Alan Hammond

The really galling thing is that at the same time that this judement is coming out there is the other one concerning the bloke who hacked into the Pentagon computers. The fact that he actualy did no harm, did not cause any distress to any body, did not threaten anybody with violence is English and could have been tried in this country for the offences he committed has not stopped him being put forward for extradition to the good old USA. Once there he will face a charge that virtualy guarantees that he has no legal or human rights whatsoever and will at the very least face a jail sentence that is out of all proportion to to the offence committed. This is just the sort of hairbrained thing that causes racial hatred. Unfortunately our politicians and judges are either to thick or two blinkered to see it.

I have kept tropical fish on and off for years. At the moment I have an Amazon community tank with half a dozen discus in as well as an assortment of teras and corydoras. I have had no problem with it. It is heavily planted including floating plants and algae has never really existed. I do a partial water change once a week coupled with a general clean up, total time half an hour and that is about it. The only slight drawback as you say is the cost of the discus. But I find them very rewarding to watch as they sort themselves out and have their various domestic disputes. They also recognise individual humans who approach the tank. If I go near them they invariably get agitated and start looking to be fed. But they ignore everbody else.

I think that a certain amount of common sense has to applied as far as knives go. I have a small folding knife attached to my key ring that I find useful for cutting open parcels or packaging. But I always make a point of removing it if I have to go anywhere that it might be sensitive. I also have a fairly long bladed Italian lock knife that rarely leaves my tackle box as well as several versions of Stanley knife and various modelling knives. All of which are very useful tools but all of which could be considered lethal weapons depending on the circumstances that they are used or carried in. I still remember about thirty years ago a Police officer in Gateshead was murdered by a youth who stuck a "toy" knife with a blade of only just over an inch long into his heart.

I have used both Greenline and Java in the past year. I would say that there is not a lot to choose between them. Both supplied good quality plants in good condition. Greenline if I remember rightly also supplied a colour catalogue which made identification easier. Both being specialist plant retailers carry a much wider variety than the local fish shops can handle and are only too willing to give advice over the phone. Do not forget to thoroughly rinse all plants under a tap before putiing them in your aquarium to get rid of any unwanted pasengers like snail eggs.

I enjoyed smoking but packed it in when I was told it was bad for me. I enjoy a good drink of whiskey but I have just been told that that is bad for me and that I have to stop drinking it. I wonder how long it will be before I have to stop fishing?

This talk about telescopic rods has set me to thinking again about a project I had in mind a couple of winters ago to build my own rod. What I wanted to make was a minimum twelve foot long float rod with the line feeding through the rod itself as with some boat rods. But I could not work out a simple and easy way of threading the line through three or more four or five foot sections. So the project never got beyond the speculating stage. A telescopic though pretty much solves the problem. At most it will be three feet long when retracted and therefore a simple ram rod, stored in the butt and first section, could be used to pull the line through. When I get finished with my current winter projects I might just look into it a bit more.

From what I remember of my time in Germany there was a very strong Jager or hunter tradition especialy in the south around the Black Forest. So whilst it was perfectly acceptable to hunt boar with dogs and guns angling was always regarded as a somewhat lowly sport. A bit like we regard the so called Spanish sportsmen who torment a bull to death or the southern Europeans who trap and shoot song birds. That at least was my impression from forty years ago.

I bought mine when I was living in Belgium and was not doing very much fishing at the time for various reasons. When things settled down and I started fishing again after a good few years break I replaced all my tackle with new stuff. The telescopic was after a few outings for old times sake used solely for holding a reel while winding new line onto a spool. I can not ever recall any problems with the rings moving and when I binned it they were all as shiny as the day I bought it. I take the point about it only taking five minutes to tackle up a normal rod. But a telescopic only takes seconds and in a tight little spot it can be a lot easier to set up than a normal rod. If I could find a half decent modern equivalent then I would definitely be interested. But I would stress that I am very much one of that cruelly maligned breed known as the pleasure angler and therefore my needs are not as demanding as the more serious anglers.

On the one I had the sections were tapered and the rings were attached to bands and just slid up until they locked in place. If I remember rightly there were just as many as on a conventional rod. Each junction was reinforced with a stainless steal band. For the life of me I could not tell you what the action was like but I would imagine that in its day it was not that much worse than conventional rods.

I think if you look back over the years you will find that the weather goes in a much larger cycle than mans lifespan. Fot instance in Roman times Britain was warmer than it is today and in the fouteenth century there was nearly a hundred years of terrible gales and storms. Then in the middle ages through to roughly Victorian times there was a mini ice age. Man may be having some effect on the climate but compared with nature itself it is only minor and transient.

