Article In The Times - Tories/Angling

[Elton]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,...1232629,00.html

[Chris Plumb]

Link's not coming up Elton?

 

 

C.

[KK]

Same here, Chris - a blank page...

[KK]

It says:

 

quote:

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Tories get into deep water on angling

By Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE Conservative Party has sparked a row with anglers over moves to scrap fishing licences.

 

The plan was first mooted last year by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, who said that it was an outdated tax on leisure. But there was such an outcry from fishing organisations that he was forced into a U-turn.

 

Yet 12 months later the Tories have resurrected the idea, with a party consultation document on field sports that puts the option back on the agenda. Tories believe that it could be a vote-catcher and that it would encourage more people to take up the sport.

 

The document suggests that some people think that the £23.25_annual licences for coarse fishing and the £62.25 for salmon and sea trout are an “unfair and bureaucratic tax” and that as only about one million of the country’s four million anglers actually pay for a licence it means that “a minority is effectively paying for everyone else to fish”.

 

A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance said that the organisation was “surprised, to say the least, that this is being raised again”. He said: “We disagree strongly with the abolition of licences. The cash from the licence raises £16.5 million a year, which goes to the Environment Agency and is used to clean, restock and preserve waterways. If that was taken away, who would pay for our rivers?”

 

The Salmon and Trout Association is so alarmed that it has written to James Gray, the Conservative rural affairs spokesman, opposing the scrapping of rod licences. The association said that it did not accept the fees were unfair and bureaucratic and that most anglers see their licence as “funding crucial environmental and regulatory work in support of the resource around which their sport is based; it gives them something of a moral high ground”.

 

Cash from the licences is ring-fenced to fund the Environment Agency’s fisheries department and gives anglers influence in decisions about the aquatic environment.

 

Mr Gray defended the stance, adding that the party was not committed to scrapping the licence but wished to debate the issue. The party and the main angling bodies will meet in October.

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[Peter Waller]

Pointless meeting if they are not going to be in power

 

Whose agenda is this I wonder.

[RUDD]

Oiiiiiiii all you politicians out there.

 

WE the angling public WANT to pay for our licence/s each year.

 

If you want the vote of the 4 million UK anglers why not advertise on PRIME TIME TV the fact that anglers pay 16.5 MILLION out of our own pockets each year towards the upkeep of the nations waterways which are there for ALL of the general public.

[Guest sslatter]

I was listening to a radio phone-in the other night, and the subject of angling rod licences and permits came up.

 

One caller had a novel idea: a Rod Licence to be sold with every new rod (unless already purchased); or to put it another way, no new rod should be sold unless a valid rod licence was shown. His stance was that this would put off the "weekend" anglers, who this particular angler thought were mostly responsible for the litter and "bad angling" problems, which beset our sport.

 

Of course, he had totally overlooked sea angling, and hadn't thought about how his new "rule" could be applied to sea anglers.

 

I'm against a sea rod licence btw, but grudgingly admit the need for a freshwater one.

 

[ 26. August 2004, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: Graham X ]

[phil dean]

KK:

Same here, Chris - a blank page...

much like many of the old threads you lost on your site Keith

 

nice to see you on here.

 

I am happy to pay for a river licence on the basis that the money is ring fenced, and would pay for a sea one IF there was to be a 5 year ban on commercial trawling in the North Sea/Irish Sea and the money was used exclusively to help those who were unable to make a living to get into new businesses (and to police our waters for vessells breaking the ban). We might then get a decent fishery back.

[wearyone]

A blank page, no more than you would expect from the Tory's

£23-00 a year, not much if it keeps the Tory's out

And another thing, not a whimper was heard when tax payers money went into buying off the salmon nets, why not subsidise the sea fishermen, not to fish?

 

[ 26. August 2004, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: wearyone ]

[Lid]

One think I don't agree though is the extortionate cost of a salmon licence!! Very unfair.