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Sprat spat

• Mark Mardell
• 1 Oct 07, 11:05 PM

It鈥檚 a factory like none I have ever seen before. Rows of women in gumboots and waterproof aprons stand at their stations, sharp little knives in hands, chopping the heads off tiny silver fishes.

The remains drop down on to a sort of dis-assembly line and end up tipped into a vast bucket of miniature fish heads. No wonder there are so many cats in town.

Over the other side of the factory, women pass long needles through the fish and hang them in ranks, battalion upon battalion of spratus spratus balticus ready to go into the smoking machine.

I鈥檓 in Latvia on the Baltic sea, at a firm famous for its smoked sprats. Very tasty they are too. I鈥檓 doing some research, and recording TV and radio pieces for a series on relationships between the European Union and Russia, ahead of their summit at the end of the month.

I won鈥檛 give too much away, but the question is whether the whale next door is still pushing the minnows around.

Although the company meets strict EU standards, the Russians say there is too much of a certain chemical in the sprats, which are very popular in Russia, and they鈥檝e banned imports.

Everyone at the company is sure that the Russians are just trying to protect their market, and use their economic muscle to show who鈥檚 boss.

It鈥檚 an interesting story, the downside is, as ever filming in factories, the dress code. In my time, I鈥檝e worn plenty of shower caps while filming in factories, but we do look right sprats dressed in the pale pink robes that are meant to keep the fish hygienic in our presence.

Baltic Knights of the rosy robe? Or a better headline might be 鈥淪prat spat prat鈥�.

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Flemish flamenco

• Mark Mardell
• 1 Oct 07, 03:52 PM

Thanks for all your interesting comments about Belgium. Apologies for calling one of the colours in the Belgian flag 鈥済old鈥� rather than 鈥測ellow鈥�: it is my come-uppance for being pedantic. In heraldry there is no such thing as 鈥測ellow鈥� and the flag derives from the arms of Brabant which are: Sable, a lion rampant or, armed and langued gules (a gold lion on a black background with a red tongue).

Michael makes an interesting point, that my views are very Brussels-centric. Well, it鈥檚 true I do live in the city and my perceptions are coloured by my experiences. But in my limited experience, the Flemish outside Brussels are not that much more sensitive about their language. Yes, we all know stories of post offices and town halls where the perfect English speaker requires you to bring a translator but I don鈥檛 find that in the shops in those towns.

Perhaps both the French and Dutch speakers deserve more understanding. We British are in a privileged position, speaking what is rapidly become the world鈥檚 lingua franca. It鈥檚 largely an accident of history, and down to America. I think we would be immensely prickly if we felt our language was under attack.

Doing a regular but random trawl of euro blogs I was tickled by and flag. I suggested the Flemish had more in common with the Anglo-Saxons than with the French. says they would get on better with the English than the Scots do.

A propos of not much, I was struck by something I read this weekend about flamboyant Flems. The book suggested that the Flemish-born Carlos I of Spain introduced a lot of his fellow countrymen to the Spanish court, where they were known for their colourful, extravagant dress.

Derivations of 鈥淔lemish鈥� supposedly came to have this meaning, and that is where 鈥�flamenco鈥� comes from. Can this possibly be true? I鈥檓 somewhat doubtful (鈥渇lamboyant鈥� is from 鈥渇laming鈥�, not 鈥淔lemish鈥�). But if even half-true, it suggests that national stereotypes can rather change over the centuries.

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Undesirable and untouchable?

• Mark Mardell
• 1 Oct 07, 01:00 AM

I suppose it is an act of faith, a declaration of purpose, but it always surprises me when senior politicians make bold announcements with no idea of how they are going to turn them into reality. This, it seems, is the case with Gordon Brown鈥檚 if they are convicted of dealing drugs to children or having guns.

It was one of those delightful moments that had me chuckling in the kitchen when the Secretary of State for Communities, Hazel Blears, was interviewed on the Today programme.The point was put to her that, given EU law, this wasn鈥檛 possible.

She answered that people would like such a law. She found a few figures to quote. She sounded firm and purposeful. Almost. But it was clear she hadn鈥檛 got the slightest idea how such a policy proposal would be translated into action.

Certainly, diplomats in Brussels have not been asked to look at ways of squaring such a policy of expulsions with European rules. But is the assumption that expulsions are forbidden under EU law completely accurate?

The reason it could be difficult to expel people from one EU country to another is that the European Union regards the : "Every EU citizen is entitled to travel freely around the Member States of the European Union, and settle anywhere within its territory."

But according to a 2003 directive, nation states are in fact allowed to expel certain categories of undesirables: the 2003 directive specifically singles out those who are "an unreasonable burden on the social security system鈥� and those identified on the grounds of 鈥減ublic policy, public security or public health".

However, Mr Brown鈥檚 promise is under greater danger from , which came into force in British law last year. It repeats the grounds for expulsion but says such conduct "must represent a sufficiently serious and present threat which affects the fundamental interests of the state". To many ears, that will sound like planning acts of terror rather than selling weed to 17-year-olds. I could argue that gun crime was a present threat to the fundamental interests of the state, but I bet I would find a judge to disagree with me.

When most people think about this they will remember the recent case of the killer of the headmaster Philip Lawrence, who will be allowed to stay in Britain rather than be returned to his native Italy, when he finishes his prison sentence. But that is because he was five when his parents moved to Britain.

The European directive that allows expulsions also states: 鈥淥nly in exceptional circumstances, where there are imperative grounds of public security, should an expulsion measure be taken against Union citizens who have resided for many years in the territory of the host Member State, in particular when they were born and have resided there throughout their life.鈥�

The second directive, again, toughens this up. If someone has been in a country for 10 years, they can only be expelled under 鈥渆xceptional circumstances for overriding considerations of public security鈥�.

It was the that looked at these laws and the and decided the killer should stay.

So will Mr Brown succeed? According to a spokesman for the , he may have a problem. 鈥淚f the government invokes a clause saying that someone is a threat to national security, then it will be up to British judges, not Brussels, to rule on a case by case basis,鈥� the spokesman says.

Indeed, the problem for Mr Brown is that it is the British appeals system that decides who stays and who doesn鈥檛, not him, not the commission. What is astonishing is that, as far as I can find out, there hasn鈥檛 been a single conversation about how this serious policy proposal might be turned into reality.

While I am waiting to hear from the ministers how they plan to keep Mr Brown鈥檚 promise, it鈥檚 worth reflecting on the value of such expulsions. Aside from .

There is a wider issue here: how far away should we be able to send undesirables? If a Mancunian commits a crime in Macclesfield, they can鈥檛 be deported back to Manchester.

But perhaps there is an idea here. The idea of internal exile has a long if equivocal history from Rome to Russia. While is not a sovereign state it is a country, and one with its own laws and If errant Dutchmen could be chucked out of Dover, is it so daft to send Londoners who commit crimes in Glasgow back across the border?

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