letter from david miliband

[Glenn Kilpatrick]

I don't know how your fishing clubs work a bit further North. I would be interested to learn from Sless more about their club (cleaden did you say it was called ?). The Whitby fishing club fishes twice a week with the matches based on a heaviest bag of fish format. We weigh in at the same time same place twice a week for 6 months. All it would take is a 1 off visit from a licence inspector to check the club members at the weigh in and he could ensure evryone had a licence and deal with those who didnt.

It also concerns me that if bag limits were to be introduced they could also be checked at the weigh in. If any of this comes into fruition Whitby fishing club may not be able to continue as it always has done. For me that would be a very sad day especially after fish stocks have been mismanaged so badly for so long and all this could have been avoided with some tough decisions a few years back. :mad2:

 

[sless]

yes we fish for 6 months of the year
as you say weighing in the same time same place every week

 

[PAUL.S.HARRISON.SNR]

letter to miliband from harra

letter to miliband from harra

this attachment is the letter paul/harra sent out to mp's of all partys

 

[treeboa]

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

 

[Topfly]

Hi treeboa, i wonder what will happen if the scottish parliament throw the white paper on rsa strategy out,and the english are shortsighted enough to push it through. as you probably know you dont need a licence to freshwater fish over the border,(apart from game fish ).do you think they could handle more tourists,

 

[treeboa]

if scotland throws it then you just know that we will go through, end the day its a lucrative bit of easy money to be made and now they have buggered the revenue up from the fags they need to recoup it from elsewhere, the problem is if scotland do dump it then that part of the uk could be barren for fishing as that could be the only area unprotected, though the tourist industry would love it initially, till it was realised that scotland was fished out, some of the lochs are near barren, was it loch fyne that used to have a good head of cod and haddock till the trawlers moved in ??, no ifs or buts something drastic has to be done, but untill the trawlermen are stopped from dictating policy nothing will change, also untill there is effective policing abuse will continue, this is part of my concerns, rarely do you see anything to do with illegal fishing taken to court, its reported often enough but they cant do anything because they dont have the manpower, or so they claim, yet we have a fleet of navel vessels and nimrod aircraft that could and should be involved, the aircraft are always out training anyway so why they cant is beyond me, it does not take a destroyer to pull over a fishing boat, nursery areas need to be setup and enforced and total loss of the boat for anyone caught trawling or longlining the area, a minimum distance from all shores in place and total loss of the boat if caught in that distance fishing, no silly fines that can be paid off by the next catch landed, no dumping of dead undersize fish, that alone is not helping the situation, the trawlers claim that resrictions are ruining thier livlihoods, however they are slowley cutting off the head of the golden goose themselves, global warming has been cited to be part of the problem with uk fishing, i think uk attitude has more to do with it

 

[davem2005]

Treeboa,
Since the creation of regional pariaments you can effectly consider the uk as four seperate countries in terms of decision making as far as fish are concerned. Bradshaw makes the decisions for the uk and ross finnie makes em for Scotland. If you need any info on the scottish problem I sugest you contact Ian Burett the SACN regionalco-ordinator.

The white paper is a proposal for english waters. The Scots will get their own paper. Its a very confusing minefield of who controls and legislates over what.

With regard to the enforcement of fisheries legisltion in our region it is the sole responsibility of the local sfc to ensure that rules are not broken from the low water mark out to six miles. Its not the navy or the airforces job but an organisation funded by the local councils.

I will start another thread with regard to the fisheries enforcement in the NSFC region, which for those who dont know is from berwick to a line drawn east of N Shields peir. The entire enforcement capicity is a patrol boat called the St Oswald with a sea launchable rib on board and a towed rib for mobile inshore work. Nimrods and destroyers...fat chance.

I have just been reading a report requesting that all enforcement officers be issued with stab vests. I am pleased to say the the chief fisheries officer did not think it was appropriate for our region for all officers but felt it may be wise to have a couple of vests available should the need arise.

I have fish many times around St mary's and personally have never seen a patrolboat. This may be because of the figures I have seen for the number of times they are at sea that the odds are in my favour of never meeting my local fisheries enforcement officer.

Cheers
Dave

 

[treeboa]

hi dave, as you are prob aware lossie is a nimrod base, so as they conduct countrywide`training` flights , it would not be 100% outside of thier normal training to patrol and check out boats, they have the equipement on those aircraft to do a lot of things, though i doubt the govenment would let them drop a fish on an errant trawler ( shame), the other night i was reading about fisheries protection vessels but as something cropped up i left the publication in the unit, must remember to look for it again tuesday when im back in, however you would think that as the royal navy protects our coasts that fisheries protection should be part of the deal, especially as it seems they are cutting back on jobs in the forces, ideal way of keeping sailors off the dole i would have thought
as for the 4 regions, in some ways this has been a step forward but in others its going to create problems, the north sea covers a lot of ground and if say a protected area was made in scotland but not england then the trawlers could still destroy the fish stocks upto the imaginary line

stab vests, now theres a good one, if the need arises, poor old jocks now in a pool of blood because the couple of vests are miles away, whos to say that they need it and when, a mate of mine an ex game keeper had his arm half blown off chasing poachers, ok a stab vest would not have saved his arm but it could have been a knife to the chest rather than a shotgun blast, at the end of the day fisheries enforcement officers will be doing a similar job to gamekeepers, however they will have more chance of meeting what in essence will then be a `poacher`

the fact that you have never seen a patrol boat nor do you feel that the odds are against you meeting mr fisheries enforcement proves somewhat then that the whole system needs an enema, yet to expect the sea angler to pay for it is taking the urine, football fans dont pay extra for policing of matches, cyclists dont pay for cycle lanes, boat owners dont pay to use the open sea and if not fishing still wont, yet we it seems are expected to accept that lots of good things will come AFTER we pay for it, i wonder if the betting shop will give good odds, yes i realise that the fishing licience is only part of the proposed bill but its the main thing thats getting up anglers noses, especially when you look at the credibility of the labour govenment