Mike Todd
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Posts posted by Mike Todd
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18 hours ago, Peanut said:
Maybe the answer lies in enforcement. As this would cost money, franchise it out to wheel clampers. They have the skill set needed.
Unlicensed boats, over-stayers, and dumpers, could pay a fine, say £150 initially, and then if still non-compliant be towed to a location, away from anywhere convenient, padlocked and pay, say £500 to be released, and a storage charge of some £50 a day. With last resort, the option to gain possession, and sell the boat for non-payment. In addition, all unlicensed boats would need to pay all back fees, comply with the BSS and insurance, or be sold.
It would take a while for the message to sink in, but soon enough the problem would go away. CART, would refer all complaints back to the clampers. 🙂
EA have tried that but it did not go well.
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3 hours ago, IanD said:
Since that's clearly a dig at the likes of me, I'll rise to the bait... 😉
CART need more money, and some of this has to come from boaters. CCers have for many years been making a smaller contribution to CART funding (which pays for the canals their boat is on) than home moorers -- some of who pay CART directly, some via the 9% levy on other mooring fees -- and this low-cost living aboard is one factor that has lead to the large rise in the number of CMers, many of who (not all) seem to do their best to bend/break the rules which law-abiding boaters follow.
The CC surcharge on the license fee goes at least part-way to correcting this anomaly (and increases CART income), and simply means that everyone -- CCer or CMer or HMer or EOGer -- pays a similar amount to CART. Or at least CCers don't continue to pay less -- some HMers who pay CART directly or via EOG obviously pay much more. It's a bit like closing a historical tax loophole that some people have taken advantage of but now protest when this is corrected... 😉
You might also care to note that I've suggested several measures to raise further money for CART (like boat-age-related surcharge/discount) which would result in "wealthy leisure boaters" like me paying more money *and poorer people in old boats paying less* -- which hardly smacks of self-interest or prejudice against poorer boaters, does it?
Nothing to do with self-satisfaction, just fairness (those with the broadest shoulders carry the heaviest load), and trying to help close the gap between CART funding and the expenditure needed to maintain the canals.
Now expecting accusations of being a "champagne socialist" -- well if that means being well-off and thinking I should pay more and those less well-off should pay less, guilty as charged... 😉
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.
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On 16/04/2024 at 18:05, Tracy D'arth said:
Excellent, I knew that the stern was familiar. 24 years ago I welded all the interior stern panels around one of these. I was told by the owner that 41 feet was a popular size for Minden Marine as it fitted in the workshop!
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!
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2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:
Did you read what I suggested ?
If attempt to remove it was made it would be destroyed - a bit like the security seals, and if it was destroyed then ............
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.
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3 hours ago, MtB said:
Yes that's easy. CRT asks "Do you have a home mooring?"
Answer no and that means you must be mooring out on the towpath all year round so a bill is issued for 365 nights at £10 a night. Cheap and easy. I can't imagine that costing £10, let alone £10 a night.
But the proposal on which I was commenting was to charge everyone per night when not on a home mooring.
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2 hours ago, magpie patrick said:
Any care charity has the option of not providing the care if it can't achieve the standard - CRT don't have that option - they don't just have to meet statutory requirements, they have statutory duties.
There is a difference between holding CRT to account and "being on their case" - one frequent FOI user was found to be vexatious and CRT no longer have to comply with their requests.
Those who want CRT to improve (and that's probably most of us) should pick their battles, not just try and make CRT's life difficult.
I thought that there was a mechanism to be invoked if CaRT become non-viable - ie they cannot fulfil their duties.
1 hour ago, cuthound said:I wouldn't object to.CRT charging all boaters say £10.a night to moor on the towpath if they stayed longer than one night.
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)
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2 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:
Has the water tap gone now, it was the only operational bit last time I was there
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.
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7 minutes ago, Ian Mac said:
The other thing that C&RT have to undertake are the 47? statuary obligations which they inherited from when they were a government body. I am not aware of any other charity which has such legal obligations. Anybody know of any?
Would be interesting to know just what the 47 obligations are, I suspect someone on here will have the list.
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.
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17 hours ago, Pie Eater said:
There is a full list of services on the Bridgewater Canal Company website.
Beware that those at Worsley are no longer functional.
