Angling against ASBOs

I was curious why Labour's Angling spokesman, Martin Salter (Reading West MP) would be so against the idea of canoeists having access to the waterways given that he presumably has an appreciation of the waterways as a place to spend leisure time.

Suddenly it is all much clearer. Recently there has been negative publicity for the Government as a result of the levels of Anti-Social Behaviour and the number of ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) that have been issued. Presumably the government, mindful of their poor election performance recently, are keen to ensure that they do something about this problem and have encouraged their MPs to see what they can do - something which I agree with as Anti-Social behaviour is a blight on the lives of too many people in this country.

However, I am not in favour of the government's political ambitions and aims resulting in a part of the community being prevented or discouraged from enjoying their hobby, and that seems to be one result of the new Angling Action project that is a partnership between NACRO, Reading Borough Council and the Environment Agency (http://www.reading.gov.uk/pressarticle.asp?id=sx9452-a780d952)


Organisers will be targeting schools, clubs and communities in order to encourage young people to take up this so-called sport and thus reduce the anti-social behaviour.

Why not encourage them to take up canoeing, support the proposed access to waterways for the canoeists and kill two birds with one stone?

It all comes back to the same thing, Labour think that Angling is a "sport" popular with traditional, working class Labour voters and so they want to encourage that at the expense of the more middle class interest of Canoeing, especially as Labour are now moving away from the left and becoming just another middle of the road political party.