Joshua

I wouldn't know if they were Chris, so it's highly probable! I was quoting from the manual on the assumption that other people would know what it meant! I note their web site give different figures again. - http://www.teac.com/...specifications/ I would like to know what you are talking about, 'flat', 'nodes' etc. and I would make the effort if I had an ear that could tell the difference but ever since a friend walked into my house some years ago and immediately commented (as if it was obvious) that I had the polarity of my speaker wires around the wrong way, I gave up! You either have the ear or you don't and I obviously don't. I chose my system partly on advice but mostly on what sounded good to my ears compared to the alternatives I was offered.

Actually your claim is against the person or persons who’s action directly led to your loss, i.e. the helmsman of the boat that collided with the boat that ricocheted into you. Strictly speaking, insurance companies have nothing to do with it. Think of it this way, if you have to start an action, the name of the defendant on the writ will not be an insurance company but the name of the person steering the boat (or if a minor, the person with legal responsibility for the minor). Or look at it another way, what if the helmsman was not insured, would you have no claim? Of course not. That’s the legal bit. Now the practical bit. Firstly, hopefully the helmsman was insured as it means there is a pot of money to cover losses. The helmsman might be a poor student with not a penny to his name; his legal culpability and liability wont alone pay for the damage. Secondly, it is generally a lot easier to allow the insurance companies to carve it up between themselves (they have what used to be called ‘knock for knock’ arrangements between companies, in other words accounting wheezes). But, you do not have to accept any charges or loss of no claims, if the insurance company try to impose them, tell them you will make a direct claim against the offender for ALL of your losses, they wont like that as it contravenes the in house agreements they have ( to be honest this is more a bluff as I am sure you have better things to do with your life).

First house my partner and I bought (a very long time ago )the Halifax mortgage Co charged us a £400 'first time buyers fee'. What the hell is that I asked, what it says they replied, in other words you're a first time buyer, you're desperate to buy your first house and we have you over a barrel, we know you will pay just about anything we ask, "stand and deliver"! When the shit hit the fan they still had the nerve to ask me (the British public) to cough up so that the directors could maintain the lifestyle they had grown accustomed to. My heart bleeds for them.

Considering that I was sat next to you, I am surprised you got the chance to say anything at all, must have been while I was out of the room! Gobby Git

They do for me. I'm no expert but I like my music and a car radio just doesn't do it for me. I took some advice and fitted the following: For music on my Ipod Classic Onkyo Digital Media Transport ND-S1 Power consumption 3.5W Has the following jacks: Optical; Coaxial; composite; USB; RI. For everything else I have a Teac A-H01 digital amplifier: Power consumption 34W Max power output 60W + 60W (1KHz, JEITA) Digital Audio Input includes: RCA x 2 Optical USB No TV but I sometimes watch a video which I drive via my MacBook Pro and an LED Samsung wide screen monitor. Then I play the audio via the amp direct from the Mac using its USB input. For radio I have a Roberts Vintage DAB/FM RDS Digital Radio which I feed via the Amp using the Optical input. Everything outputs via two Dali Zensor 1 Speakers ( http://www.dali-spea...ZENSOR-1-1.aspx ) It works for me.

All sorts of issues are discussed on this forum, every colour of the boating rainbow. Some are flippant, light hearted and open to general merriment and silliness. Others, like CRT's vision for the future of our waterways, are serious. The problem is that a number of members of this forum have a job recognising the difference and when a serious issue is thrown open, they use it as an excuse either to play with it like a kitten with a ball of wool, not a care in the world (like yourself) or they use it as an excuse to simply broadcast their prejudices, content only with a tenuous relevance to the issue being discussed and with absolutely no intention to debate, just broadcast. I find your comments about John and Steve particularly contemptuous as when you attended the Birmingham meeting, if memory serves, not only did you not once open your mouth, but neither before or after the meeting did you take the opportunity to engage with John, Steve, Alan or anyone else, to discuss their ideas. I can only assume you are not really bothered with the issues, but instead are just having a bit of a laugh from behind the safety of your keyboard. To avoid the predictable jesters derailing otherwise potentially worthwhile ideas, is it any wonder that anyone seriously negotiating with CRT to improve their management of the system are cautious about throwing all the feedback onto the forum like so much bread on a duck pond?

Thank you very much, that looks about as close as I am going to get. I am a little limited in the type of bulb I can fit as all of the light fittings on my boat are Victorian styled lamps, many of which look as if they have gas mantles in them never mind round bulbs. Thanks for all the other tips and links. Part of the problem is coming to terms with the alien styling of modern light bulbs but I am getting there.

Can someone please recommend a good source for 12v LED B22 (golf ball) bayonet fitting light bulbs? I am struggling; Google searches throw up lots of 240V types but not the 12v versions. Ta.

