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