OUR PHILOSOPHY

Sport Britain recently stated that the number of anglers in the UK was a mere 280,000, this in spite of one million rod licence sales. Such overtly cynical and ludicrously inaccurate assessments of actual participating anglers in Britain acts to effectively undermine our influence as a sport. Also severely threatened is our rightful consideration for core funding from government, the lottery and other sources so critical to angling survival protection and development. However unfairly, far more obscure sports and pastimes are now eligible for financial subsidy so cruelly denied to us.

As ever, angling's fatal weakness lies in factionalism, complacency and a traditional expectation that others will fight our battles for us. The time has now come for individual sea, coarse and game anglers to act in concert as one body that properly reflects our potential to influence the vote getting propensity of relevant legislators. We must demand to be automatically involved and represented within all future consultative procedure directly affecting any form of angling. At present, we are so easily sidelined and perceived as a mere irritant. Without provable strength of numbers politicians will continue to ignore us with relative impunity. Our sheer numbers as a united body could and should be our greatest strength.

Please help me and others like Keith Arthur, Greg Whitehead, Les Weber, Tom Legge, Grev Humphry and others to fight for our sport by joining NUBA today. NUBA will never automatically favour any single political party, but will pressure lobby and influence politicians and any individual with the power to affect our sport. We must not follow fox hunting as the next target for the antis. Please take this oportunity to stand up and be counted for angling’s future. Those with a racist agenda will not be welcome in NUBA.

Alan Suttie