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I just go boating. Its fab out there. Nowts changed in my near on thirty years, still fab and still getting awesome service.

I hesitate to start this but I will anyway. Watching this evening's news I was struck by how the enquiry into Grenfell seems to have been hijacked by those who have lost loved ones in the fire rather than them getting down to business to establish how best to find ways of preventing such a thing happening again. That is the purpose of the enquiry surely? Surely grief is better expressed at a funeral or rememberence service? Not at the process set up to find the root cause? There seems to be a tendency to fixate on public grief in this country, propergated by our social media driven media/politicians lacking in any real sincerity but only interested in exploiting people for personal gain. Yes that's cynical but I can't help but feel some people also allow themselves to be exploited just for that '15 minutes of fame'. This is not about saying 'yeah ok somebody died get over it' but honestly does anyone remember all this sort of stuff after Kings Cross/Ladbroke grove/the Herald of free enterprise etc. The enquiries just got on with the task in hand IIRC.

These used to be fitted on to all of the early Tom pudding compartment boats. It was called a knocker, although the barge men referred to it as an ankle breaker. It was a way to quickly secure chains between the pans, using only gravity. It eventually fell out of favour, as, it worked well enough when the Tom pudding pans were behaving themselves on a nice calm day. However, when it was blowing a gale and the pans were halfway up the bank, the knocker part could flick up and, anyone unlucky enough to be passing at the time, risked getting their ankle broken. Hope this is of interest.

This is why people dont speak about their illnesses, a basic lack of understanding of what causes mental illness. Is it weak to fight every day against the voices telling you to kill yourself? Is it weak when your own mind is the thing that is stopping you from doing something? Is it weakness that means people kill themselves because they cannot cope and the govt are cutting support every single day? No, thats absolute rubbish. Mental illness comes from a wide variety of causes, you are not weak if you have a mental illness, toughing it out doesnt work. If you broke your leg, having prepared every day of your life for the moment you break your leg wont allow you to walk on it or ignore the pain. If you get cancer having prepared for it wont help you beat cancer. Its time we stopped talking about mental illness as some sort of weakness on the part of the sufferer, its not. JHFC I am actually stunned at such ignorance.

If you want help finding a missing boat, supply all the information not just's bit's. I.e Name and Index number, Crime number, Type, Last location seen, Colour Photos and detailed description of the vessel.

This thread title would make an ideal name for a boat

Tins of beer, good god woman, beer should only be on draught or in bottles with sediment in the bottom never in tins.

But the info was provided on other sites not this one, speculation started whilst the owner was actively looking for his boat and may not even of been aware that this forum existed. I don't see why anyone should be maligned without their knowledge on a forum they may not even know about particularly during a time of great stress. And then when they get good news it's felt necessary to denigrate their boat looks. Not the forums finest hour methinks. I'm saying no more other than to say that I was greatly disappointed with the way the thread headed. Eta I don't disagree with what you say if they, or a representitive of theirs comes to this forum. maybe in future what you say above should be raised and explained with an op when they request assistance in this type of search.

I see your mistake. Try turning the shower on instead !

I have just seen a photo on facebook of CaRT taking down a large sign outside a boaters service block and replacing it with an almost identical sign in Blue and White rather than black and white. This makes me so sad and angry. I see many things wrong with this This is a reckless waste of money, some of which comes from taxation and donations. This rebranding is going to cost a fortune which should be spent on better things. CaRT are obviously not telling the truth about its true cost, and when they say the new logo will only appear when things need changing. The canals have a very strong black and white "brand" so changing it is just daft, I assume (and desperately hope) that they do do not plan to paint the locks blue. How on earth can changing a sign outside a boaters facility help more people donate money to the canals or even visit them. This is plain corporate madness. Not sure if I am allowed to re-post photos from facebook. ..................Dave

I don't want to trivialise anyone's experience but I suspect that the reason they just got on with it was because just about everyone else was in the same or a similar position. In the main they didn't need to talk about it because they knew that people knew what they had experienced (OK some will have had worse experiences than others - I had a family friend who simply wouldn't have anything from Japan in the house and wouldn't travel in a Japanese car, but he never expanded on why and no-one expected him to) ... whereas today's veterans are few and far between and are 'forced' to relive experiences in the wrong setting when people put them under pressure by asking "how did it feel out there" (often with good intent I suspect) In my humble (and clearly untrained) opinion, it is when someone's experience is far outside that of the rest of their social group that they may need help... the rest of the time the group supports all its members.

Perhaps he's a fisherman.

Don’t be ridiculous!

Use dry seasoned wood and smokeless fuel, no problem. If you don't it would appear that you don't care about your neighbours health and wish to give them breathing problems, your choice.

No and that is where Internet mistakes creep In. The poster from here asked for a police number on narrow boat users facebook group so that he could post a message on here. It was the regulars on that group who seemed to take umbrage at him asking for the number. The important point being that at that point the owner had not posted it, was not a member of the group and had not been party to the fractious discussion. This somehow interpretated on here as the owner refusing to give a number and comments being made based on that misinterpretation. Nothing could be further from the truth the owner was not even aware of the Facebook request at the time and was not involved in the argument. If the owner had done as you say above then the comments on here, that I and others have been complaining about, may have had some validity but as he did not say those things and had no part in them then the comments needed to be addressed. Another case of social media Chinese whispers me thinks Social media is a wonderful tool for communication whilst being at the same time a completely rubbish tool for communication.

No, the point I was making which YOU have not grasped was that the waterways are working pretty well by and large, these days in my experience. Yes there are problems and yers possibly in 20 years time it will have all fallen apart, but you said you sold up because cannot be dealing with an authority that doesn't want to be, or something like that. This seems an weird reason to sell your boat when practically, at the moment they are doing it all pretty well. I agree in 20 years the outlook is poor, but I'll keep my boats until then rather than sell up while there is a shedload of good boating still available.

So once again an interesting thread has degenerated into petty point scoring. I thought after the last surge of complaints about this forum there were signs that it had settled down, but it seems that it was wishful thinking on my behalf, and the playground mentality has come back. For goodness sake kep to the topic. Howard

how can it appear to be an ever-increasing scam when this case is proven not to be? do you shout knife crime every time you walk into a kitchen? maybe an apology to the owner of the boat you accused of scamming might be in order?

Oh - to live in such a simple world. Happy for you.

Sorry to bring politics into this thread but it also heraled in the Thatcher era, 1979 to 1990. She utterly devastated this country and every political party/member has been trash ever since. We will never recover from her reign Brexit or no Brexit.

Breath easy! Still leaving.

I look at those big houses and dream "If I had worked harder and had wealthy parents and/or no principals I could have owned one of those houses", I could sit in those big rooms and watch the boats going past, but hold on, I am the boat that's going past, its my boat and I live on it. You can live next to the water, or you can live on the water. (ok if I had one of those houses I would rent it out and buy more boats) ..............Dave

Not boated for as long as you. But the ten years we have done have been great. I hear the complaints and I know it’s not perfect on the canals but it’s still pretty good. Some just look for the problems I believe so they can moan.

OK, it's gone to the judging panel. It's going to be close, Sea Dog having to go defensive in the face of a prolonged response from 70liveaboard. And the result is in - the winner of the thread is.......