You just cannot reason with some folk!

Two views of Hunt Sabs and Angling, one from the horses mouth.

ALL COUNTRY SPORTS ARE UNDER THREAT
05 September 2006
Western Morning News

Since the 1980s, I have been talking about the obvious threat to fishing as a hobby sport, pointing out that once hunting was banned animal activists would turn their attention to both shooting and fishing.

A constant response from the sports fishing communities was "'why, when our hobby is seen as more 'working class' than hunting, would Labour be so slack as to create a climate in which attacks upon us can be launched?" Indeed, at the last but one election Labour took a large "bung" from an animal rights source and may have had inputs at the last election too.

The simplistic perception that Labour would protect those assumed (incorrectly as it happens) to have a majority of Labour voters in their ranks and who fish for sport, proved false when Labour destroyed hare coursing despite it being very much a flat-cap sport. Now that fresh attacks have been made on fishing folk, they must wonder what they have done wrong; not seemingly a "class thing", like the attack on hunting, but just blind aggression against those who happily sit beside Westcountry rivers and lakes to catch and return for sport or take for food.

In my experience all countryside sports are rooted in game and environmental preservation. Anglers help keep waters fresh and populated and rivers clean of unacceptable weed and silts. But it is now clear they are seen as another class enemy to be vanquished by animal welfare warriors, who wish us to return to a dream world of ample brown bread, pulses boiled in water, and berries galore, all leading to the early deaths that were the lot of our Neolithic ancestors.

Those who fish and shoot, and hunters, should actively seek common cause through powerful representative bodies. Without a joined-up stance, the ability of the animal lobbies to twist New Labour around their fingers may generate new legislation that impacts severely on all country pursuits and sports. Then they will turn their attention to sea fishing and farmed animals. Act now or simply get swallowed up.
Tom Jones
Plymouth

Lancaster & Morecambe Citizen 6.9.06
Angling is a bloodsport

TO PUT the record straight, the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) has always considered angling to be a bloodsport.

There is no new campaign' against angling - it remains an abhorrent and cruel activity and as such will continue to be included within our remit as an organisation against all bloodsports.
The HSA has been around for over 40 years and has played a major part in securing a ban on hunting with hounds by using non-violent, direct action tactics.

Now call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but something tells me this whole media frenzy is highly likely to be orchestrated by an increasingly desperate team at the Countryside Alliance. Ultimately they have nothing to lose, and seemingly everything to gain by trying to push the angling is the next target' angle (sic).

The hunt ban eradicated the CA's primary reason for existance (sic) and so now they scrabble around trying to rally others to their already lost cause. You'd be a fool to fall for it.

Of course we'll never agree on the issue of angling but it's not about people-hating, class hatred or terrorism - it's plain and simple about cruelty.

If you want to spend an afternoon by the river bank then by all means do, just take a good book or maybe a bin bag and gloves so you can clean a bit of our countryside up for others to enjoy.
Leave the hooking of a fish out of the equation, and we'll gladly leave you alone.

Dawn Preston, Hunt Saboteurs Association.

The problem anglers have Dawn is that angling is not a bloodsport, never has been and never will be. And anglers never see you and the rest of your sabs when we, the anglers, are cleaning the rivers and helping to maintain that vital habitat for all wildlife.