IanD

Only in a past life... 😉 But seriously, I was genuinely interested about when that was 🙂

Nah, didn't have electric water pumps, palomas and showers then. You'd have been boiling water on a solid-fuel stove then sitting in a tin bath and pouring it over you... 😉

When was that -- the 1960s? 😉

The problem is that if you want to effectively enforce a 14-day rule you need checkers passing each boat a lot more often than this. Then the next problem is what to do about offenders, which takes more people to compile the data and send out warnings, then repeat warnings, then threaten to not renew a license, then deal with the protests that they weren't breaking the rules, then start the process of removing a boat if it gets that far, then fending off appeals, then arranging for police/cranes/council workers... Checking is the small part of the problem, effective enforcement is a much bigger one without which checking is useless. If CART only have to do this over a small part of the network -- 5% or 100 miles was my handwaving guess -- then it all becomes many times easier and cheaper, and changes it from unworkable to workable... If you don't think your posts (and M_JGs) are ad hominem attacks, I suggest you look the term up a dictionary and then re-read your last few posts... 🙂

Of course it's much better to be right first time. If you're not, the next best thing is to admit you were wrong. And telling deliberate porkies is the lowest form of debate. Except for ad hominem attacks, like you and M_JG keep using to try and get a reaction. Agreed? 😉

<sigh> if you're looking for yet another wind-up argument, I'm not going to give you the pleasure. Yet again I made the mistaken assumption that you had sensible things to say, and took you off the naughty step. Within a few posts we're back to square one, so back in your box you go...

The first paragraph. If he had bothered reading the follow-up post I made, I had already said that it looked like I was wrong -- I'd assumed the law from the 60s was still valid, and it had been superseded.

And I've just admitted that I could well have been wrong saying that due to later laws, something which some people on here would *never* do... 😉 It *is* angels dancing on pin heads, or pedantry if you want to call it that -- CART can charge different license fees for different boats and boaters, and whether this is called a "CC surcharge" or a "home moorer discount" is only of interest to lawyers (and some CWDF posters), because the end effect on what boaters pay is exactly the same. Do you agree? It's also what Nigel Moore said and it's what Alan said, so maybe you should argue with them... 😉 The comment about parking was to try and show that dividing up the mooring rules/length of stay by location is just what parking does, there's no reason a similar solution shouldn't work on the canals, and it would lead to far better enforcement in honeypot areas than the current system. All CART would have to do is keep the exiting (and enshrined in law) 14-day CC rule in honeypot areas, but waive it elsewhere -- the law says that they can't refuse a license for a valid CCer, but AFAIK it doesn't say the 14-day rule has to apply everywhere (and need checking/enforcement), for example "out in the sticks". If you disagree, please explain why this is wrong instead of stooping to personal insults.

I have a very good idea about how to climb to the top of the 80' Leylandii at the bottom of our garden with a chainsaw (which I have) and remove bits, but I'd much rather pay somebody else to do it... 😉

You're arguing pointlessly about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin again... Regardless of how they write the rules -- whether it's a £10000/year fee with discounts for narrowboats/home moorers/whatever -- CART can make different charges to different types of boat/boater, so long as they stay within the law, which is that the river-only fee can't be higher than 60% of the river+canal fee. Whether you call the fee scales discounts or surcharges makes absolutely zero difference to what is paid, the result is the same. So if they want to charge different amounts by boat size (width/length) or usage (home mooring or not) or anything else, they can do that, so long as the river-only fees are cheaper by at least 40%.

In his mind, Alan still seems to live in the Good Old Days before t'Internet and all those niggly restrictions to avoid money laundering... 😉

IANAL but you may well be right 🙂 However this is a pointless argument, AFAIK there's no proposal from CART to remove the CC exemption as part of the license fee review because this would force every boater to get a home mooring and there simply aren't enough of them. Their possible proposal was to make a surcharge (higher license fee) for CCers ("no home mooring"), which IIRC they are allowed to do -- just like a surcharge for widebeams or area-related pricing which are other ideas floated around.

Why? There's nothing legally that says CART *have* to offer a CC ("no home mooring") license, they didn't until the 1960s IIRC, before then you had to have a home mooring to get a license. It's a concession that they made then, and could remove today if they chose to because it's not written into law.

You sure it wasn't Daedalus? 😉

Wow, they'd discovered paraffin and gas when you were a lad? 😉