LORD Sewel is to be congratulated on his announcement to revoke the River Tay and Tweed/Eye Exclusion Orders. We have witnessed the first tangible evidence of Labour's General Election commitment to radical land reforms.
However, my main purpose in writing is to clarify the inaccuracies and distortions of the facts put about by feudal lairds in response to Lord Sewel's decision.
The lairds claim that when the Orders are abolished anglers will have no legal rights to take freshwater fish, but in a letter to Dennis Canavan, MP, a former Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, made clear the law on the catching of freshwater fish. ''Fish living in the free-flowing rivers and lochs of Scotland are the property of no-one but become the property of the person who catches them.'' No criminal offence is committed by catching and taking freshwater fish.
The lairds also claim that support for public ownership of Scotland's fishing rights is insignificant.
However, several Labour and SNP MPs, 22 Scottish unitary councils, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Trade Union Congress, trade union councils, individual union branches, angling bodies and clubs give us financial or policy support for our campaign.
It comes as no surprise that the lairds refuse to bow to the democratic will of the masses when the perceive a challenge from vassals to their medieval right of superiority and absolute powers to suzerainty.
Andy Scott,
Chairman, Scottish Campaign for
Public Angling,
28 Brora Court, Perth.
May 1.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article