Arthur Marshall

Excellent if LadyG's got her cat back. Just goes to show what this forum can achieve. So much for the doomsters...

Just reading that myself. Another year of racing home...

Mine did, led to all sorts of problems as, in keeping with Arthur's Law of Narrowboat Engineering, they didn't get the engine back in lined up properly so more vibration and associated grief.

If you'll pardon the asperity, that's a bloody silly statement. The vast majority of people, including probably your tenants, live in unaffordable housing, in that they can't afford it and don't pay for it. They pay a bit, and the state pays the rest. Maybe you should tell us the proportion of your unearned income comes (perfectly legitimately) from housing benefit. Landlords are some of the biggest benefit claimants going. And, just as a point of interest, "market value" is a myth. There's no such thing, it's just a useful economic shorthand for a very complex computation. As we have discussed on many occasions, there is no "market value" for boats of a certain type. It just depends on what one person will pay for a particular one. In the case of houses, it depends on the willingness of a mortgage provider to lend (ie create) money - a calculation that used to be x times an income and now is y times, when y is a number somebody thought they could get away with. It has nothing to do with the actual cost of building, or exchanging a house. When it goes wrong, as recently in the US or Eire, it's a disaster. Rents are a different matter. Neither the cost of building, nor the purchase price of a house, nor it's current apparent value, has anything to do with the rent charged. That depends purely on a combination of scarcity, the ability of local people to pay, and the level of available state support. The last named makes any talk of a "market" nonsense. Anyway, this is a bit silly and I've got a boat to paint and a euphonium to play. Both much more fun than trying to educate the wilfully ignorant.

I think it sort of means affordable to someone on an average income. As evrybody kno. Though those who got on the housing ladder in the last century pretend not to, just as they pretend not to know that rents, too, are unaffordable. Of course, the government has always known this, which is why they used to subsidise mortgages with interest tax relief, why buy to lets are subsidised by ridiculous allowances for expenses to be set against the income (I worked for an accountant...) and why most working people's rents are at least partly paid by the state. So, no, it's not a nonsense statement. It's shorthand for "the housing market is out of control, mortgages are a total rip off, so are most rents, but we're not going to do owt about it because firstly, we're scared of rich people, secondly we ARE rich people and most of us own lots of property, and anyway, we dunno what to do". It's a lot shorter than that. The phrase is just an admission that most housing, now, is unavailable to the average working person.

If it's any consolation, which it probably isn't, I reckon it took fifty years before my engine bilge rusted through, and even then only in one small spot. It didn't matter that much, because I had another bottom plate by then, and I'd never have noticed the hole in the bilge if the weld on that plating hadn't failed!

I just vactanned and then red leaded mine. You can't stop the rust. I was told that the oil from the engine used to help protect the metal before the introduction of drip trays.

I think there's a water point just the Barbridge side of Cholmondeston Lock (I may have spelt that wrong). It's exceedingly slow.

Can't see that in the article. Provenance, please. Though someone may well have complained, rather justifiably, about what the caravan dwellers may be doing with their "human waste" products.

Surely the resale value doesn't matter at all, it's the rent you can charge that matters. The house that you rent out doesn't cost you any more twenty years after you bought it, but you can wind the rent up through the roof because, essentially, if the tenant can't afford it, the government pays it for him. In essence, the landlord is as much a claimant and reciever of benefits as the bloke living in it, and the government is buying him a house. It's a very strange system, one of the unforeseen consequences of an attempt by, I think, Labour under Blair, to support low income tenants. At least, I assume it was unforeseen, though knowing Blair, he probably saw a profit in it for himself somewhere along the lihe.

Interesting how this forum has decided that the problem is all down to migrants, junkies and the mentally ill. Obviously nothing to do with ludicrous house prices and rents, both largely fuelled by a combination of deliberate government (of all colours) policies and decisions and unforeseen consequences of other ones. I am pleased to report, for the sake of balance, that when I spent my fairly short period living rough, I was British, didn't do drugs and was completely sane. I didn't even play the trombone at the time. Sometimes, some people let their prejudices show. Shame, really. Keep it for the politics but, where nobody cares. PS, thank you, Rog. Someone with a brain at last.