I began my working life as a very busy criminal defence advocate. When I wasn't in court, I was in either police or prison cells, so I worked at the sharp end of the criminal justice system. I remember once sitting with a client in the cells below Bristol Crown court desperately trying to think of something to say in mitigation on his behalf, that hadn't already been said before. He was an habitual offender and alcoholic, the circumstances were such that it was inevitable that he would been given a custodial sentence all I could do was try to limit the term. I had his records in front of me and idly totted up the amount of time he had to date spent in prison. He was about 48 years old and not only had he spent over half his adult life in prison but the most serious offence he had ever committed was theft. He duly went to prison. Twelve months later I was called to a police station to represent him again, theft from an off-licence, he had been released from prison that same day. I eventually gave up criminal law because it was soul destroying, a merry-go-round going nowhere. That was 30 years ago and there was then as there is now a lot of talented and caring people trying to change the way we deal with 'offenders' (as unlikely as it might sound, a number of states in the USA have done a lot of innovative and thoughtful work in this area) but until we evolve as people and rise above our deep seated desire for revenge, sentencing will be heavily weighted to feed this powerful public 'need' instead of addressing the causes of crime and trying to solve them. It's the same sort of ignorance that feeds the sanitizing steamroller that will inevitably one day turn the canal network into a theme park for relatively wealthy weekend boaters. No one will benefit from that either, but it will still happen. I believe the secret, is to eradicate ignorance.

We are with Collidge & Partners. Hull insurance is competitive with any of the other major companies we checked. As far as contents are concerned, they charge £10 for every £1000 worth of goods covered, eg £20,000 value of contents add £200 to premium. Their standard policies do not cover bikes nicked or damaged while away from the boat but for another £45 per bike they will cover this up to a value of £750.

One solution to that problem is a hydraulic drive. We have a galley in the stern (with a solid fuel range to warm the steerer) ahead of which is our 'mid' engine room (with a Gardner 2LW), head room in the galley is just under 6ft 5", like the rest of the boat. But, the OP wants a traditional boatmans cabin and I thought a BC wouldn't be a BC if you could stand up in it?

That brings to mind a humorous irony regarding the history of our chairs. I bought them in a French antique shop for £10 each (see below) and for years let our cats sleep in them while we decided what to do with them. We loved their worn out state but they were too far gone to use, the cats, on the other hand loved to use them but thought they needed roughing up a bit more and duly arranged this. When we moved back to the UK the chairs were about the only thing we brought with us and we left the cats in the care of my mother in France. We asked a UK upholsterer if he could restore them without ruining their 'shabby chic' state. Looking embarrassed and I am sure restraining a laugh, he told us they had long ago past through their 'shabby chic' period and would have to be completely rebuilt. With some reluctance we let him at them but were dreading that we wouldn't love them so much when finished. When he delivered them, we were relieved, they were different but still beautiful. And what did the upholsterer recommend we do to maintain their beauty, - let our dog sleep in them!! That's actually what we do and they are indeed beginning to look nicely warn now. Only a dog of course can do this, cats, parrots, mice and such like tend to eat the furniture (and each other) rather than wear it in!

It's surprising what you can fit in a narrowboat. We had these two (very comfortable) leather chairs rebuilt and recovered with the intention of using them in our narrowboat, but (stupidly) before actually trying to fit them in. The day the upholsterer finished them was tense, we would have been very upset had they not fit in. Chairs can look quite big but still fit through a relatively small gap due to their L shape but you really need to play around with their position in the boat. In one configuration we tried, our chairs completely filled the boat, in another they slotted in as if they had been made for the job.

John should be applauded for his hard work arranging these meetings, he's 'bothered' and he is doing a fantastic job of holding it all together. This sort of bickering is divisive, counterproductive and a disservice to the art of boating. For Christ sake, the variety and inventiveness of people is rarely displayed in one place better than on our canal network, don't fear it, celebrate it. I have never seen the artwork of Peter Wells that Sir Nibble bitched about earlier this week, describing it as pretentious vandalism but I am so glad to be part of a waterway world that lets them both express themselves.

