Who represents us? A serious question!

[Peter Waller]

I'm not suggesting 5 or 6 million snail mail letters Leon. But an up-to-date web site, maintained and sponsored by the angling trade (minimal increase in tackle prices, or minimal reduction in profits,) is surely not beyond the realms of possibility. Surely e-mailed news letters once a month would not be beyond modern computer capability?

[snotty]

Until the All New Unified Super Anglers Alliance is spawned and can sell itself to ordinary anglers I think the concept of 'angler dipping into pocket to raise funds' will be a non starter.

 

Question 1 will be... what do I get for my tenner that I don't already get for nowt?

 

The problem of apathy will remain, until the work currently being done on our behalf is realised by the masses and the need for funding is established in the minds of carper, matchman, beachcaster and fluffchucker alike.

[Leon Roskilly]

Peter Waller:

We want to know whats going on.

Well, for sea anglers there's:

 

http://www.anglers-net.co.uk/sacn/latest

 

(see especially the item that tries to keep track of what the various sea angling bodies are up to http://www.anglers-net.co.uk/sacn/latest/i...ex.php?view=136 )

 

You wouldn't believe the amount of work that goes into that, finding information sifting though many websites, following up on emails from other anglers and angling organisations.

 

Anyone care to take on that task for freshwater anglers?

 

Or pay for someone else to do it?

 

In finding/recieving all that information, I come across a lot of important stuff that is of interest to other angling organisations (fresh and saltwater) and some individual anglers, but too technical/boring to go onto SACN latest.

 

That gets passed on by email, and often kicks off major action by those organisations, but often adds to the information/workload overload of those on the receiving end.

 

Then there are the items that only go out by eemail to the SACN membership (free for anyone to join).

 

(And to think that just a few short years ago I didn't know the difference between a trammel net and an NFSA blazer!)

 

Now if just a few moaners were to roll up their sleeves and get on with it, we'd be home and dry!!

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Peter Waller]

What Snotty has just written makes perfect sense and takes us back to the 'we need to know what is going on' agenda!

 

[ 28. August 2004, 12:45 AM: Message edited by: Peter Waller ]

[Leon Roskilly]

Peter Waller:

Surely e-mailed news letters once a month would not be beyond modern computer capability?

No, but to mass mail millions of anglers, gathering and keeping up to date with their ever changing email addresses, without falling foul of data protection and anti-spammer legislation is both very expensive in equipment, software and manpower.

 

SACN is a free to join network serving a possible 2 million sea anglers (Prime Ministers Strategy Unit), or 1.1 million households that have at least one sea angler (DEFRA Environmental & Fisheries Enforcement Review).

 

Fortunately only some 200 individual email addresses have registered so far (although some of those are Federations etc = some 10,000 individuals).

 

(people keep changing email addresses without remembering to advise SACN, so every mailing has to be followed up with snail mail post to remind some members to advise their new email address - more admin and postage!)

 

It all sounds so simple, but not until you try it!

 

Tight Lines - leon

[phil hackett]

Come in No9. Are you out there LEE?

[KK]

Hi ratchet,

 

re: the TAA (and I think this is a point fundemental to Peter's question).

 

Having had a long term personal experience of the TAA and one of its key supporting clubs, I can assure you that neither the TAA nor any local club represents me or my interests in any way shape or form.

 

I am not alone in this view.

 

Locally organised groups like this (and don't get me wrong, on balance I'd rather have the TAA around than not) only represent their own interests and - if you're lucky - the interests of member clubs, and - if you're really lucky - your interests too: but very often those interests fly in the face of what's mandated by the rank and file anglers within these "catchments".

 

PM me if you want some of the gory proof of this...

 

So, some (or more) of us become alienated by the non-representative agendas some clubs and lobby groups like the TAA espouse, and reject these organisations.

 

As a result, (and this is a demonstrable fact up here), there is a significant body of anglers for whom these local bodies clearly aren't a voice.

 

And besides (the thinking goes): why do I have to be part of a club/local lobby group and accept their agendas as my own, before I can feel I am being represented?

 

This is the whole reason I set up a "non aligned" angling website: I know there are a lot of lads and lasses up here that are utterly disillusioned with their "representatives", and have withdrawn their support for them.

 

On the site I refer to, anyone can contribute freely and honestly (and politely!), discuss matters that concern them and - if they want - use it to get issues addressed formally by asking me to raise them at the twice-yearly North East Fisheries Forum hosted by the EA, which I'm attending as an "independent".

 

Representation and the right to a voice shouldn't be conditional on accepting that the voice doesn't actually say what you want it to.

 

[ 28. August 2004, 05:21 AM: Message edited by: KK ]

[KK]

This thread is raising very important issues, but isn't it preaching to the converted, so to speak?

 

I've always worried that because it's so easy to get into the sport, there is no incentive, much less compulsion, for people to look past their own noses as far as the politics is concerned.

 

In other words, while there may well be 5 million anglers, most really couldn't care less about the big issues and - if angling ceased to exist tomorrow - would turn to golf or whatever without so much as missing a beat.

 

Leon makes the compelling point above that the info is out there - but that the vast majority just aren't interested.

 

While this is the case, it hardly matters who the biggest (loudest) representative group is, because it is still only representing those that want to be represented - and the greatest proportion of anglers by far clearly couldn't care less about that.

 

We should arguably be putting much more effort into figuring out how to engage the millions of potential voices out there that currently don't appear to give a toss as long as they can wet a line occasionally.

 

But how? I'm sure it is doable, but not without a huge shift in the fundementals of how angling "works"...

 

[ 28. August 2004, 03:38 AM: Message edited by: KK ]

[wearyone]

All serious points, there can be few other major participant sports/ activities that do not have a single truly representative body.

 

03:38 AM, don't you ever sleep Keith?

Bet you don't have a single mirror in your house.

[Peter Waller]

There is some good stuff coming out of this thread, some of it echoing my own thoughts and much of it highlighting the perceived problems. We have, as we do on AN, gone of on a tangeant from the original question though!

 

How many anglers do the representative bodies actually represent?

 

Okay, so mass e-mailing is not practical. But surely, if minutes are kept, and probably entered up on a computer, it is not beyond the wit of man, or even woman for that matter, that a web site can not be maintained by a consortium of our major representatives.

 

As yet no one has answered another question. Do we need both the NAA and the JAGB? There seems to be an incredible amount of duplication by our representative bodies. Not only duplication, but duplication of duplication!

 

Atleast I now know who represents me, I think. It would be nice to know that they are actually, as I'm sure they are, active! But where is the evidence?

 

No, I'm not decrying the work that has and does go on behind the scenes, I'm decrying the fact that it is behind the scenes.

 

[ 28. August 2004, 08:43 AM: Message edited by: Peter Waller ]