Do you remember the old Public Information Films (PIF)? Humorous, quirky, and very British, they got their message across.
Wearing seatbelts, Keep Britain Tidy, the Green Cross Code – all were covered and changes brought about.
Best of all was Reginald Molehusband, who couldn’t park his car.
I still recite lines from his PIF while making my own sorry attempts at parallel parking.
The point is, thoughtless acts will inevitably occur.
Yes, we can legislate against them, but the most effective way to change behaviour is through education.
Which brings me to the Advertiser’s piece (July 17th, p.24) about poaching and Operation Traverse, the police drive to reduce river crime.
As a member of a local angling club, I come across the problem regularly, but realise that many people just don’t understand what constitutes poaching. Allow me to explain.
First of all, the fish.
Nobody owns them – they’re wild animals, free to come and go as they choose.
The right to fish for them, and to use a section of the river, is, however, owned by someone.
So, if you use that section of river without permission, you are stealing that right of use; that’s poaching - the theft of rights.
Now, whenever we confront someone fishing illegally on our club waters, we’re invariably told "you don’t own the river".
And it’s true, we don’t; but we do own (or lease) the right to use it.
So, imagine you rent a house, and I pitch up and plonk my deckchair in your back garden.
"You don’t own the house", I tell you, but does that really give me leave to infringe your right to use that garden "without let or hindrance"? Of course not.
Well, the same goes for theft of fishing rights, a.k.a. poaching.
Most people, of course, wouldn’t infringe these rights if they understood that their behaviour constituted theft.
And that’s where a little education would be useful - it won’t stop hardened poachers doing it for financial gain, but it might dissuade those "accidental criminals" who simply know no better.
So how about a modern-day PIF, explaining just what crimes are being committed?
It might be funded through angling associations, and the evidence from those old PIFs suggests that, given time, we’d see positive changes in behaviour.
And if it turns out that Reginald Molehusband were also an angler and could be persuaded to appear, then job done, methinks.
