Maritime metaphors

Sir, – Fintan O'Toole's shoal of maritime metaphors contains a few red herrings but he is right that the Government is all at sea ("Our maritime identity is as thin as a slice of sushi", Opinion & Analysis, February 2nd).

We do not even pretend that we can patrol our own waters.

But when the European Commission rules that we cannot be trusted to police quotas under the Common Fisheries Policy (ie weighing fish on land), we really are up ship’s creek. – Yours, etc,