These people we can combat. The answer becomes irrelevant though because whatever you believe about hunting, the anti's themselves are in no doubt whatsoever. We need to activelt combat this material with quality information of our own. In the meantime the Government was inundated at its 1999 Bournemouth Conference with protests from many different countryside groups, which included the debate on banning hunting. Sounds quite clear that doesn't it, safe and comforting for us, and will suit us nicely because anglers are traditionally terrible at getting up and actually doing anything.
Governments however change, and make no mistake, our future lies in our hands, no-one else's.
The present Sports Minister Kate Hoey MP is a great supporter of angling and has been of tremendous assistance, but for government to help us further we must first help ourselves, they cannot prop up a non-existent hierarchy. Finally I would point out we have been pushing these warnings out in various forms for nine years now. More recently the events I have outlined had wide coverage in the angling press during 1999 from Angling Times, Anglers Mail and Carp Talk. Note that, no trade support at all, you would think they might wish to protect their long-term future sales, but no. SACG sets out its full case on where we are in our new publicity document that some of you will have seen.