Speaking for myself (a CCer), you have nothing to fear from me, unless my very way of life bugs you. It's not what I want CRT to do, more what I want them to stop doing, namely trying to subvert the nice simple law that allows me to navigate the network (all of it, including interesting urban areas) stopping for 14 days at a time if I wish (longer if good reason dictates). In all this debate about VM's it is easy to forget that this is the norm, what the 95 Act provided for. I originally got involved with the CRT meetings because they were billed as a mechanism by which ordinary unaffiliated boaters could HELP the Trust (in particular, to encourage cooperation amongst boaters) and I recognised that some short term VM's in certain areas, sensibly used, might help. I never gave a thought as to whether the Trust had the legal power to introduce them, nor did I quite frankly care because I never envisaged them being used in the network wide, fundamentally changing way which now looks ever more likely. I mean for goodness sake, whole lengths of canal being made no mooring at all, for what looks like local residence appeasement! The only thing I ever wanted to change was the 'I'm all right jack' culture between different groups of boaters that I saw as a threat to my enjoyment of boating by its tendency to attract ever more rules to sort out issues that boaters should and could easily do between themselves. My dismay and lack of confidence with the Trust, grows by the day and I now find myself at a crossroads, do I turn left, pack up all together and buy an off-shore boat, do I press ahead and try to cooperate with the Trust or do I turn right, join the rebels, help finance legal challenges to CRT and perhaps even engage in acts of civil disobedience. I'll be honest I'm tending towards the latter. If that happens, I probably really will be a nuisance.

Yes, living in a hot climate (obviously not Britain) involves a trade-off between light and heat. The French, Spanish, Italians for example, live almost exclusively behind shuttered windows and leave their stone floors bare, it makes the interiors blissfully cool but it can be depressingly dark unless you have very big, high ceilinged rooms, not something narrowboats are famed for!

I have recently spoken to 3 hire companies about their customers experiences regarding VM's, they all responded with mild bewilderment, that is, puzzled why I was asking, lack of moorings was clearly not something their customers seem particularly bothered with. Even if true, why should a hirer have greater access to and privileges on the waterways than any other type of boater? As I live on the waterways, practically every penny I spend goes to waterway businesses or businesses because they are near a waterway (shops, public transport, local services, pubs and restaurants etc.). I spent some of last year in a marina while work was carried out on my boat and I am in no doubt whatsoever that CCing is more expensive than if I was moored in a £3500 a year marina, so I recon I pay my way (about £20,000 a year). Personally I think the hire company thing is a red herring. I have no doubt that some hire companies have complained and would like VM's reserved outside pubs for the exclusive use of their customers, why wouldn't you if you thought you could get away with it. I think this is probably especially true of some companies fighting to stay afloat in tough financial conditions, it is human nature to look for excuses and some one to blame. As for "how it was described in the adverts", I bought a boat to CC, stopping for a week or two here and there to visit Britain's towns and cities because having read the 'rules' it was clear they let me do exactly that. Reducing all the most interesting urban areas to 24/48HR zones is not at all what I was 'sold'. Hirers and marina leisure boaters might well feel that they will not be affected by all this as they don't generally have enough time to stop for longer than 24/48 Hrs., but in my view you can't make these type of fundamental changes without fundamentally changing the whole ethos of the waterways and that effects all of us. I think the following from CaRT's 'Policies for Moorings along the banks of our Canals and Rivers' spells out the motives behind CaRT's manipulations of VM's. "The British Waterways Act 1995 limits to three specific criteria our ability to refuse to licence a boat. These relate to (1) boat safety standards (the equivalent of the car MOT); (2) third party liability insurance cover; and (3) the requirement for the boat to have a home mooring, unless it is used for navigation throughout the period of the licence. There are no statutory provisions for refusing a licence on the grounds of say, congestion or aesthetics both of which are subjective. Adequate moorings control is therefore essential for preserving the amenity of the waterways for boating and other uses." In other words – 'the law didn't give us the power to control numbers (congestion) or the type of person using the waterways (aesthetics) so we will have to use ruthless VM rules instead which will have the bonus of driving off a lot of scruffy (aesthetically unpleasing) boats making plenty of space for the better bred boater and pleasing the middle class residents who live along side the prettier canals.

