Do you believe any of the current shooting/field sports ect,orgs really make any difference or indeed could they under totally new faces in the chair really make a difference...
Well I doubt if they could have done any worse. In fact my cat could probably have done better even though he's been dead these past twenty-seven years. The point is that the British NRA can't effectively lobby because it is a charity. It failed in 1988 and then, in 1996 appointed and paid the same lobbying firm that it had employed and had failed in 1988. You couldn't make it up! And BASC, remember, was part on both occasions of that Shooting Sports Council that agreed it.
Look at the BASC fiasco with Richard Ali. Yet the organisation appoints staff who have often never ever been BASC members. Thus you've staff who whilst happy enough to be paid by BASC were never happy enough (if they had sort of shooting background at all!) to be members of it. In effect...carpetbaggers I'm sorry to say. Surely to God the first question at interview to these should be "Why do you want to work for BASC and have its members pay your wages when you've never ever yourself seen fit to be a BASC Member?"
And all these reserves of money are for what? Because if we go on like this there won't be any point in having them "to defend and promote shooting sports" because there won't be ANY shooting sports in any meaningful form that we the ordinary punters can enjoy to take part in.
BASC should have taken a Judicial Review on the medical issue and it should have done it when these measures were initiated in Scotland? What does that "B" stand for "BRITISH" or "BUGGER" as in "BUGGER ALL INTEREST TO US HERE AT MARFORD MILL MATE BECAUSE IT'S NOT HERE IN ENGLAND?"
In essence BASC has failed. We had no bans after the Cumbria shootings I now feel not because of BASC but in spite of BASC. Because Cameron was Prime Minister. And this medical certification issue has shown that this is true. BASC's claim to be the "Voice of Shooting" is a hollow boast evidenced by its now wilful inaction.
For the last two decades plus I paid money to BASC thinking that I was paying not just for insurance but for something extra. And that extra is what? John Swift's pronouncement's on lead shot and tens, scores of thousands spent on the Richard Ali debacle. In effect I've paid a Guinea price for what turns out to be a Half Crown performance!
Not any more. I've joined SACS. I get the insurance and it comes without any pretence that I'm getting much other than that. Maybe I don't get free Game Fair admission. But somehow I think I'll be spending more than any saving I might have made on that on Doctor's fees that's a cold comfort.
So. BASC. The "Voice of Shooting" or, more like, not a voice at all. Just a silence that gives a consent. A silence that is as deafening as it is shameful in its acceptance, acquiescence and total abnegation of what yet another slash, another slice in the "death by a thousand cuts" that successive UK Governments are inflicting on our sport.
I doubt if with the current faces in the choir that it'll see the next generation out. But the staff at BASC, those ones that were happy to take the job, to have its members pay their wages when they've never ever themselves seen fit to be a BASC Member? Probably won't care..they'll no doubt be anticipating their pensions, funded by its members, shortly maturing.
