Marking the centenary of Dick Walker's birth
Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 12:43 pm
Some of you may remember that a while back I posted on TFF about possible ways to mark the centenary in 2018.
Earlier this year, having decided that it was time to do something a bit more serious, I took the matter up with the new chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Angling (Charles Walker - no relation I presume - and MP, fittingly, for Broxbourne). Rather than excerpt the correspondence to date in this post I'll post it separately later. Details of the APPG are here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... ngling.htm.
Two specific ideas emerged from our discussions: a Royal Mail stamp or using the famous photo of RW and Ravioli/Clarissa on the 2018-19 coarse and non-migratory fishing licence. CW contacted the Environment Agency, forwarding my letter, and also put down a PQ about the latter (see: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publi ... -24/17525/) and we have had very positive replies from both the Deputy Director of Fisheries at EA and the Minister of State at DEFRA. I've also heard from Grinner that the Daily Mail have since contacted him about running a story on this. I think we may well have a winner here.
While the wide exposure and national recognition of a stamp appeals to me, it certainly seems that the licence idea would be seen as more appropriate and, given the responses, the more likely to be achieveable, the EA say they will make a decision on the illustration in 2017 but I think we should try to make them commit in advance before then. This would also make sense given that they also need to manage the existing contract for licence illustrations.
Success in achieving either of these will depend, however, on launching a co-ordinated broadly based campaign in the fairly near future, perhaps in the early New Year, targeting the EA and/or Royal Mail and which will build momentum fairly rapidly. I'm doing some thinking about this and I'm going to post in more detail about how we might do it later this week on TFF.
In the meantime I'd be interested in your comments.
Earlier this year, having decided that it was time to do something a bit more serious, I took the matter up with the new chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Angling (Charles Walker - no relation I presume - and MP, fittingly, for Broxbourne). Rather than excerpt the correspondence to date in this post I'll post it separately later. Details of the APPG are here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... ngling.htm.
Two specific ideas emerged from our discussions: a Royal Mail stamp or using the famous photo of RW and Ravioli/Clarissa on the 2018-19 coarse and non-migratory fishing licence. CW contacted the Environment Agency, forwarding my letter, and also put down a PQ about the latter (see: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publi ... -24/17525/) and we have had very positive replies from both the Deputy Director of Fisheries at EA and the Minister of State at DEFRA. I've also heard from Grinner that the Daily Mail have since contacted him about running a story on this. I think we may well have a winner here.
While the wide exposure and national recognition of a stamp appeals to me, it certainly seems that the licence idea would be seen as more appropriate and, given the responses, the more likely to be achieveable, the EA say they will make a decision on the illustration in 2017 but I think we should try to make them commit in advance before then. This would also make sense given that they also need to manage the existing contract for licence illustrations.
Success in achieving either of these will depend, however, on launching a co-ordinated broadly based campaign in the fairly near future, perhaps in the early New Year, targeting the EA and/or Royal Mail and which will build momentum fairly rapidly. I'm doing some thinking about this and I'm going to post in more detail about how we might do it later this week on TFF.
In the meantime I'd be interested in your comments.
