David John Porter [1] (born 16 April 1948) was Conservative Member of Parliament for Waveney from 1987 to 1997.
Before going into Parliament he was co-founder and director of Vivid Children's Theatre, Head of Drama at Benjamin Britten High School in Lowestoft and Conservative Party Agent in Eltham, Norwich North and Waveney. After the 1997 election, he gave some support to efforts supporting the British film industry. After his defeat, he returned to teaching, this time at Kirkley High School in Lowestoft (now East Point Academy), where he became Head of Performing Arts. After he left teaching in 2011, he continued working as a senior examiner in performing arts and English and writer of exam and teaching materials.
In December 2015, he self-published a novel, Old Men's Dreams, on Amazon. In early 2018, he self-published a collection of short stories, Wild Beasts and Plague, which in turn was followed by a second anthology of short stories, Scoffers Will Come (2019) and a further novel, Detestable Things (2020). He also published his autobiography, A Rebel's Journey, for private circulation only.
All his publications are under his Walk in My Shoes imprint, with the logo of a pair of surgical boots he has to wear on account of his Charcot Marie Tooth condition, which has deformed his feet.
During his time in Parliament, some said that he never managed to completely step out of the shadow of his predecessor, the Conservative Cabinet Minister from Lowestoft, Jim Prior.[ citation needed ]
Porter had an in-depth knowledge of the fishing industry and sea defences[ citation needed ] and was considered by some opponents to be a near single-issue politician and a rebel, while frequently focusing on local issues, including rural affairs, housing, education, health, social security and consumer affairs and citizenship, for example.
On two occasions he was threatened with suspension, but was never actually suspended from the Conservative whip. He rebelled against the Government on the Maastricht Treaty and several fishing motions that he regarded as damaging to Lowestoft. The European Common Fisheries Policy he argued resulted in unfair national allocations of fish stocks and the discard policy of throwing dead fish back into the sea was preposterous, damaging the fishing industry in the longer term. Although some in the Conservative Party tried to select a different candidate after his selection in 1985, at the time the local Conservative Associations had total power of selection and retained Porter. He regularly campaigned for Britain to leave the European Common Fisheries Policy, preferring a system of local control with a yearly 'Sabbath' (ban of fishing) rotating through each sea area around the United Kingdom waters.
He served on Social Security, Employment and Education Select Committees during his decade in the Commons.
Although he always remained popular locally,[ citation needed ] he lost his seat in the 1997 Labour landslide to Bob Blizzard, a local councillor who in turn lost the seat back to the Conservatives in 2010, when Peter Aldous became MP.
The Broads is a network of mostly navigable rivers and lakes in the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Although the terms "Norfolk Broads" and "Suffolk Broads" are correctly used to identify specific areas within the two counties respectively, the whole area is frequently referred to as the Norfolk Broads.
Lowestoft is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. As the most easterly UK settlement, it is 110 miles (177 km) north-east of London, 38 miles (61 km) north-east of Ipswich and 22 miles (35 km) south-east of Norwich, and the main town in its district. The estimated population in the built-up area exceeds 70,000. Its development grew with the fishing industry and as a seaside resort with wide sandy beaches. As fishing declined, oil and gas exploitation in the North Sea in the 1960s took over. While these too have declined, Lowestoft is becoming a regional centre of the renewable energy industry.
The Grand Banks of Newfoundland are a series of underwater plateaus south-east of the island of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf. The Grand Banks are one of the world's richest fishing grounds, supporting Atlantic cod, swordfish, haddock and capelin, as well as shellfish, seabirds and sea mammals.
Robert John Blizzard was a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for the Suffolk constituency of Waveney from the 1997 general election to 2010.
The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products. It is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as including recreational, subsistence and commercial fishing, and the related harvesting, processing, and marketing sectors. The commercial activity is aimed at the delivery of fish and other seafood products for human consumption or as input factors in other industrial processes. The livelihood of over 500 million people in developing countries depends directly or indirectly on fisheries and aquaculture.
