Arthur Marshall

Now that's another one that's been done to death. I still find it peculiar that after apparently being on the site a while, and appearing to have a love of boating, the OP posts his first ever contribution by explaining how crap it all is, and successfully reigniting arguments that have bored us all to death already and got a few people banned. I think he's Algernon Johnson's sock puppet just trying to distract us from the fact that narrowboats and especially widebeams are natural repositories for the mutated coronavirus, which now successfully moves between biodiesel and humans. The only one if us who is safe is Peterboat, and that won't last because it's in the process of being carried by sunbeams.

Market forces - if people pay, then it aint overpriced, sorry. If it's too expensive for you, do something cheaper. buying a smaller boat is always an option. I'm always interested in the concept of "ordinary people". These are so very rarely the same kind of people as the people using the term... and the authority is not human. It's a charitable business, not a person. Plus, publishing the costs of stuff isn't particularly sneaky. Not needing something you love doing is a bit odd too - usually, we want to do stuff we love doing rather than walk away because someone is asking for money to pay for it. But it all comes down to what you want to spend your money on - me, I'll keep the boat on the water for as long as I can, which may not be much longer anyway, but I don't give a toss about CRT, or the legality of charging me mooring fees, or whether CRT can charge me to moor for a couple of days somewhere. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, miles from traffic, towns and people, perched on the back of the tub reading a book in the sun listening to the birds sing is worth a couple of grand a year. You won't find that anywhere else in this country without having to climb a mountain.

I think that nails it. Your licence allows you to wander about and stop here and there for 14 days. It doesn't allow you to hog a bit of canal bank for most of the year so you can have a fortnight's holiday in the summer. You're paying for the right to stay put, which, I think, is where the legal quibblers rest their case as that right may not actually exist in law. Could be a bit self defeating challenging it as we might all either have to go CC or park in offline marinas. That would clear a few thousand boats off the system....

Thanks - I apologise to the OP. What interests me a bit, though not enough to bother to do anything about it, is how CRT set their rate. My EOG fee is about £600, while what I actually pay the farmer for my mooring is £400. So shouldn't my EOG be £200? I presume they are taking half what they charge for their own online moorings, which have facilities we don't. Whinging about what you get charged is fine, stopping boating, assuming you still like it, because you're picking a fight seems like cutting your nose off to spite your face. Looks like an excuse to me. I just regarded the imposition of mooring fees as a sneaky way to put the licence money up while pretending they weren't - bit like the government claiming to reduce income tax while raising NI contributions!

Back when I started this lark there was no CRT (or BW) mooring fee, we just paid the farmer his whack. There was much discontent when mooring fees came in, and many attempts to wriggle out of paying them. None worked. There are still those who say the charges have no legal validity but who have never had the nerve to try it in court. Most of those you will find on the other boating forum, still fulminating. The thing is, the law appears to be the law, at least judges say it is, so whether you think it's fair or not is irrelevant. I also suspect, as this subject has been done to death, and this is someone's first post (at least under this name), it's a deliberate attempt at trolling!

Maybe it's the club members who are historic... although, to be fair, it is likely that the age range of historic boat owners is in the danger area. It would be interesting to have a survey of how many of us boat owners are over 70. The chance of someone in any large group carrying the infection in another week or so is going to be pretty high, and while the sprightly young ones will shake it off, us old farts may be better off not all huddling together in packs. I mean, three hundred old working boats coming on the market all at once, it doesn't bear thinking sbout...

I think there's a stoppage at Adderley which may have stopped some water coming down and there's a landslip further back. There's a hell of a lot going pearshaped at the moment and I don't see where the money is coming from to fix it all.

The problem with giant letters is that most of us read this on tablets or phones, and it's quite nice to see several posts without having to scroll all the time. Yours nearly filled my screen by itself, which means in a discussion you lose all context. Colour etc is good in life, but we use it on here specifically to highlight bits of a post we're commenting on, so bunging big chunks in colour for the fun of it is just irritating, I'm afraid. There's historic reasons for most of it too - in old days, using big fonts or too many caps was regarded as shouting and it's a bit impolite. Generally, when joining a working forum it's best to tread a bit carefully as folk can get upset if a newcomer tries to "improve" it without trying to understand why we like it the way it is.