pay 2 sea fish

Not a fan of licenses myself but it was introduced in Australia and has helped a lot. In Victoria there are designated areas where a license is required (freshwater or sea) and the license definately pays for more bailiffs who operate on the shore and also by boat. There was a culture of killing everything in the sea and if a fish was undersized, they were ground into fish paste to prepare soup etc...
Basically this now happens less and less as the bailiffs are about and licenses are checked. Also commercial fishermen are kept in check as when they are reported by joe public something actually happens as there are people in place to act.
It is funny though. No one begrudges paying out £10 for bait, possibly £10 for terminal tackle that might be lost and god knows how much for a new rod/reel combo, but mention paying for your fishing and it's the end of civilisation as we know it.
I agree that the money will most probably be lost in Whitehall, but if there was a scottish license at least we have our own MSP's who really need our vote in may. There are constant threads about the poor quality of fish stocks, undersize bass killing, etc... but the only way to address these issues is to pay for people to actually act on the problem. It is maybe too late to get the fish stocks back, but expecting our politicians to do it for free is optimistic at best.

diamond dave said:

Excuse me if i'm wrong, but isn't the government getting enough of a revenue with the vat accrued in our chosen sport ? Then why add another type of tax ?
OK, if they were to excuse us from paying vat when we buy our tackle, then it wouldn't seem as if we were getting screwed once again. Why can't they try to improve things first, take the costs on the chin & try to get us onside so to speak, bearing in mind, it won't happen overnight.

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The Scottish Executive have a poor record when it comes to recognizing the needs of sea anglers, the SFSA along with SOS and SACN have been lobbying them for quite a while - indeed in the past many members of this forum helped us wake up Mr Finnie to sea angling.

Just recently we have written to all party leaders requesting their take on our members issues and what steps they would take to address them, we have also tabled questions to be asked at tonights debate on STV - whether they get asked or not is another question

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