Mike Todd

EA have tried that but it did not go well.

I have yet to see evidence that boat age and licence holder income are sufficiently well correlated to make a viable basis for differentiated charging. Insofar as government subsidies help to maintain the network then there is already a degree of income related charging.

Reminds me of a story that I was told many many years ago. There was a belief that there was a certain maximum size for ship's propellers and various theories based on, mostly, pseudo hydro dynamics. Turned out to be the width between the factory gateposts of the only UK manufacturer!

The important test to apply to any such ideas is to consider the costs of issuing, enforcement and tracking. Midt will gobble up a large part if any realistic increased charges.

But the proposal on which I was commenting was to charge everyone per night when not on a home mooring.

I thought that there was a mechanism to be invoked if CaRT become non-viable - ie they cannot fulfil their duties. But can you devise a system for collecting that does not cost more than £10 a night? (or, more realistically £1 a night of it is to make a difference)

Now you ask I am not sure as the last two times we passed that way we were principally concerned about elsan and rubbish as well. But I do not recall seeing a functional tap.

MAny charities operate in regulated activities where the regulations have statutory force. For example, anyone providing care has to comply with the very extensive conditions set by CSCI (or its predecessors). In neither case do they wholly prevent problems but they do make it a whole lot better.

Beware that those at Worsley are no longer functional.

And I thought after posting that actually by the time it gets down hear it is no longer H2O but a mild acid which is corrosive - see sandstone heritage buildings.

That's a pretty wet joke!

And, in general, canals were not built to facilitate mooring in at arbitrary 9spots. A boat not moving was a boat not earning.

Unless your budget depends on Total Return . . .

No, it reflects that fact that many new entrants do not realise the effort and involved in keeping a boat shiny (ever had a quote for a proper re-paint?) It takes time for a boat to get a 'lived in' patina . . . But it is inevitable . . .

Try looking back at past vlogs from Foxes Afloat - I seem to recall that they hired somewhere north of the border when thinking about a move that way. Even contact them. I recall that they had a good time - enough to persuade them to buy a croft!

There does seem to be a lacuna at that point - almost all moorers renew their mooring agreement at a different date in the year than their licence - even if they did once align the Covid-month changed that. Most marinas offer no commitment to renew at the end of the existing agreement - indeed they can probably terminate earlier in some events. Hence, for the period after the end of the current mooring agreement, a boater does not have a home mooring available throughput the period. Not sure how that will be dealt with!

No it is not a usage charge - if it were then that usage would have to appear contractually in your licence documentation from CaRT. It was an argument batted around in the debate but in the end all that the surcharge does is allow a boater to cruise (within movement rules) the network and not have to declare a home mooring.

We had our first boat in 1968 and paid a fee to BW to moor just above Bishops Meadow Lock where Jack Monk lived at the time and wd received a disc with a large M on it.

Not as much of a difference as many would imagine. I think the major additions are Rochdale and Huddersfield (funded Millennially so not much chance of any immediate repeat!), Ribble Link and Liverpool Link. All very welcome but there was certainly plenty available in 1971 (even if almost all towpaths were impassable) - enough anyway to get us hooked in 1967.

As has been found elsewhere, filling in canals to be suitable for housing is not as easy as it might seem . . . A succession of politicians (and others) have had to have the facts put straight to them by their civil servants.

L:ast summer we had a couple of nights moored in Paddington and the hire boats seemed to be quite busy. It was nice to see folk enjoying themselves and seeing some value in the preservation of navigable water. Generally no behavioural issues but on a good summer evening the whole area is busy. I could see no reason why the boats should not be there.

That kind of argument led to the Poll Tax - everyone pays the same as everyone has access to the same services (irrespective of amount used) And that turned out well, didn't it? Surely you pay the same as everyone else for the licence to navigate? Mooring is a separate matter.

For me, I'd want to advocate somewhere between you and MtB: neither a fully public utility, free at the point of use, nor a fully commercial operation is really going to work. In the first case, there are just too many areas where sustained reductions in public maintenance have led to situations of near collapse (OK I'm biased having just has a pothole damaged tyre to replace) with canals rather lower down the priority scale, compared with hospitals, schools and roads all in dire need. In the second case, a fully commercial operation would need to find ways of monetising all the non-boating users, including walkers and cyclists, with a real problem over controlling access and monitoring payments/permits or w.h.y. As with most of these challenges, a real problem is a complete lack of a political philosophy that can give a principled underpinning yo the separate decisions. At one extreme we do have the Corbynist approach that really only values publicly owned activities - and is principled in doing so - and at the other we have the 'tax is wrong' brigade of Farage and Rees-Mogg. Until we can find a way that says that the mixed economy - some things are best done for the public good and some better for those who need/can afford it, we will struggle to do anything better than ad hoc decision making that generally quickly fails because it is a fine balance of opinion which changes with the daily winds. But I still lie in hoe that we can find a way of doing this with the canals!

I may have the thread tangled up but I thought the post was about marina moorings and I also thought that they are generally subject to CT on the business, although there is, I think, an option to charge it on individual moorings. However, from Wikipedia for Council Tax: Each dwelling is allocated to one of eight bands coded by letters A to H (A to I in Wales) on the basis of its assumed capital value (as at 1 April 1991 in England and Scotland, 1 April 2003 in Wales). Newly constructed properties are also assigned a nominal 1991 (2003 for Wales) value. Same point, though, it is based on a value at a fixed point in time.

I doubt that find a way to do it is the hard bit - find the money to enforce it, is