have a read....

[mark]

so, has anyone read the white paper yet??

http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/sea-angling/consultation.pdf

[treeboa]

and in it they admit that policing the comercial guys is a problem, sorry untill we see something not only constuctive but also workable they can shove the licience were the sun dont shine, end the day the sea is not like a course angling venue were fish can be bred and stocked, it needs the raping of the sea to stop, none uk boats should be told theres a 12 mile exclusion zone, tresspass and your boat will be siezed and not returned, i see little that will actually benifit us, i pay a course licience and can see the benifits, the sea licience in my eyes is no more than a soft target to raise goivenment coffers and provide overpaid officials with nice salaries

[Red5]

Have you let DEFRA know your views Treeboa? If we all let them know what we think then we obviously have more ammo

[Oblickta]

I'm on the final draught of my response to the consultation. There's still plenty of time so come on if you haven't already! Just a few words will suffice.

Defra, UK - Consultations - Consultation on a Recreational Sea Angling Strategy for England

[treeboa]

that is basically the opinion i sent to them some time back yes, obviously worded a touch better, personally i trust defra as much as i would trust a loose rattlesnake, they were the moving force in the animal welfare bill which affected me as a snake keeper/breeder, , despite promises from them they ignored a lot of the `common mans` thoughts and wishes and basically did as they pleased, to go back to the point in question , i have read they intend providing more launching positions, that though is of help to a small percentage of anglers who have thier own or part ownership of a boat, on wirral even though there are a fair number of launch places the local govenment have seen fit to impose a permit scheme in place and unless you satisfy set criteria ( obviously inc money) you get done for launching/recovering, so now we are to pay for a licience at cost to us, we get a boat and again we have to pay up for something we have possibly paid for if not only in upkeep anyway, i dont know if that situation is in place in other parts of the country, so were does it end, ooo we have provided car parks for you anglers, but you also have to pay a charge to use them ?, you look at the "golden mile" and in plain view here they are already saying they cant police it, so in this we are no better off because the fisheries protection boats are tied up somewhere, liken this to the vehicle road tax, we pay that and its supposed to be for the upkeep of our roads, and here we are many years down the line, toll roads, congestion charges, they are even now thinking of having a system in place were your car has a modded gps installed and they charge you for miles driven, i have no doubt that will be rated by your vehicles cubic capacity as well-the road tax is, mine is a lone voice, you may say if many lone voices sent thier thoughts then people would take notice, however you only have to look at the govenments `cut` in fuel costs, how many complained, how much less has the govenment taken so the cost of a gallon is less, some diesel vehicles can run on a mixture of veg oil, untill recently the c and e demanded you paid duty if you used it, recently there has been a relaxation on people using a max of 2500 ltrs per year, not because the govenment is in a giving mood but because it cost them too much and they lost money trying to collect the duty, so as long as you keep reciepts and a log book you are not lible for duty on veg oil used as fuel as long as you dont exceed the allowance

stuff the launching points, lets see a couple of years of `free` proven benifits to the angler and then lets talk about licencing payment, and lets not be conned by seeing more cod one year, we all know that the cod and other fish can have bumper breeding years and you see a big influx of small fish initially-untill the nets take them, you would not go and lash out a big wad of cash on some super duppa unproven fishing kit unless you saw it in action and it proved its worth, i wonder if `our` money will be used to clean up pollution ??, of course that could be to our benifit, though fining properly the *******s that caused the pollution would be the better way

[treeboa]

Consultation questions





6
Section 4
Page 8
Which species do you value most?

7
Section 5
Page 12
If a sea angling licence were introduced and the revenue spent to provide benefits for sea anglers, would you be willing to pay and how much?


9
Section 7
Page 15
What would you spend money on to improve your enjoyment of sea angling?
10
Section 9
Page 18
What new sources of information are you aware of that are available to build an evidence base? E.g. data on catches, social studies, angling business turnovers, numbers of people going on charter vessels year on year etc

[Oblickta]

If a sea angling licence were introduced and the revenue spent to provide benefits for sea anglers, would you be willing to pay and how much?

What would you spend money on to improve your enjoyment of sea angling?

I've told them that I'm not paying to fish in the sea until we have competent fisheries management and that doesn't include making and breaking promises like the bass MLS. Iv'e also told them that I'd rather fish once or twice a year in Iceland and Norway than pay for a licence to fish here.

We've been telling the EU where to go on the issue of the euro for years now and still didn't sign the Maastrict treaty so why cant we tell them to eff off with their fisheries policies?

The only chance we have is for everyone to stick together and refuse to pay a penny until we see results.

[pottsy]

I have just started to go through this document with my red pen. I have only reached page 6. I can see I wont have much ink left in it by the time I have finished if this page is anything to go by. To quote objective 2 out of the four given -

To capitalise on the economic potential of the sport to optimise the economic and social return to coastal economies and society and identify ways to re-invest expenditure to provide further benefits

............expenditure is whats already been spent - you cant re-invest it as its already gone ...what they mean is re-invest revenue

They talk about using management tools and use SWOT analysis but.... they dont know the difference between expenditure and revenue
objectives should be SMART which stands for
Specific
Measurable
Acheivable
Realistic and
Timely

"further benefits" is far from specific and how do they intend measuring social return? Realistic? I don't think so...

