British waterways and the EA

With British waterways going, and the EA being "substantially reformed", should we, as anglers, be getting together and applying pressure to these new bodies before the manure hits the rotating air circulator and some anti angling lobby gets in first?

Thoughts please ladies and gentleman, and suggestions as to how we can pull together if we need to.

The Angling Trust?

maybe the angling trust. I am no expert on these organisations so I ask in the spirit of curiosity, hoping that more like me who sit back and do not get involved might find out if we need to get active.

i see the Angling Trust, no longer have a web site,its just been shut down,
this is due to ,arguments and no one being able to act as monitor,
i would have done it for free,

Site looks OK to me. However, this is the time to find out what sort of clout the AT has - if they get asked behind a load of other bodies it wont look good.

British Waterways going??? I live on a boat and have not heard this one, nor indeed has the landowner where I moor. Can someone elaborate or is this just rumours?

the list of Quango's disbanded by the government, British waterways is gone and being taken over by a charity, the Environment Agency is being substantially reformed. No real detail yet, just the list produced by the government today.

here is the list from the direct.gov site

http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consu.../@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_191543.pdf

Mithrandir said:

the list of Quango's disbanded by the government, British waterways is gone and being taken over by a charity, the Environment Agency is being substantially reformed. No real detail yet, just the list produced by the government today.

here is the list from the direct.gov site

http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consu.../@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_191543.pdf

Click to expand...

for the EA being substantially reformed read funding substantially reduced.

Jimmy crackedcorn,
Emails have been sent to A,T members from Mark Loylld, saying the website would no longer be in use because of a lot of arguments ,and the fact that no one could spare the time to moderate the site,

---------- Post added at 19:23 ---------- Previous post was at 19:01 ----------

this is what i received,


MESSAGE FROM THE ANGLING TRUST BOARD “The Angling Trust Board has decided to remove the Online Forum for the foreseeable future. We ran it for 9 months as an experiment in the hope that it would generate constructive debate amongst a wide cross-section of our membership. Unfortunately, it went the way of many other angling forums and became very aggressive. Of more than 13,000 members, only 186 registered for the forum and only a handful of those use it regularly. 70 of those members registered have never logged on and 118 have never written a post. Therefore the Forum was only used by 68 of our members. The staff and Directors made efforts to answer questions when they became aware of them, but there were so many pages of debate to trawl through that this became impractical for the busy team. We strongly encourage members to contact us in the usual ways if they have views about priority campaigns, membership issues and anything else related to their membership. The Trust has established meetings of regional forums for members in several parts of the country and is seeking volunteers to help set up new regional forums in other regions. We encourage all our members to attend these meetings, and local consultative meetings, to find out the latest news from the Trust and to have their views heard. Thank you to those of you who supported the Forum in the spirit it was set up and in particular to the long-suffering Carl Hoyle, an Angling Trust volunteer who gave up countless hours of his time to administer new member applications. We are very grateful to Carl for all his hard work.

the blanker said:

for the EA being substantially reformed read funding substantially reduced.

Click to expand...

But I am not sure the EA have really done good with the funding they currently have.
They will have to continue to monitor the water quality and have a responsibility to improve on this. That is a European directive.

But I would welcome the budget decrease, if all dredging on our rivers stopped and trees were left where they fell etc etc.

The less man interferes the better IMO.

Matt

BW will be turned into a Trust. Probably given a new name, slimmed down no doubt and all charges it make going up, for a poorer service.

matt1960 said:

But I am not sure the EA have really done good with the funding they currently have.
They will have to continue to monitor the water quality and have a responsibility to improve on this. That is a European directive.

But I would welcome the budget decrease, if all dredging on our rivers stopped and trees were left where they fell etc etc.

The less man interferes the better IMO.

Matt

Click to expand...

your right the EA have not done a good job as far as i am concered i hope any changes stop the "improvements" to rivers but i doubt it(i get more like victor meldew every day).