Let's have a bit of a reality check here. Government decree may have said traveller sites should be set up, but they never have been. Governments decree all sort of stuff that never happens. I doubt many of these folk are genuine travellers, just people down on their luck. The rest of what you say about people using services they don't pay for, of course, applies equally to yourself as it does to all CCers. Generally, given a choice, people prefer not to live on the street, in crap vans, or in slums. Whether they have jobs or not neither of us know, but people still have to be somewhere. I suspect if they had decent jobs paying a living wage they wouldn't be living as and where they do.

What do you consider the issue? That posh homeowners have to look at scruffy caravans, or that some people have nowhere else to live?

Does anybody? I distinctly get the impression on here that they all just stay put!

Well, you didn't. If that was true, then people who didn't work (for example, because they were raising kids, caring for parents) wouldn't get one. Any contributions you made to the support systems while working went to pay pensioners living at that time, same as workers now pay for yours. All you earned was your earnings, plus any private pension scheme you paid into. The state pension is a benefit. And a taxable one at that, quite rightly. How you feel may set your attitude to other claimants, but has nothing to do with why you get a pension.

What makes me cross is how many OAPs moan about benefit claimants while pocketing their couple of hundred quid a week, especially those well off enough to own property. However, this is a thread about setting up a subforum, not a political debate and I'd be grateful if the powers that be that actually run this place would think about it. I don't actually give a toss about any other members' opinions, to which they are of course perfectly entitled. They just aren't relevant. I'm happy to accept the organisers' decision, and, having made the suggestion and explained why, I'm not going to get involved in any further discussion.

Judging by some of theposts in the political ghetto, they're already here.

I think I read that line at least fifteen years ago. The forum will still be here, long after you have thankfully taken your leave. St Paul said it all them years ago - empty vessels make the most noise.

I don't agree. There's no shame in claiming benefits - millions of working people do, as well as us pensioners. It's no different from any other form of unearned income.

As questions in this subject are now fairly common, and the replies tend to drift away from the matters concerned into general debate about benefit claimants' motivations and, often, characters, it might be valuable to have a specific place for this. Would make sensible suggestions easier to find, experience easier to share and probably cut down the aggro from those who just want a fight or demonstrate their political position. It would also show that we're not entirely focussed on well off folk with expensive boats but have some comcern for the whole spectrum of boating folk.

Trying to get an answer via the courts is probably not a good idea. Partly because they're so unpredictable, but mostly because if it's as necessary as you imply, the boat will probably have sunk before the court looks at it. Is it a job he can do himself? Bitumen isn't that expensive and it's cheaper to hire a dry dock than pay for the whole job to be done, and it doesn't take long. If there is a real problem with the hull, I very much doubt if anyone would pay for overplating, which could be problematic. My boat is pretty old, at least sixty years, and last time I had it plated, when they blasted the hull clean we found you could actually see through it - it was only the bitumen keeping me afloat. That being said, it had probably been that bad for at least five years. There must be other boaters in, so to speak, the same boat. I wonder whether it is worth setting up a subforum on here for boaters on benefits. Firstly it would collate any genuine info that turns up and make it easier to find, and secondly it would allow those who just want to poke a stick at such claimants to keep out of the discussion. I think it might provide as valuable a service as the engine subforums do. Some of us appear to be very well off, but plenty of us aint.

I don't think the OP is reading any replies, he's just looking for a row. It's this sense of entitlement that grates, that he should immediately get the answers he wants and then everyone should shut up. The fact that there are many opinions out there isn't relevant. Personally I doubt that benefits would pay for blacking, as the DWP would assume claimants would want it done every year in the most costly way. You'd certainly have to give evidence of when it was done previously and how essential it was. Plenty of boats appear to think it isn't needed at all.

Certainly looks that way. It's a shame as the original query was perfectly valid and there were some attempts at helpful responses. But you can't help it if they turn out to be pillocks looking for a fight anyway.