[paulthespark]

I,v been bleating on about the state of our totally depleted fiosh stocks ever since joining this forum and i must say i have found, to a certain degree , apathy amongst some of our members concerning this subject,if we all united and made our voice heard would it make any difference to DEFRA i doubt it, [they are only interested in getting money out of us e.g rod licence] and don,t give a stuff about our grievences .The goverment is no better, let any body fish our waters if they are in the E.U .who in spain checks the catches when they are landed in cadiz nobody that,s who. like the rest of the europeans they don,t give a flying f*** about our fish stocks.im afraid even with a united front from us sea anglers our concerns would not be listened to by the powers to be, and in 20 years time the cod around our shores and not only cod ,other spieces of fish:will be almost extinct

the eternal optamist

[The Great Wallsendo]

I have just started to go through this document with my red pen. I have only reached page 6. I can see I wont have much ink left in it by the time I have finished if this page is anything to go by. To quote objective 2 out of the four given -

To capitalise on the economic potential of the sport to optimise the economic and social return to coastal economies and society and identify ways to re-invest expenditure to provide further benefits

............expenditure is whats already been spent - you cant re-invest it as its already gone ...what they mean is re-invest revenue

They talk about using management tools and use SWOT analysis but.... they dont know the difference between expenditure and revenue
objectives should be SMART which stands for
Specific
Measurable
Acheivable
Realistic and
Timely

"further benefits" is far from specific and how do they intend measuring social return? Realistic? I don't think so...

Ali you're giving me coursework nightmares please stop with the SWOT and SMART stuff....or are you taking the PESTLE?

[treeboa]

i for one will not be paying to fish, i pay to coarse fish and i can see the results from doing that, if and its a big if we see an improvement in sea fishing then my attitude to fish in the sea will change, somehow i cant see me paying as with everything this and other govenments have done to date is let any and all rape our seas bowing from the waist to the commercial guys when they say anything, the bass min size proves that, you look in any supermarket and you see farmed bass for sale so there is really no reason not to raise the minimum size, yes i realise that you cant dictate what takes your hook however we put back alive, unlike the netters, nor will it open up some of the hotspots we know about-nor the closed piers, when you think about the fishing fleet and how they say fewer and few people are running the boats, is this nothing more than a greedy government trying to reclaim the lost revenue

[Oblickta]

Recreational Sea Angling Strategy for England?

Somebody pointed out that the document only refers to England and I cant find any reference to the rest of the UK. Does this mean that the rest of the UK have seperate consultations or the licence will only apply to England?

[pottsy]

Ali you're giving me coursework nightmares please stop with the SWOT and SMART stuff....or are you taking the PESTLE?

just wait till I get started with Porter's FIVE FORCES On a serious note if this was a uni assignment it would fail as it is one of the most badly written documents I have read in a while - I have flicked through to success criteria now....number of anglers - they are going to assess through a survey???? how, who, when - on the rockends in the dark and the next bit.....social structure. They reckon a successful assessment is "anecdotally assessed". That is an astonishing admission for a government department to use as success criteria as it is openly admitting that their information is guesswork and thereby legally flawed. It will be interesting to read their social structure classification groups.....can I suggest that they include Chavs as that one will be dead easy to record if they head to Blyth pier when the mackeral is in

This paper is amateurish and I am heartened to read it - gives us anglers loads of scope for legal challenge

[treeboa]

gives us anglers loads of scope for legal challenge

nice thought to have that available, however who is going to fund it, if no one is going to pay for a licience then fewer are going to be willing to pay for fighting against something they wont pay for anyway

number of anglers - they are going to assess through a survey???? how, who, when - on the rockends in the dark

ooo nice southwest wind, lets go and see how many anglers are fishing horden, ooo now its a force 10, them north east hardened anglers will be out fishing in hoards, lets get the bins out and look, ooo none, obviously there are not a lot of people in the north east actually fishing, so thats sorted


you know i cant wait to see how they actually intend policing this one, if you are not actually caught fishing can you be done for being `equipped` or for ` intent`, i can think of one excuse - honest officer i aint been fishing, i`m havin an affair and the missus thinks i have gone fishin - got to look the part aint i

[davem2005]

Hi Guys,
Sorry to not reply to this earlier but it has been a busy week.

If anyone wants any help to come up with a reply I would be more than happy to help, be it a reply from a club, a tackle shop or an individual. I am not proposing to write it for you but would be happy to advise on any item you are unsure of. The legal side of these documents is confusing, the wording they use does not help. I have been involved with this stuff for around 2 years and have taken the time to learn the lingo.

The one thing I stressed to defra regarding meetings they proposed with anglers was that they kept it in anglers terms. Its no good using wording that most dont understand.

I was down in London last monday where I attended a meeting of angling representatives which was called the "2008 Angling Summit"...I have to say that as a NE angler I left that meeting feeling very dissolutioned. I wont say any more about that meeting for the simple reason the meeting was held under "charter house rules" (google it)

Its not a case of secret meetings ..its a case of my lack of knowledge as to what I can write about that meeting untill an official press release comes out, I will speak up on every issue raised that may/could affect NE anglers...just I would rather not end up in the tower for doing it. If its really important they can take charter house and fill it with assylum seekers for what I care.

I will be posting over the weekend on one issue raised ( rules or no rules) that NE anglers should could consider VERY seriously. Its a long subject so not for this thread.

With regard responses.

1. Try and make the meeting on the 4th
2. Spend an hour or two to read what may affect YOUR sport for the next 50 years.
3. Come up with a reply from a personal point of view or as a club.
4. Need help...please dont hesitate to ask. I cant write a response for you or your club but I will spend as much time helping you as I can. Send me a PM or email via this site and I will get in touch.

Cheers
Dave