The goal of fisheries management is to produce sustainable biological, environmental and socioeconomic benefits from renewable aquatic resources. Wild fisheries are classified as renewable because the organisms of interest usually produce an annual biological surplus that with judicious management can be harvested without reducing future productivity. Fishery management employs activities that protect fishery resources so sustainable exploitation is possible, drawing on fisheries science and possibly including the precautionary principle.
The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is the fisheries policy of the European Union (EU). It sets quotas for which member states are allowed to catch each type of fish, as well as encouraging the fishing industry by various market interventions. In 2004 it had a budget of €931 million, approximately 0.75% of the EU budget.
Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing or game fishing, is fishing for leisure, exercise or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is professional fishing for profit; or subsistence fishing, which is fishing for survival and livelihood.
The Atlantic salmon is a species of ray-finned fish in the family Salmonidae. It is the third largest of the Salmonidae, behind Siberian taimen and Pacific Chinook salmon, growing up to a meter in length. Atlantic salmon are found in the northern Atlantic Ocean and in rivers that flow into it. Most populations are anadromous, hatching in streams and rivers but moving out to sea as they grow where they mature, after which the adults seasonally move upstream again to spawn.
Waveney is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Peter Aldous, a Conservative.
The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) is an executive agency of the United Kingdom government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It carries out a wide range of research, advisory, consultancy, monitoring and training activities for a large number of customers around the world.
Lowestoft was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Lowestoft in Suffolk. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.
Kirkley is a district within the town of Lowestoft in the East Suffolk district of the English county of Suffolk. It is located south of the centre of Lowestoft and the town's harbour and Lake Lothing. Kirkley was originally an independent village but is now part of the urban conurbation of Lowestoft. In 1901 the parish had a population of 6465.
The fishing industry in Scotland comprises a significant proportion of the United Kingdom fishing industry. A recent inquiry by the Royal Society of Edinburgh found fishing to be of much greater social, economic and cultural importance to Scotland than it is relative to the rest of the UK. Scotland has just 8.4 per cent of the UK population but lands at its ports over 60 per cent of the total catch in the UK.
The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat is a book by journalist Charles Clover about overfishing. It was made into a movie released in 2009 and was re-released with updates in 2017.
The Port of Lowestoft is a harbour in Lowestoft in the English county of Suffolk owned by Associated British Ports. It is the most easterly harbour in the United Kingdom and has direct sea access to the North Sea. The harbour is made up of two sections divided by a bascule bridge. The inner harbour is formed by Lake Lothing whilst the outer harbour is constructed from breakwaters.
Fishing in Cornwall, England, UK, has traditionally been one of the main elements of the economy of the county. Pilchard fishing and processing was a thriving industry in Cornwall from around 1750 to around 1880, after which it went into an almost terminal decline. During the 20th century the varieties of fish taken became much more diverse and crustaceans such as crab and lobster are now significant. Much of the catch is exported to France due to the higher prices obtainable there. Though fishing has been significantly damaged by overfishing, the Southwest Handline Fishermen's Association has started to revive the fishing industry. As of 2007, stocks were improving. The Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee is one of 12 committees responsible for managing the corresponding Sea Fisheries District. The Isles of Scilly Sea Fisheries Committee is responsible for the Scilly district.
The fishing industry in England covers the fish processing industry and fishing trawler companies that fish around England.
Michael Graham (1898–1972) CMG OBE was a British fisheries scientist, author, and ecologist. He was the director of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food fisheries laboratory in Lowestoft (1945–1958), now known as the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas). His classic book, The Fish Gate, published in 1943, paints a picture of the near-collapse of the British fishing industry through overfishing that occurred before both the First and the Second World Wars.
June Alison Mummery is a British politician, and businesswoman. She was elected as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East of England constituency in the 2019 European parliamentary election, a role she held until the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU. Mummery is also the managing director of BFP Eastern Ltd, fish market auctioneers who operate in Lowestoft.