{"id":4554,"date":"2013-09-30T07:48:11","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T06:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=4554"},"modified":"2013-09-30T07:48:11","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T06:48:11","slug":"nobody-sings-about-prawns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/09\/30\/nobody-sings-about-prawns\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobody sings about prawns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They never did, and never will. \u00a0But herrings are a different matter, as those of you familiar with Ewan McColl's \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6Ov81aogaxg\">silver darlings<\/a>\", know.<\/p>\n<p>A recent Bagehot article in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/britain\/21584322-devastation-fishery-shows-idiocy-much-environmental-politics-parable\">Economist<\/a> about fishing in the river Clyde (well, actually about no longer fishing in the Clyde) illustrated how timid politicians, a valourisation of tradition, and self-serving on a massive scale, all conspired to clean the Clyde, not of pollution, but of fish. \u00a0It's a tale that would be cautionary, were it not so common as to be commonplace.<\/p>\n<p>Not many fish, or much learning, around, as the ending of Bagehot's piece illustrates:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">Fishing, for as long as anyone can remember, was more than an occupation in Carradale. \u00a0The community was founded on it. \u00a0Youths went to sea in their uncles\u2019 boats, formed ring-netting pairs with their neighbours, married one another\u2019s sisters and celebrated by drinking and singing songs about herring. \u00a0Support for the fishermen was bolstered by a desire to preserve these happy traditions. \u00a0But how misguided that was. \u00a0Carradale is shrinking. \u00a0Its young folk are leaving; one of the five boats is crewed by Latvians for want of local labour. \u00a0\u201cLast year was a bad year, 18 deaths and the rest of us ageing,\u201d was how an old fisherman greeted Bagehot on his return to the village. \u00a0Few sing about herring these days. \u00a0Nobody sings about prawns.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They never did, and never will. \u00a0But herrings are a different matter, as those of you familiar with Ewan McColl's \"silver darlings\", know. A recent Bagehot article in the\u00a0Economist about fishing in the river Clyde (well, actually about no longer...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}