Alphabet Soup

[AberdeenAngus]

My previous thread re the Banning of all field sports has resulted in posturing by representatives of various bodies, all claiming to be acting in our best interests, and arguing about who received minutes or agendas for whatever.

 

As a returning "prodigal Son"(!!??) to the sport would somebody care to enlighten me objectively as to who the hell are SAA, NFA, NAA, ABCDEFG, NASA etc as I am well and truly confused by all of the initials of copious bodies who all appear to be representing us.

 

For a poor naive person like me, who enjoys angling but realises there is a real threat to my pastime, the saying "United we stand, divided we fall," springs to mind. Is there one national body to which all anglers should subscribe to ensure our voice is heard?

[will this name be ok]

here are a few to get you going

 

N.F.A. = National Federation of Anglers

S.A.A. = SPECIALIST ANGLERS’ ALLIANCE

N.A.A. = National Angling Alliance

E.A. = ENVIROMENTAL AGENCY

 

Hope this helps

[waterman1013]

Aberdeen

 

"Is there one national body to which all anglers should subscribe to ensure our voice is heard?"

 

Unfortunately not yet.

 

If you look at the SAA pages via the link to the left of the AnglersNet front page you can see the structures as it is now and a view of the future for angling from SAA.

 

Mike

[poledark]

Further to this question, could someone explain the setup of the NFA. They seem to have been around for years, have individual membership and seem to be truly "national"

 

If this is so (and I claim complete ignorance) why do we not all join them?

 

One thing that is prety certain is that we individual anglers are not going to be able to join the "National Anglers Alliance"

 

As Newt would say "ROFLMAO"

 

National?????

 

Alliance?????

 

Leave it out, who you kidding, pull the other one,

Den

[davidP]

The NFA is very much club based with individual membership being a comparatively recent innovation. They used to be practically the only body involved in the running and politics of coarse fishing in the UK and were recognised by the government as such. As we know however must specimen hunters are individuals and don't join clubs and hence didn't feel that the NFA represented them and so set up their own bodies with their own agendas not always in synch with the NFA. There was also a large downturn in NFA membership in the late 80's & early 90's as the number of anglers joining clubs diminshed and rents increased. Many clubs decided that the several hundred pounds afiliation fee (based on membership) was better spent elsewhere. The myth has since been propagated that all the NFA do is run the Nationals and Team England and little else. This is largely put about by people who've never bothered to find out what they do of course. It certainly wasn't helped either by the number of minimum sized match groups that joined purely to fish the Nationals whilst the bigger clubs were leaving, as they're a vociferous bunch who like to make themselves heard. As a result the annual Conference, about the only thing that ever got publicity, was often reduced to people arguing about match related issues. In the meantime of course the real work was done in the background with minimal publicity because nobody was interested!

 

The NFA is structured into 8 regions each with their own local volunteer officers who report in to headquarters in Derby. These are the people that sit on all the regional consultative bodies and the like. Headquarters meantime deals with it all on a national level. They also deal with things like Lottery & other external funding, fishing right disputes and protection of rights, pollution, legal advice, cormorants, anti-angling, fishery management advice, assistance in negotiations & valuations, coaching and disabled angling

 

I must confess that I've been out of it for a

couple of years now so I'm a bit out of date, but if you have a look at the NFAs new website they detail a bit more of what they do, although the site obviously isn't finished yet.

[Paul_D]

Go on then......ROFLMAO..????

[Jem]

rolling on the floor laughing my arse off

[Paul_D]

Right..........!!!

[poledark]

Thanks David, it is as I thought. I used to pick up odd snippets re the NFA, mainly critism of their supposed match bias. I was also aware that they were recognised as the spokespeople for coarse anglers.

 

So what went wrong? I do remember one large club that I was a member of, dropping out of the NFA, it was very expensive for them with 2500 members. This club embarked on a policy of purchasing the land and the waters that they contained, and felt that they did not need the NFA.

This made sense at the time, perhaps this would be a good time for the NFA to make a bid for new members, I for one feel some affection for the "old boys" that used to run it.

 

I shall take a look at their site.

 

Den