like the uprated four wheel drive road fund, vehicle tracking , banning smoking in public places its going to happen, make no bones about it, the choice is drive your head in the sand and imagine it wont happen or get behind a common banner and shaft them back, the only way you are going to win is to be a real threat to any govenment party, how many anglers are there ??, you need someone to make it known that if they want to f*** us about then they are going to get the same in return, however if as normally happens in blighty its a dog with no teeth then we are all going to get laughed at, any party that wants to be voted in will promise you a night in bed with the the virgin mary if it would get your vote, once in you know that all those promises will be cast aside, look at labours track record alone on failed promises and hidden taxes, left to thier own devices we will get all these promised ` anglers perks` when there are no more fish to be plundered, however we will be penalised if we cast into the sea without that magic piece of paper, once its in place then i can see a big push to prosecute as many unpaid anglers as they can to show resolve, ok after the intial 6 months it may all die down a bit but by then lots of people have fines to pay, they dont have to come to some godforsaken rockmark, a wheel clamp will do, theres plenty of private clamping companies out there, we are talking a govenment body, like the police, before they pull you over they know if your cars taxed -insured and who should be driving it, computers wonderfull things, it would not take much to see if the car parked up at a fishing mark has the owner with a licience, a comp , hello theres mister fisheries person, you want to book in, no licience, sorry mate, then you get the private clubs , like seahams pier lads, they pull the memberships and check that the club has made sure , and possibly the club gets a hit for having unlicienced members, bit like a pub manager getting it for underage drinkers, if this is a stealth tax as many fear then the govenment will go to any lengths to get it, personally i have signed to say stuff your licience, however that now means that they know who i am and where i live
, my own personal opinion is that this like so many other white papers this one will never materialize. it just could not be done, can you imagine the man power and resourses used to police the whole of coastline and can you emagine council employees walking up and down our coast in the middle of the night or the winter, christ you cant even get them to work past 12 noon on a friday. plus if we as anglers ALL!!!! stick together and say sod it, what can they do??????. but like i said i cant see it working.
