Thank goodnes a few people have started talking sense here. If we want to preserve angling, our first job is to put our house in order. While I appreciate that sabs and antis will shamelessly use pictures of birds trapped in discarded line, fish with deformed mouths, etc, to promote their own ends, we can hardly complain because we, as Nigel points out, hand it to them on a plate. And for heaven's sake, let's drop the cliches about "nanny states" and the digs at the left, etc, etc. Is anyone naive enough to think that a Tory (or any other government) would ignore massive public pressure to move against angling if they thought it would save their political skins? Most animal welfare charities draw a lot of their membership from nice, respectable conservative voters, a lot of whom don't like us nasty, common anglers and would be very happy to see us outlawed. It's no good out indulging in petty political points scoring and saloon bar rhetoric on this or any other site.
