IanD

On a separate tiller arm question -- has anyone come up with a good solution for varying the tiller arm length? At the moment mine is a compromise (it reaches just to the semi-trad doors) which is the right length for steering standing just inside the doors -- which I find I rarely do, because I don't find this very comfortable, either reaching behind my back or standing sideways (cricked neck). The tiller is pretty light (well-balanced Schilling rudder) and could be more easily (and safely) steered from the stern deck if it was maybe 20cm shorter. And when steering sitting down just ahead of the controls, it would be better if it was maybe 20cm longer to save you having to reach so far back towards the stern. The obvious solution is to get more than one tiller arm and swap them over, but that's a PITA if you want to change over when moving steering position or swapping between steerers. A short arm with a push-on extension would work, but you still need to store/find the extension. A better solution could be some kind of telescopic system, maybe with the wooden handle attached to an inner tiller tube inside the main one which can be slid in and out (oooer missus!), maybe using a second tiller pin with several alternative holes to set the length. Some kind of telescopic twist-to-lock system would be better still, but it's difficult to see how that can be made to work (and manufactured!) Has anyone else come up with a good solution to this problem? Cheers Ian P.S. Please, don't come back and say "you're doing it all wrong, you (meaning, I...) don't need to do this" -- what you do on your boat is your business, and vice versa... 😉

Don't see anything there about moving the boat away from others if it's on fire... 😉

Except that IIRC the advice from the fire brigade if there's a fire is always GET OUT! -- keep yourself safe, don't try and take stuff with you, don't try and heroically fight the fire (unless it's a small one), don't try and move a burning boat which might go BOOM! at any moment...

How can directors of a charity and a not-for-profit company get paid in dividends when there aren't any? Paying in "loans" was a tax fiddle which HMRC have now cracked down on, and gone after the culprits to recover large amounts of tax which was avoided, so it seems extremely unlikely CART/BSS would be doing that. Unless we know whether they're only paid for their BSS role or whether this is on top of their CART pay all this is just speculation, throwing sh*t at people with positions that posters on here don't like the sound of, with no facts to justify it -- apart from the fact that they appear to be paid around £90k for "the job", whatever that is and however much time they spend on it. If that's all they get paid and it's a full-time job -- or they spend some time on this and the rest of the time on work for CART -- then it's not an unreasonable sum. If they get paid that for a day or two per week (or even half their time) and paid again for working for CART, then it is indeed a fat-cat ripoff. Right now nobody's provided any evidence about which is the case, no matter how much some people hate "directors"... 😉

So by both arguments -- this one and the one I gave above -- the BSS is justified in requiring CO detectors be fitted onboard.

Isn't the principle behind the BSS supposed to be to prevent boaters harming others (third parties)? (because if you want to commit suicide that's your own business...) If a boat stove (or whatever) is chucking out CO -- which could get into another boat (third party), or the boat generating it (first party) -- then the only sane place to put a detector is inside the boat, where the people are. But boater A can't install a CO detector inside boat B to protect them, only inside their own boat. So the BSS says "you must install a CO detector inside your boat"; the detector inside boat A (installed by boater A) protects them against being gassed by CO generated by boat B, and vice versa -- in other words, it prevents boaters harming others, which is the BSS remit. The fact that it tells a boater to install a CO detector inside their own boat seems odd, but it's to protect them from somebody else's faulty stove -- the fact that it also protects them from their own is a free bonus... 😉

Thank you, I can read, and nothing you posted said they were the *only* four employees -- which is why I asked. Now I'll ask if *you* can read... 😉 "The Canal & River Trust has incorporated the new entity and is one of four members of the company, alongside three appointed director members: Tom Deards, Jon Horsfall (both employees of the Trust)" It's common practice for employees of one company/charity (e.g. CART) to be seconded to another associated company/charity (e.g. BSS) to work for them, in this case the one they're doing the work for normally pays them -- which in this case would (maybe...) be about £90k each from BSS, if there are no other employees. Usually they don't get two salaries for doing one job, for obvious reasons -- so if you have any evidence to suggest this is the case, might I suggest you provide it? 🙂 If they are getting £90k each as part-time directors *on top of* their CART salary for doing a theoretically full-time job -- then yes I agree with you, this seems excessive... 😉