Not a spinning rod but I have just thrown out a 16 foot telescopic general purpose coarse rod that I bought over thirty years ago. It was made of fibreglass and by modern standards weighed a ton. But I have often wondered why no one has produced a modern equivealent as it had some distinct advantages over convential rods not the least of which was the ease in threading the line through the rings and setting up in general.

I think that what we are all guilty of most of all whether we fish a local pond or a massive reservoir is familiarity breeding contempt. Any water is dangerous at any time if proper respect is not shown. Last year I went to a small club water ( Brenkley in Northumberland ) very early in the morning. It had been raining heavily for a few weeks and the water level was way above normal. But I was safe because I know the place like the back of my hand and knew exactly where I was despite it being fairly dark still. I happily made my way around to my favourite peg on the far side of what is really nothing more than a large pond; crossing a couple of bridges that were under a few inches of water on the way without the least bit of concern. It was when I sank in over my knees on what should have been solid ground and noticed that I was actualy surrounded by water that I realised my mistake. By sheer luck I was able to get myself out and retreat to a safer spot with no more than a couple of welly fulls of water and mud. But at the end of the day there was nobody else on the water and no habitation within earshot. No other angler turned up for at least six hours. If I had not been able to get myself out what then? I dread to think. I am quite sure that others will have similar tales to tell and are equally thankful that they lived to learn by their mistake.

If you look back over the years I do not think that society has changed a whole lot. What has changed is the population which means that percentage wise there are probably the same number of thugs and nutters around as ever there were but now there are actually more of them. There is also the factor of modern communications to be taken into account. Incidents that would have barely been heard of outside of the area that they occured in are now nationwide news within hours. Not forgetting of course the loony system of political correctness that is being rammed down our throats and which states that the more evil you are the more you need to be loved, tolerated and rewarded. I am speaking incidentally from the point of view of a retired Policeman who earned his retirement the hard way and who is married to a teacher who has worked in some of the toughest Primary schools on Tyneside.

Wasn't there something a couple of years ago in the papers about a youngster who split open a bag of maggots on a bus and in doing so upset all the other passengers? The upshot of it according to one local tackle shop at the time was that legislation was brought in banning the sale of maggots in bags. You had to have a bait box and if you had forgotten to bring one then they could not sell you any maggots. The option of course being to buy a bait box from them. Now I think of it I also got the same story from a tackle shop in Wroxham when I was on holiday.

We have a couple of public urban lakes/ponds around this area that are well stocked with fish but I have to admit I wont go near any of them simply because of the nuisance caused by passersby. Dog owners seem to be the worst just letting their beasts dive into the water regardless of the poor angler that they are upsetting. To make it even worse I own a dog myself and enjoy walking her around these places. I make sure that she stays on a lead but I still get tarred with the same brush from other anglers.

I may be getting cynical in my old age but I wonder how long it is going to take for the first scam to appear in relation to the Tsunami. That is if one has not already been started.

I may be new to this forum but I am not new to either angling or life. So for what it is worth I would like to air a few views on some of the comments above. The reason that a lot of attention is paid to the loss of a few Brits as opposed to tens of thousands of locals is quite simple. Twelve to twenty is an easy number to comprehend and cope with. Twenty thousand just overwhelms the senses and lives just become statistics. For proof look at the numbers of dead in the battles of the Great war and the Second war. To say nothing of the millions of civilian dead. I have no doubt that France and Germany and several other nations who have lost a few people in this disaster are reacting in the same way by prioritising their own loss in their media reports. It is the only way to comprehend the true disaster of what has happened. If it was us Brits you Americans learnt from Newt then I am afraid that you did not learn very well. We got kicked out of Afghanistan over a hundred years ago when we ruled a quarter of the world and decided then it was best to leave these people alone to sort out their own destiny. The same happened in Iraq and Iran to say nothing of several other countries. Just in case anybody gets the wrong ideas of my beliefs, I have been a firm believer for a long time that natural disasters apart all of the evil comitted in this world can be traced back to one of three sources: Priests Politicians or Lawyers and it is amazing how often all three are found to be at the same trough.

The aluminium ones seem to be fairly common in the tackle shops in the Newcastle area. I always put a wine cork on the end of mine. It makes them a bit easier to handle, easier to find and they float when cast in.

I have an article in mind for my club web site and am trying to find out which is correct Course or Coarse. As far as I can gather so far both spellings of the word have been applied to our sport since the early 20th century. Any information would be most welcome.