Spin doctors faced with fresh fishy dilemma as tabloids spawn trouble

Date: 08/02/1996

A LEAKED copy of the minutes of the first meeting of Mussels Against Brussels (MAB), a new militant lobby group defending the welfare of shellfish, has just landed on my desk.

The group was spawned out of rising anger that European Commission officials have emphatically denied clams, sorry, claims, that they have been giving five-star treatment to cockles, mussels and their slippery cold-blooded kith and kin on the long journey from domicile to slaughter-house.

Mussels Against Brussels is now launching a campaign to give the creatures not just regular rest breaks, showers and an in-transit video, but also, in common with all other sentient beings in Europe, four weeks' paid holiday a year and a pension from the age of 60.

“The whole thing is a disgrace,” declared MAB chairperson Hector Whelkstall, opening the first emergency session. “It is a disgrace that the Commission is denying these comforting reports in the British Press that our crustacean cousins are receiving the care and attention they so rightly deserve. Have our Euro-officials no heart? No sole?”

At this point, the minutes show that he started waving a batch of newspaper cuttings bearing headlines such as “What a Cockle-up!” and “Commission in Deep Water over Mussel-Flexing”.

Mr Whelkstall continued: “Members of MAB, let me just say that the Commission stands accused in these cuttings of unduly feathering the nest of these tiny creatures whose high point, at the end of their lives, is to lie dead on a bed of crushed ice on a market barrow. Yet who, fellow militants, could begrudge them more in life than that? Some people are just plain shellfish. Sorry, selfish.”

Unfortunately, MAB secretary Wendy Whelkstall (wife) broke her pencil at this point and only managed to scrawl a plea for more members to increase subscriptions from the current two, before giving up any further attempt to maintain a full record of the proceedings.

But the shellfish issue has stirred up a hornet's nest and the world is waiting to see what steps the Commission will take next.

It's a tricky one for the poor old Euro spin doctors, charged with lunacy on one side and hard-hearted cruelty on the other. No wonder they're in a tizzy.

They have tackled many slippery public relations slopes in the past. They have grappled with the curvature of cucumbers, the bendiness of bananas, the sartorial elegance of fishermen in hairnets, the sad demise of the prawn cocktail-flavoured crisp and the outlawing of traditional British cider.

News just in - in response to overwhelming pressure from Mr and Mrs Whelkstall, it has been confirmed that cockles and mussels will be entitled to three months' parental leave, plus extra time off work without penalty for 'unforeseen' family events, to improve their lot. So that's nice.

It also marks a change of tune from the spin doctors. “Have you been writing this?” they demanded after initial reports surfaced that our shellfishy friends were getting luxury treatment from the Commission.

“Look,” I responded, referring swiftly to the latest international edition of Comforting Things to Say to People Which are Guaranteed to Make Them Feel Worse, “there is no such thing as bad news.”

“Listen,” countered the spin doc, whipping out his pocket edition of Swift Retorts to Smug Homilies We Don't Want to Hear, “no news is good news.”

“That's not true any more,” I said, “not these days.”

“The trick is to keep your name up there in lights. Take the rough with the smooth. For every this-mammoth-worldwide-motorway-infrastructure-project-which-will-materially-improve-your-lives-would-not-have-been-possible-without-generous-grants-from-the-European-Commission signpost on a building site somewhere, there is a slugs-to-get-EU-subsidies-to-encourage-them-to-clean-up-their-unsightly-silvery-trails-and-improve-the-environment story in a tabloid newspaper somewhere else.”

I persevered. “Which would you rather? Stories painting the Commission as champion of the underdog, as great big softies insisting on seatbelts for sea creatures in transit as well as compulsory piped music for all battery hens, or nasty stories about horrid Eurocrats ignoring the non-human rights of those to whom fate has given just a tiny walk-on part in this pageant we call existence?”

More news just in - the Commission has announced in the past few minutes that cockles and mussels swimming in areas of decline and facing job cuts because of rockpool closures are to qualify for grants to retrain as sharks and dolphins.

MAB has issued an instant press release welcoming the move, but saying more needs to be done.

The thing that the Commission public relations people have to remember is that we have been here many times before and, alas and alack, we will be here many more times. Many of us are veterans of the long-running campaign over the status of the British sausage (meat content), the continuing battle over the credibility of British chocolate (cocoa content) and the saga over the threat to the deep green colour of the average British pea (artificial colourants content) - not to mention the Commission's scandalous attempts to terminate the historic role of the British newspaper boy (working hours content).

Cider was the worst. This is a drink little known beyond the south-west of England and in certain quarters of France. And those that drink it know little after a mere couple of pints, such is its strength. There are those on the fringes of Devon and Cornwall who are still in the dark about the end of the Korean war and Britain's EU membership, thanks to the power of the stuff.

But it was nearly wiped out by EU taxation plans aimed at wines, but embracing all 'apple-based' drinks.

The cider industry kicked up a fuss, forcing the British government to take up the case, and bemused Commission officials were introduced to yet another bizarre facet of daily life in the UK, a facet nearly ruined by Euro legislation that reaches parts national legislation carefully avoids.

No big deal, they said. Keep your cider, you funny people. And at one stroke of the pen, there was a derogation.

It was the same with prawn cocktail crisps. Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann had never even heard of a prawn cocktail crisp when he framed all that food legislation to prepare for the single market. He wasn't much impressed by the British sausage, either, and when government officials turned up at Commission headquarters trying to explain the concept of small children going out in the dark before breakfast on bikes with a bag full of newspapers, pushing them through metal slots in people's front doors, a wondrous silence fell.

Derogations, derogations everywhere, as the British way of life was once again spared the excesses of the 'baddies' in the Breydel.

In the process of Euro proposal-making, there are many similar excisions to accommodate the foibles found in all member states. But only in the UK are these credited to government officials riding in on white chargers to defeat the foe.

But the saga of cockles and mussels is a true classic. For in reality, there was nothing there to defeat.

The 1991 agreement on the transport of live animals sets down conditions for livestock, to avoid stress and suffering. British ministers insisted it created the ludicrous situation in which all creatures - including shellfish - must be treated like royalty and claimed that if it wasn't for their intervention, cockles and mussels would even now be enjoying a compulsory in-transit overnight stop at a four-star hotel somewhere.

In fact, the legislation clearly covers livestock and says that “other creatures” should be transported “as appropriate”.

The real danger is not excessive rules from Brussels, of course, but over-zealous implementation of what rules there are by national bureaucrats handing out luncheon vouchers and tickets on Concorde to everything from grasshoppers to giraffes, “as appropriate”.

News just in - MAB is now launching legal action against the Commission, challenging the interpretation of “as appropriate” and demanding luncheon vouchers and first-class air travel, on Concorde where practicable, for all journeys longer than 12 hours.

A Commission spin doctor said: “We reject this clam. It's just a bunch of molluscs.”