Where do you get the £80k each from? (£360k/4=90k) Are these directors the only BSS staff or are there others? I read it as that this is their job seconded from CART, and this is what they get paid not on top of an existing CART salary -- because anything else would be crazy, neither would be a full-time job. Or do you know different? (facts please, not speculation...) Just trying to find out the truth here, as opposed to slagging off the BSS and speculation... 😉

That might be your personal view -- that charity directors should be paid peanuts -- but it obviously isn't the view of the charities. How much are the BSS directors paid then, and how much do you think they should be paid? Bear in mind that two of them are CART employees so presumably paid on the CART scale -- though I guess you think all CART senior management are overpaid too, and possibly all senior management everywhere? Whether the BSS is incompetent or just plain misguided and over-reaching is a debate to be had -- I'd certainly agree on the last two, whether that's caused by the first one is again a matter for debate... 😉 And the breakdown of "administrative expenses"? Come on, let's see just how much the fat cats are paid then... 🙂 Oh yes, not forgetting -- and how this compares to what you were paid as a company director, just for the sake of transparency... 😉 This is all sounding like a witch-hunt based on little or no actual facts, except hatred of "fat-cats" -- regardless of whether those accused are or not... P.S Don't get me wrong, there are undoubtedly lots of overpaid fat-cats out there, especially some big company directors, and more particularly in privatised companies like water -- but it really doesn't seem likely that this is the case for the BSS or CART, other than the "all senior managers are overpaid by definition, especially those in charities" class-war trope.

Where? "The company is a not-for-profit public safety initiative, so all income will be used to fund the costs of running and continuously improving the Scheme to reduce risks to the safety of boaters and other people on and near the waterways" People always accusing organisations of fat-cat behaviour and profiteering with no evidence to back it up -- or even when this shows the opposite -- gets right up my nose, partly because it often diverts attention towards an easy (and imaginary?) target and away from where the real blame lies -- CART is one example and BSS is another where fat-cats are definitely not the real problem. Of course the water companies really *are* an utterly disgusting example of such behaviour, and deserve every last bit of the sh*t that gets thrown at them... 😞

Given that -- unlike the pubcos, or water companies -- the BSS is a not-for-profit company with three directors, two of who are CART employees so unlikely to be coining it, I can't help feeling that your comment is a teeny bit hyperbolic... 😉 https://www.boatsafetyscheme.org/media/299495/explanatory-note-on-the-governance-arrangements-from-april-2024.pdf "Who runs BSS Limited? The Canal & River Trust has incorporated the new entity and is one of four members of the company, alongside three appointed director members: Tom Deards, Jon Horsfall (both employees of the Trust) and Phil Aspey (an independent director with long experience in the Boat Safety Scheme up to March 2024). How will BSS Limited be funded? BSS Limited will be funded by existing sources, such as BSS Certification charges and Examiner training and accreditation fees. The company is a not-for-profit public safety initiative, so all income will be used to fund the costs of running and continuously improving the Scheme to reduce risks to the safety of boaters and other people on and near the waterways"

That's not a safe assumption though is it, when many of the boaters on cheap scruffy and presumably more dangerous boats are younger people desperate for somewhere to live? I think you're contradicting yourself -- deaths from CO poisoning and fires/explosions are (I believe) a lot more frequent than people getting chopped up by propellers, and it's these that BSS is supposed to prevent. I don't think anyone would have a big complaint about the BSS if it focused on the big things that really do kill people -- like gas/electricity installation, petrol, CO poisoning -- and not the thousand and one little piddly things that at worst are going to cost the boater some money, or where the chance of them causing a problem is so small that it should be ignored. It's not unreasonable to have rules that stop people living on board a deathtrap that might kill them and other boaters, and that's what the BSS should be doing.

And I've had a dispute where it wasn't resolved so quickly due to plain old lies from the seller, telling Amazon there wasn't a problem and I was lying and ripping them off... 😞 I agree that Amazon is normally pretty good, but not always -- and if they're not, you can't necessarily rely on the CC company to refund you. That's just a warning, because many (most?) people think you can if it's within the £100-£30k limit, they don't know about the "direct contract" clause... 😉