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help the rivers

That's a bit harsh David. Sites like this deal with the whole spectrum of angling issues.
Anyway, back to the water. Under Thatcher we lost control of water issues, as well as train, power, telecominication, local services, and all the rest. This sell off was done to finance tax cuts for the rich, and create the biggest redistribution of wealth in this country since records began. We will live with this awful legacy for a very long time. I am sure we can all recall the terrible loss of life on our railways, which forced the government to regain control of rail tracks in this country, at a huge cost to the tax payer. The great lie that everything works much better if the rich or foreign companies are taking a big profit was unfortunately bought by many.
What to do? Dig in. People like Ray, finding stuff out and making it public, angling bodies exerting what ever pressure they can, probably the best we can do.
Four years to go, fight for the allotments, free stretches of rivers, no more school field sell offs to developers, and so on. Then make sure it never happens again.
Shaun of the sick
 
I can't see an answer to this problem, 50 years ago we had 10,000,000 less people in the country, unless you had a heavy manual dirty job you only took one bath a week and wash day was Monday, whites first and then coloureds in the same water. Washing up was done in the sink and everyone had a water butt for the garden.
These days we all bath or shower every day, sometimes twice or three times a day, we wash our clothes everyday, we all have dishwashers and water the garden from the tap, in addition we like to drive shiny cars and where your granddad washed his with a bucket and sponge we like to use the car wash or the pressure washer.
And that's before we even start to think about industry.
Unless we as a nation start to think about our water usage we have had it and what we are seeing now will be the norm.
Work parties will be busy building platforms at the new water levels.
 
Although the increasing usage of water by households has an effect, particularly on Southern chalk streams where more and more home are being built, it has little effect on the Teme which has little water removed for either households or industrial usage.

Much the same applies to the Severn. The wise Victorians who built the viaduct to Birmingham ensured that the industrial heartlands of Britain were well supplied with water, this was supplemented after the war with further dams and reservoirs. Whilst populations and water usage in the Midlands has increased, industrial use has declined and overall water usage in the Midlands has not changed that much in the last 50 years. In the Southern half of the country it is an entirely different story. The continued building of housing in the South is a disaster for the water supplies there.

The Teme is suffering through increases in agricultural abstraction in the middle reaches and from the removal of trees in the upper reaches for mainly upland sheep grazing. The presence of cattle in ever larger numbers along the banks of the Teme tributaries also creates further problems, particularly with diffuse pollution in the river.

The Teme and its tributaries is a river that can be improved without huge expenditure by water companies as it is not and never has been a river that supplies much of its water to the general consumer and has never had any large industrial usage. It is agricultural practises that need to change and we can all do our bit to influence that.

Water friendly farming is the key to the Teme. Many farmers are keen to do this and the environmental stewardship scheme that changes the way that farmers are paid can is helping. However with the major supermarkets taking an ever greater share of the farming market and forcing increased production at the cost of the environment in order to provide us with cheap food it is a difficult issue. Only when we as consumers are prepared to pay the cost of producing food in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way will it really be a success.
 
Agreed...Protecting what you've got left of the natural river environment and its inhabitants should be the No1 prime importance for anglers and everyone and should not be allowed to be exploited and destroyed for commercial gain or someones personal requirements at the expense of f***** up everything else in the river to achieve a personal objective that is ill founded.
 
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my next door neighbor says his golf club have the sprinklers on all night, nice.
 
They would/should have an EA authorised abstraction licence if the supply is taken from a river of lake. Worth reporting to the EA if you see this and mobile abstraction pumps on the banks in low flows and levels and checking it out!
 
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David Will said:
But it is not as important as whether to use two rods or one, what landing net to use or which shoes to wear in summer.
Anglers are idiots.
Click to expand...



And, apart from putting up a link or two, how pro-active have you been?
How many letters have you written, meetings attended, MP's contacted, organisations joined, boardrooms lobbied?

Most of your 28 posts are in response to tackle questions, thus far, perhaps you might like to practice what you preach.

And let others correspond and communicate as they see fit, without pejorative remarks like the above.
 
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