I have Just seen the RBOA response to the SE Mooring proposals, looks very reasonable to me. I was going to link to the document but can't see it published on the RBOA page yet, as it isn't particularly long, I have copied it here instead. Refreshing signage and rules for South East visitor mooring sites consultation Jan-Feb 2013 Comments from the Residential Boat Owners’ Association (RBOA) This response is made on behalf of the committee of the Residential Boat Owners’ Association (RBOA) taking into account comments received from its members based on SE Waterways. Our comments apply to the principles of the proposals rather than the specific detail of each area as we believe that it is important to understand and agree these as a first stage. In general RBOA is reluctant to accept further time restrictions to moorings over and above the 14 days set out in the British Waterways Act 1995. We cherish the freedom and lack of restriction that have always been an essential element of the inland waterways and which to many residential boat owners is a fundamental part of our life style. We are concerned that the focus on the ‘creation of new visitor moorings’ suggests that these did not exist previously. In reality subject to any navigation or other restrictions the default position is 14 day mooring anywhere. We are aware that some boaters, whether on private or hire boats, actually believe that they can only moor where it is signed ‘visitor mooring’ and some education of the true position would actually reduce the pressure on popular places. We do recognise that the increase in the number of boats wishing to moor at certain locations during the main cruising season has necessitated some form of control so that all boaters have a fair opportunity to enjoy these locations. Unfortunately over the years a great variety of time restrictions have appeared, often without consultation, evidence that they are needed to resolve a problem, or monitoring to show whether they have achieved their objectives. There has been no consistency in these restrictions across the system and together with a lack of understanding by boaters this has resulted in many of the current problems. Furthermore the failure to manage or adequately police these restrictions has led to the lack of confidence in them by boaters. The RBOA is concerned that the Trust will be perpetuating this confusion with these complex and multiple restrictions without due process to identify the problem and investigate ways of resolving it. We are also concerned that the development of different restrictions at local level will lead to further confusion across the system. The RBOA believes that the proposals are too complicated and bureaucratic. The majority of boaters who are cruising through these areas and probably only stopping overnight, will not understand them and will be inconvenienced. Those who consistently ignore the default 14 days or lesser periods are unlikely to change their habits and will still need stronger enforcement. The extent of paperwork that you suggest is in our opinion excessive and unnecessary and we do not believe that this will be well received by your customers. Before any additional restrictions are considered at local level it must be ascertained that those in place have not worked. There is no point in applying additional restrictions if the existing ones have not been properly managed and monitored. We do not believe that this has been fully applied over the areas covered by this strategy. The proposals require considerably more control by your staff and volunteers than is currently in place and we suggest that this level of control should be applied to the existing restrictions for a cruising season before any further action is considered. We understand that suggestions have been made for all boaters to be issued with a form of self-control moorings disc to be displayed on their boats. We are in favour of this as a way for the majority of boaters to demonstrate that they are behaving responsibly and believe that this will help to identify the small problem sector and allow peer pressure to have an impact. RBOA firmly supports the provision of more affordable long term moorings as a means of encouraging those whose life styles require them to remain in one area, to vacate visitor moorings and we will continue to work with the Trust to achieve this. In summary we suggest that measures are taken during the 2013 cruising season to properly control the existing restrictions on visitor moorings and to monitor the results. Based on a detailed report of this it will then be possible to consider any necessary changes and consult over them for implementation if found necessary in 2014.

Agree. Recommend: - http://www.redhotglass.net

I am still struggling to stop referring to the Sea and Arghh trust as "British waterways"! I had no idea 'they' had specified a preference for how they wished to be addressed. After 'British waterways' I normally say 'cart' simply because it trips off the tongue. I find it very difficult to slot 'Sea', 'Arghh', 'Tea', into a sentence without tripping over my own tongue, and by the time I have got it in, often find the person I was talking to has got bored and walked off.

Just to add my thanks John for organising another good meeting and to Steve, Matt, Dan, Allan, John and Stan for your excellent company at the bar. My only regret was not allowing myself to be dragged into one of the various nigh clubs that we past on our way home at 3 am, the 3 hours sleep I got instead was poor consolation. I have some sympathy with Richards view, the meeting did nothing to allay my fears that the Trust are committed to the SE Mooring proposal and that use of words like 'proposal' and 'consultation' are just a smoke screen. On a positive note, it was an excellent opportunity to establish some new contacts. I was particularly impressed with the CRT Midlands maintenance manager and CRT head of volunteering and I will be following up a couple of issues I discussed privately with them after the meeting. I was also very impressed with the response to my 'P Skiver' thoughts. I really had not anticipated that at all, if reflective of a wider audience it could lead to some significant gains. Finally, Bravo Birmingham, great city, lovely people. Reg

That is probably true in practice Martin but in case anyone is bothered, you can actually regain management of your e-mail accounts by reconfiguring them to use the earlier internet communication technology of POP rather than IMAP. Only the latter technology enables Google (and other such servers) to save your data on their server and generally control what you can and can't do with it. I use POP so that all my emails, email addresses etc. are stored on my own computer and from which I can then sort them and delete them as I wish, rather than how Google wish. Most people stick with the default IMAP because they don't know there is an alternative but even if they did would probably not change because using POP means you can't 'enjoy' the sharing across different platforms (PC/mobile phone/ipad etc.) that IMAP enables. A bit like using 'Cloud' technology to allow your service provider to store and manage all your data, I don't use that either, I am just glad I still have a choice! Edited, just to make it clear, you can still use Google, you don’t have to change your accounts, just reconfigure them to use POP instead of IMAP, Google allow you to do this, but don’t make it easy!

Crossbreed Mutt, given away at a French flea market, probably a ‘gun shy reject’. I say that because typical of French hunting dogs, he has no brains whatsoever and never tires of chasing his nose.

We have two (connected) large Stainless Steel tanks and we live on board. We keep them topped up by filling every 2 or 3 weeks. We drink the water from the tap. Never had any tummy troubles except after eating too much chocolate and once when I drank too much whisky. Our dog will only drink the water under sufferance, much preferring canal water, he hates high canal banks.