing industry I saw many inspectors checking mesh size. I didn't see many Spannish ones in the Basque country though.
The facts are that the French have exclusive historic rights to fish in, what could be described as Scottish waters. They used more conservation minded methods and still have a viable fishery in certain areas.
There's not a country in coastal Europe that cannot be accused of over fishing. I, along with most fishermen, agree that cuts have got to be made. The reality, however, is that your labour cronies, gave away valuable consessions to both the Danish and Spannish in the last agreement.
There are massive stocks of haddock in the North Sea but the Scots fishermen are not allowed to catch them as there might be the odd cod in the net. In the meantime the Danes are allowed to carry out industrial fishing (sweeping up masses of small pout and all other varieties of immature fish).
The Danes and Spannisn have dedicates fisheries ministers while our crowd have fishing tacked on Agriculture.
I think that calling French "froggies" or "Bastards" is racist not worthy of this website.