How we can influence the EA

Some ideas,

1) Funding. Instead of renewing your license in March, how about doing it a month later? April is a terrible fishing month anyway, this might upset cashflow and figures for a while, instead send a letter asking why it costs 1 million to administer the system....

2)Establish a highly organised fly life monitoring scheme, covering every few mile of the river, so anglers know more about the river than the specialists.....

Add your own ideas

Campaign to have the EA reduced to a monitoring, commisioning and scientific advisory body with any control or spending powers being devolved to regional level with enforcementof environmental crime being returned to police level. Flood prevention and the like should be handled at a local authority level, who could buy-in the skills as necessary. Ensure that the funding follows real in the field application and the EA national structure is dismantled.

They've already voluntarily given up their statutory obligation to prosecute for cost-cutting reasons, so they no longer are really guardians of the environment. May as well stop spending on their structure and apparatus too.

Hey guys,

Try visiting www.cpwf.co.uk

If you have any comments or would like your view or ideas added to the site, just send then in

I don't like being defeatist, but I really would question what we can possibly hope to improve with the current system. The EA is just another huge state bureaucracy that simply does not work. There are countless other examples such as the Home Office etc, which are just a complete shambles. It proved too difficult to provide the correct number of ballot papers in more than a few places last Thursday for Gods sake! What I am saying is that as anglers we deal regularly with the EA and are aware of their failings. The fact is that it is simply how the state runs things and it needs to change if we are to expect an improvement.

What we need in my view is a less centralised system with real autonomy being transferred to individual 'River Boards' to manage their own systems. The present EA is simply too large and unwieldy and does not provide value for money, or represent accurately differing concerns from around the country.

Obviously we can express our dissatisfaction via our MP's etc, but how much good will this actually do? The more militant option would be for anglers to simply refuse to pay for a licence on mass. This would definitely get the powers that be to sit up and take notice. Sadly we anglers are a pretty conservative apathetic lot, and I doubt our ability to organise and see through any form of collective action. One things for sure with the coming cuts we are only likely to feel in the future that we get less value for money than at present from the EA. No brainer as far as the governments concerned to cut fisheries budgets etc before services more popular and sensitive to the general puiblic at large.

All pretty depressing really .
Phil

Given that I was very young at the time,I thought the old River Authorities did a MUCH better,active,indeed pro-active job.This "enviroment" agency is just a knee jerk sop to voters who want to be told their choice of villian,sorry,politician,is addressing enviromental issues while they are in fact just another money generator and home for the 1000s of jobless graduates,like all the other "agencies".

As a farmer I get the full blunt end of this.Theres no ministry of agriculture,just a dept of enviroment,food and rural affairs.The whole system is buggered,it cant be made to work,indeed its not meant to.

But what choice to we have but to try and communicate with people whos job is to divert our energy away from any meaningful action?

This could be an opportunity

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10261136.stm

If local catchments were to police themselves could we do it for the licence fee money? Not saying everything should shift but if they're not performing should we get them bumped out of the way at least?

I am not happy with the stupid 10 year added to the June 16 C-R by the E-A
so i always write a small letter with my licence return with my points of view at the end of the season. The E-A replies to my questions. It is free post so it doesnt cost you anything ,but you find they are listening.PB

Welcome back lochbois, you had a few of us worried.

A Little Help From My Friends

A Little Help From My Friends

Thank you Hoppy, I keep getting cut of because of financial reasons, but im getting by with a little help from my friendsPB
I have been back to the pen and paper methods of old before this computor was given to me.
The lasses in the Post Office always make me welcome when i post my letters and it keeps the post office open another week.PB

Guys,

Yes, it's me again. Should I apologise?

We have the opportunity to collect evidence and facts with which to confront the Assembly to have them either change the current system, provide more funds or both. However without evidence we are stuck. Please use the Campaign site to record any 0800 80 70 60 calls you make or indeed to pass on any intelligence that you may glean in your travels.

www.cpwf.co.uk

The funds gathered from licences go very little towards the cost of fisheries so the idea of redirecting them, without further subsidy is a no no.

Times are changing, and not for the better, we are going to have to do more ourselves.

No I am not a turncoat, rather a pragmatist or realist.

We at the Campaign will keep plugging on. Please visit our web site. If you have any comments or tales you wish to tell: pass them on and we will publish them.

We are unlikely to be able to rely on others to look after our fisheries so will have to get down and do it ourselves. That is until somebody in a position of authority realises that there is more to protecting our fisheries that just placating anglers. Salmonids are rapidly becoming an endangered species the loss of these m fish from our rivers would be a travesty, calamity, sin, call it what you like.

We are going to keep trying and need your support.

get rid of the E A , and why not try the way scotland manage thier rivers ... i dont see the point in the EA , when they dont have them man power to manage the rivers in wales /england . seems to me they only seem to be conserned about those famous welsh/english rivers , change is asgood as a rest i say