Arthur Marshall

My gearbox broke last Tuesday and RCR sent out their engineer, who scratched his head politely and then went away to get hold of a real one. He came out on Wednesday, peered down the hole and said the gearbox would have to come out which is a fairly major undertaking - it's a Lister SR2 and there isn't much room to move stuff around down there. I said I'd get the boat home by Friday, which I did. I rang RCR to confirm I was back at the mooring and they said that they had arranged for the engineer to contact me to let me know when he was coming to get the gearbox, which he hadn't, so I rang him on his mobile and he just said he'd be in touch and rang off. So,bearing in mind that i don't expect him just to drop everything he has on hand and come rushing to sort my boat out, that his base is a long way away from the boat, that I don't live on and don't expect to use the boat again till next spring, and also that ringing him on his mobile just generally interrupts him working on whatever he is working on, how long should I leave it without hearing anything from him before I contact him (or RCR) again? He's done stuff on the boat for me before, so I know he knows his stuff and will do a first rate job.

Ah. A reasoned argument from pg after all this time. Well done!

If I remember rightly, a professional technically is someone who has to qualify and belong to a "professional body" to be classed as such. It's a hangover from the old guilds - got nothing to do with raising standards, just a way of keeping the plebs out. I believe playing golf helps...

I'm not sure that it is really just the retaliation urge. I think that most of us just assumed that BW and then CRT were essentially benevolent and their actions were lawful (and therefore those being penalised were by definition in the wrong). Generally, their existence doesn't affect most of us much - and neither, in fact, does that of the relatively few boaters who flout the rules. It's hard (and usually time-consuming, emotionally draining and expensive) to call large organisations to account and without the bolshie few it wouldn't happen. Also, prior to the net and mobile comms, such information was simply not widely available.

The surprise actually came at the swing bridge!

I'd have thought it was because they didn't expect ever to get any money from the unlicensed boat owner so might as well at least stop them clogging up the system. If they then managed to bamboozle the legalities so they got debts as well, that's a double win.

In effect then, they can still take their costs out of the boat sale proceeds, but have to either write off unpaid licence fees or claim those via another route.

If you'll pardon the phrase, bollards... into the side, into neutral, off the boat with the centre rope and whack it round a bollard. Let it play out a bit while the boat slows down and then repeat on the next bollard to stop it. Much the same going into the lock (lucky we were going down rather than up). My wife had done all the locks going up Bosley and it was supposed to be my turn to do them all on the return, but she bottled out, not surprisingly. The lockies could have been more helpful, but I've never actually known them do anything at all on that flight, so I wasn't surprised. Worst bit was coming into my landing stage at the final mooring as it's so shallow I usually go in in reverse. Managed to wrap the rope round one of the gas pipe mooring pins before it dragged me off the end of it though. The annoyance is that I had the gearbox rebuilt only a couple of years ago when the forwards died and I thought he'd done the backwards too (it's an old Lister). Ah well, out it comes again. It's only money.

Odd how some people's solution to the housing problem (be it squatters in houses or CCers overstaying) is simply just to make everyone homeless. If jobs have to be done, someone has to do them, and they have to live somewhere. It's really very simple, unless you want a city with no doctors, nurses, plumbers, buses, trains, taxis, shops... not that anyone over a certain income level seems to care. Yet.

"concatenations" Now there's a word that isn't used enough these days. A summary from Nigel as to what's happening at the moment would be most welcome.

Would have been helpful having someone going ahead to set the locks coming down Bosley couple of days ago as my gearbox is buggered again and I've got no reverse. The always-helpful vol lockies on the flight met us (one on the boat, one doing the locks) at about the third lock, set the next one for us (which was nice) and then disappeared. All three of them. Never saw them again, not even to tell them one of the paddles (lock 5) was broken. . . they did say they'd reported the broken paddle on lock 6, but they hadn't put a notice or anything useful like that on it.

I'm assuming Tony's case got stayed (or whatever they call it) in the end until Leigh's comes up. There's a bit about building on water in the weekend paper at https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/29/floating-homes-architecture-build-water-overcrowding-cities-unaffordable-housing- though I personally think the thing they built at Chichester is a monstrosity.

The Mackenzie Friends issue is, I think, going to get more and more difficult for he courts to refuse, as legal aid is now virtually impossible to get and lawyers are out of the price range of anyone short of a couple of million quid - the effect of which means that any access to justice available to the ordinary person is virtually nil. Courts are already complaining they're getting clogged up by litigants in person (I mean, for gods sake, some of them don't even understand Latin) and important people like judges are actually having to help them. And there still seem to be one or two judges actually interested in seeing justice done rather than just getting a quick exit to the golf course. Probably not many, but maybe one or two.

Shhh...

And obviously that's a fact (because someone with an axe to grind said it) , and anything that appears to contradict it (such as evidence) isn't. Weird world some live in. You really think one of the mods spent time deleting links from an email just to be unfair to someone?

Why? What's the point? No one has suggested such a thing. But of course as soon as he says he won't, someone will say that proves he was thinking of it. I refer you to Warren Beatty, who said he never denied lies told about him as that just encouraged people to think they might be true.

This is just proving my original point. Anything any of the mods, or Dan, say is not going to be accepted by those who are determined there is a vast conspiracy going on. They will be accused of not giving any information, then if they do, it will not be enough or it will be simply untrue. It's pointless. Do you really think that if the "independant legal advice" is published someone on here won't say either it's rubbish, or you used they wrong lawyer, or they know better? Or that it's just made up? There was information floating about in those other threads (such as medical details) which really shouldn't have been put on the net in the first place, whether or not the threads just got to vituperative to carry on. Myself, I'd like to see new threads on the same topics open for discussion, maybe with the guidelines of what is and is not legally acceptable carefully spelled out, as they are important subjects and they matter. But just playground yelling at the mods and the owner is, in the words of someone above, just silly.

I don't think there have been any suggestions that the site may go commercial, rather the opposite. Someone just mentioned ads on another thread, and the commercialisation of the site and database if Dan were to sell it as something we'd all want to avoid.. As far as I'm aware, the suggestion that we should contribute a small amount towards the upkeep of the site was made by one of the members (not Dan or any of the mods), so as it's voluntary, there's no particular reason why I'd expect a balance sheet to be published. I doubt if the owner's making a fortune out of those of us who do contribute. I run a couple of sites for people (without charging) and it's hard to quantify costs - hosting fees are easy enough, but how do you quote for your own time, and once you start providing financial details with all the hassle that entails (plus that of the input of a couple of hundred members who would be sure they could do it cheaper!), you'd have to, really?

The point of a discussion forum is that a discussion can change someone's mind. So I can about leaving, should I want. Unlike a stack of people on this thread who are sitting in their entrenched positions, bolstered up by rumour, conspiracy theories, unfounded allegations and unevidenced accusations. As there is no point whatsoever in arguing with such closed minds, my advice to Dan and the mods (which, of course, is as valid as yours or any other of the so-helpful antagonistic parties) would be to lock this thread due to its now total pointlessness and just let the rest of the forum get on happily, as, in fact, it is doing. Of course, one of the points that disproves most of the accusations of heavy modding is the fact that it hasn't been locked or modded, but no doubt that in itself will be used as evidence that petulance has been accepted as argument. You see, you can't win in this kind of thing, because to achieve anything you have to have compromise, and that's what there isn't a willingness for among the discontented. You can't argue rationally with the unreasonable, and it's pointless trying. Exits again through the revolving door, pursued by a bear.