IanD

I believe "bag of sand" is the accepted rhyming slang... 😉 Still cheaper and quieter (and more reliable?) than a stern thruster though... 🙂

Maybe that's where the name came from then... 😉

IIRC mine (made by Tim Tyler) cost about £1000 including VAT, but this was instead of a flat plate so presumably a replacement would cost more. Or maybe less, depending who the welder is... 😉

It was an open goal... 😉 For an unbiased comment about how well it works (or doesn't...), maybe @Up-Side-Down could comment -- he spent a couple of days on Rallentando with us last week when we were moving between marinas.

You could always fit a Schilling rudder... 😉

So how do you distinguish (and what do you call) boaters-without-a-home-mooring-who-follow-the-rules-and-keep-moving and boaters-without-a-home-mooring-who-flout-the-rules-and-move-as-little-as-possible? Because the first ones are the boaters for who the no-home-mooring (now often called Continuous Cruising -- don't blame me...) exception was devised in the first place, and the second are clearly not. I agree that many of the second class are not on CWDF, but that rather misses the point -- there certainly seem to be plenty of them on the canals. Whether you find overstayers/CMers/whatever a problem is very dependent on where you want to moor; I haven't had problems in London because my boat isn't here, but I see lots of boats doing this on a daily basis. But I have had difficulties finding visitor moorings in recent years in plenty of "honeypot" places like Braunston, Whaley Bridge, Skipton, Sowerby Bridge, Castlefield, Worcester, Stourport (how long a list would you like?) in a way that I never used to have (say) ten years ago -- and many of the boats on such short-term (e.g. 48h) moorings certainly don't look like short-term visitors, they're often still there if I pass by again a week or so later -- and according to @MtB some are still there months later. Of course there are no problems if you want to moor out in the middle of nowhere where other boats are few and far between, but funnily enough some people -- including me -- want to moor in popular towns and villages because of the facilities. If you can devise less divisive/pejorative (and short!) names than "CCers" and "CMers" and get these widely adopted so everyone knows what is being talked about then please feel free.

I'm sure the the HCS will be happy (birthday!) that closure is unlikely to happen then... 🙂

Using your calculations, that suggests that closing the Rochdale and HNC would cost CART something like £65M -- plus the other direct costs such as draining/making safe, so let's say £70M -- this could easily be more (£75M? £80M?) depending on closure costs. CART annual spending on the canals and rivers is about £200M per year, which covers everything including rivers and reservoirs. For the sake of argument, let's assume they send £140M on canals (could be less?), so the closure costs would be at least half of the entire canal maintenance budget for a year. How much money per year would closure save? The Rochdale and HNC total 53 miles long, which is about 3% of the canal network. If costs were equal per mile over the network closure might save £4M per year. Now these canals do have a lot more locks than most (about 120, about 6% of the network total IIRC) but then they're also used far less often than many others, which should reduce wear and tear. Some of the numbers are (educated) guesswork, but it looks like it would take between 10 and 20 years for CART to make up the closure costs from annual savings -- and in the meantime they'd take a massive financial hit, which they'd presumably have to borrow money to finance. At 5% interest rates this would cost them about £3M a year at the start, so maybe £15M over the 10-year payback period -- which adds about 20% to closure costs, which means we're now up to 12-25 years break-even period, maybe even longer. I can't believe that anyone with any understanding of business would think that this is a good idea... 😞

"Stoke-on-Trent" is a relatively modern name for the conglomeration of the six towns of Burslem, Tunstall, Fenton, Hanley, Longton and Stoke -- "The Potteries" -- after they were unwillingly unified into a city in 1910. Etruria was in Hanley. https://www.thepotteries.org/six_towns/index.htm https://www.thepotteries.org/six_towns/hanley.htm

I smell bullsh*t... If you're so brilliant at moneymaking ideas, why aren't you a retired CEO sleeping on a mattress stuffed with £50 notes on a superyacht? Hey guys, I've got a *much* better (but top secret!) idea than Alan's on how to *double* CARTs income, all I need is a million quid or so to get it off the ground... 😉

Such as? Realistic and costed ones please, not concepts viewed through rose-tinted spectacles... 😉 I suppose it's theoretically possible that you've got a load of brilliant ideas that neither anyone in CART or the consultants they paid to advise them on fundraising could come up with, but it seems unlikely -- apart from anything else, with that level of financial acumen I'd expect you to be a billionaire by now... 🙂

Delicious beer, we tried quite a few of them (with pork pies for lunch, obviously) -- and a lovely pub for getting wedged in too... 🙂

Price list from the Holy Inadequate last week... 😉

Not much of the network then, and as you say even less of the expensive-to-maintain-lock-heavy bits -- (most of) the BCN is the only exception. Do you know roughly how big the EP and Millennium grants were for the Rochdale and HNC, which it seems would have to be paid back (about 70% but more probably 120% with interest) if they were closed? Probably -- but it doesn't make your earlier claim about how you could miraculously improve CART's finances any more credible, which is what was being commented on... 😉

We stayed there for one night last year (and got a pump-out) but we had the only empty space -- I rang ahead to check they had one.

Yes, because the government is not just running a canal network, they are in charge of our entire society and economy, and their policies can have a huge effect on people's lives -- and unlike CART they have their hands on the levers of power and money, they can for example raise large amounts cheaply and easily to invest in infrastructure (or the NHS...) by either issuing long-term bonds/gilts or "quantitative easing" (printing money). Government finances are not like household ones, no matter how much certain politicians try to say that they are when crying crocodile tears abut how they can't afford something they don't want to do. Funnily enough, they seem to be able to afford to spend vast sums of money on the things they do want to do, whether these are of benefit to the public or just them and their mates... 😞

I have loads of tolerance for people with different lifestyles to me, regardless of their appearance or wealth or canal usage or anything else, so long as they follow the rules/laws and have consideration for others -- this applies on the canals as much as anywhere else. I don't have much tolerance for piss-takers who ignore rules/laws when it's convenient for them, and act selfishly to the detriment of other people or users of a shared resource like the canals. "CMers" is the label that has been generally used for one group of boaters who do this, with the vociferous support of the NBTA -- and like many others I don't see why I should be nice to them, any more than I should be nice to any other group who flout/break the laws, which after all are one thing that keeps society functioning. There are poor people in all walks of life both on land and the canals who deserve sympathy and support, but the way to do this should be to provide them with a liveable income and perhaps try and make life cheaper for them, for example with a reduced license fee for older boats -- which for some reason many people seem to be dead against, possibly because they might end up paying more as a result -- or in some cases, just because I suggested it... 😉 Though going by the ages of many of the people and boats on CWDF, I suspect they would end mostly up paying less, not more...

Us taxpayers. Unfortunately we don't get to decide where they spend our taxes... :--(