Anyone who thinks these cuts will be good for the rivers had better think again. The situation with budget cuts of up to 50% for the EA will mean what money they have will be focused, targeted on their statutory obligations and the ones that get the general public hopping mad, and that's flooding to their property.
As flood defense is Stat Ob and if they fail to carry it out they are liable for mega bucks compo, they will, there is no doubt, indulge in a Scorched Earth flood defense policy on the rivers. That will mean vastly over dredging to keep the channels open for longer and free from the ability of it to hold obstructions/debris Trees on the banks are major contributes to this, so man with several chainsaws comoth to remove all of them.

Habitat and conservation improvements will become bygone words. These will be passed on to the Big Society. Ergo they won't be done because of apathy of Society.

As staff are sacked, pollution monitoring will dwindle. Once that's known, those who pollute rivers deliberately, because it cheaper to pay the paltry fine, than dispose of it properly, will quickly get to know the chances of getting caught have dropped dramatically, so it worth it to increase their toxic load even more.

Some areas of pollution control will be covertly given up by the future overstretched policers and probably a diminution of regulations introduced by the backdoor by Government. In the National Interest of course, to boost the profits of the struggling private companies and the coffers of HM Treasury.

If you think its bad now, just wait 4 years when these cuts are really biting

Yes, I have to agree with some of these sentiments.
And it just shows how misguided the whole policy of allowing infrastructure on the flood plains is.
Why on earth can we not let nature do things its own way. It then costs nothing.
People with property on a flood plain should expect to be flooded, as that is what the flood plain means.
Its the same on the coast, where building sea walls exaserbates the erosion further down the coast.
When is man going to learn not to interfere with nature?
Matt

Makes you wonder tho about staffing levels, last year I got talking to a guy from the EA doing some bank work. He told me that for every one guy out there on the "Wet Face" so to speak there were six sat down in an office.
Then a couple of monthes back there were five guys, (no doubt all with degrees) one set up a square bottomless container in the rivers margins, one with a battery pack and probe to shock anything inside, another with a little net on a stick to scoop up anything that was stunned, and another to put said thing in a contianer , and the last person (presumably) to log anything of note-- they were looking for Lamprey but at that point without any success.
To be honest, I could have done it single handed and I must admit I did think that the manning for the task was out of all proportions.

I think TBO has it in a nutshell and I don't think he's exaggerating. Budget cuts won't mean half the people going to catch that lamprey, it just means the EA will totally ignore those areas of their remit and send their over-staffed missions to the flood defences etc instead.

When it comes to floodplain - we've been populating them and building flood defences since we first started building villages. We can't turn the clocks back that far. It must be a very difficult sometimes for the authorities in some places, what with all the conflicting opinions from the various eco-groups and equally persuasive pressures from the more 'pragmatic' authorities who are screaming for development land. Makes me grind my teeth too though.

Anyway, if the Global Warming pundits are correct the question will probably answer itself in a few years time.

Yup. We might all have, at one time, a few of us a lot more than others and for highly political reasons, griped about the Big (Big = Bad) Government ("pen-pushing, university kids") bureaucracy that we have been repeatedly told is now the E.A., but how many of 'us' gripers and snipers are prepared for the real-world, bottom-line, large-scale fishery neglect and death by a thousand ("Trusts and charities will take up the EA mantle" - oh yeah?) cuts?

I was talking to a CSG member last weekend who works in E.A. enforcement and it's likely his job/team will be going. He already works between the E Midlands and Thames so staffing cant be any thinner,
I fear what resources they will have will be concentrated on the game side, irrespective of the numbers of anglers.

Yes, John, it is beginning to look as if anglers are about to be presented with an ultimatum:

"Join the Big Society, volunteer, set up a River Trust and do the EA's job yourself for yourself."

Had a feeling that this might be an imminent incoming message for some time - for several years, in fact - a feeling which didn't just suddenly "go away" after I listened to this "Farming Today This Week" BBC Radio 4 programme - BBC iPlayer - Farming Today: Farming Today This Week

Rivers Trusts...

Hmm.

Usually run by men with a little money and a lot of time on their hands and an interest in fishes both adiposed and spotted who like to be heard and see people jumping to their least utterance.