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3 hours ago, Tam & Di said:
The boating families lived on their boat because the boat was a working tool; they moved because that was the whole point of the work, not just in order to do the minimum they could get away with. Their 'travelling' was the real thing, but I'm sure the NBTA people don't seriously pay much mind to that - it's just part of the fable they use to get public sympathy with their self indulgent way of life.
And, in general, canals were not built to facilitate mooring in at arbitrary 9spots. A boat not moving was a boat not earning.
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18 hours ago, David Mack said:
But the purpose of the property portfolio is to provide income to CRT. Changes in the capital value of the property portfolio are inevitable given what happens in the rest of the property market, but are largely a paper accounting issue. What matters more is whether there is a steady stream of income from property tenants.
Unless your budget depends on Total Return . . .
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1 hour ago, Momac said:
Do some people think a well kept / nicely presented boat is something that only novices do?
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 . . .
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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!
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2 hours ago, Momac said:
A CC'er can take as many short term paid for moorings as they like.
A 'HM'er ''is required to have a long term mooring agreement that is in place and available throughout the period that a license is held.
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!
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On 06/04/2024 at 09:10, Higgs said:
Which is already a fallacy. What this surcharge has done is introduced a usage charge, above and beyond the right to float your boat.
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.
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11 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:
I know it's pointless trying to educate you, but when I started boating there were no BW mooring fees, there were boats that cruised continuously and there were boats with home moorings for which they paid no fees to BW. And no home mooring requirement.
It's been pointless debating with you since you were whinging about licences in marinas. I shan't respond again.
PS ghost moorings were a myth.
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.
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10 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:
1971.
The REGISTRATION (not licence) expired at the end of December and was the same price irrespective of if you took it out Jan 1st or Nov 30th
#
£18 in 1971 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £318.86 today, an increase of £300.86 over 53 years. The pound had an average inflation rate of 5.57% per year between 1971 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 1,671.42%.
However how many miles of canal were available to cruise in 1971 ?
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.
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On 29/03/2024 at 20:09, magnetman said:
Interesting idea. Use canals for landfill then remediate the surface and build on it. win win situation.
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.
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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.
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1 hour ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
No,
but if you pay extra at the theatre you expect the better seat,
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?
38 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:Then I should, as a home moorer, because I pay twice as much to CRT as a CCer. The argument is nonsensical.
Luckily, nobody cares what we think. It's the job of the owner to set what it considers a fair price, and that of the user to decide whether it's worth it or not.
And it's the job of the government to decide where tax money gets spent, and the job of the public to vote in one that does it the way they think best. Which is what it's done consistently for the past dozen years, saying clearly it doesn't want public money spent on services, culture or fripperies like a navigation.
Surely you pay the same as everyone else for the licence to navigate? Mooring is a separate matter.
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1 hour ago, Arthur Marshall said:If license costs reflected the cost of running the system, there would be no boats and no system.
If the thing is supposed to be a resource for the general public, walkers, cyclists, fishermen, leisure boaters, hirers,, then it should be publicly funded. It's not been a commercial waterway for a century.
Bit like the water industry, really. Trying to run it is a private concern when it's meant to be a utility is to guarantee failure. It can't be both.
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!
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3 hours ago, MtB said:
Umm.... that exert is for Business Rates.
Business Rates are assessed on a different basis from Council Tax.
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.
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1 minute ago, cuthound said:
They would scream even louder if CRT ever found a way to revoke unidentified boats licences in the same way to do persistent overstayers.
I doubt that find a way to do it is the hard bit - find the money to enforce it, is
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On 30/03/2024 at 10:34, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
I hear Council Tax is going up, 👍
It’s been such a bargain for such a long time it’s well over due a good increase,
I always thought CT was supposed to reflect the value of the house?
perhaps CT ought to rise at the same rate as the value of the house?
Popular misunderstanding. From Gloucestershire website (as an example)
Business Rates are worked out based on your property’s rateable value. A property's rateable value is an assessment of the annual amount the property would rent for if it were available to let on the open market at a fixed valuation date.
The estimate is made by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA).
Until 31 March 2023, the rateable value will be based on a valuation date of 1 April 2015
From 1 April 2023, the rateable value is based on the valuation date of 1 April 2021
What is my rateable value?
Overnight Mooring for the Etihad Stadium, Manchester.
in General Boating
Posted
Isn't that all LTMs now?