Recently retired British MP and UK government’s Angling Spokesman Martin Salter, who now lives in Sydney, gives his views on the long awaited report from the NSW Parliament’s Upper House Inquiry into Recreational Fishing

WITH three million anglers in a population of 20 million, it is surprising that recreational fishing hasn’t been given greater political attention.

Former UK Angling MP Calls on NSW Politicians to Support More Recreational Fishing in Marine Parks
Last week the British Labour Party’s former Angling Spokesman, Martin Salter gave evidence to the New South Wales Parliamentary Inquiry into Recreational Fishing which is looking, amongst other things, at the controversial issue angling and Marine Parks which featured as [...]

What a drab, joyless, uninspiring spectacle it turned out to be. Australians are a great people and I can’t help feeling that they deserve better than most of the politics and some of the politicians who were on offer last week.

Back in 1981 I received a call from an old friend predicting the imminent demise of my party and urging me to throw in my lot with the recently formed SDP. “Labour is finished,” this excitable schoolteacher proclaimed, and what’s more, “the SDP are about to break the mould of British politics.”

Life at the moment can’t be easy for the 200 or so newbies who woke up on May 7 to find themselves Members of Parliament for the first time. In contrast to the 1997 Labour landslide that catapulted so many of us into the Commons in what already seems like another lifetime, this time it’s really not clear who’s in charge.

Now that Graham Brady has won chairman of the 1922 Committee by a landslide, the Tory leadership will be desperately smoothing the ruffled feathers of their own troops. Not only are many unhappy over the debacle of the botched changes to the 1922, but an even larger number are appalled at the bureaucratic madness that passes for the new, improved expenses regime.

Back in February I wrote of the determination of a small bunch Right-wing Tories to oust John Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons. Their ringleader is the strange and ever so slightly scary Mid-Bedfordshire MP, Nadine Dorries

The horrific stabbing of Stephen Timms as he held a constituency surgery in East Ham has, we are told, reopened the debate on MPs’ safety.

So Nick Clegg, the leader of the party that lost in more constituencies than any other, is now set to be our Deputy Prime Minister. That’s not very proportional, is it?