IanD

Gas and coal and beer have gone up for everyone, welcome to 2024... 😞 Boat diesel has gone up like -- well, diesel. Fuel cost increases hit drivers much more than boaters. The duty change (getting rid of red diesel) was a genuine boater-only hit, but unless you travel long distances this increase is going to be tiny compared to all the others -- as are the recent license fee increases. So what price increases specific to boaters have changed that? Otherwise you're just complaining about general cost-of-living increases which have hit everybody -- some much more so than boaters (e.g. renters)... 😞 And these also apply to boaters who don't go boating, staying at home (and maintaining that home) is also more expensive nowadays...

Agree that lots of prices have gone up over the years, and pubs have closed, and beer and food prices have gone up. Just like they have for everybody else. License and mooring fees may have doubled (over what time?), but then housing costs/rent/utilities for land dwellers have probably gone up by more than this. So yes, the cost of living on a boat has gone up -- just like the cost of not living on a boat... 😉

Exaggeration for effect, methinks -- yes lots of boating costs have gone up over the years, just like everything else in life. What has gone up so much faster for boaters than "normal" people?

Given that the vast majority of the cost of a boat are the fixed costs of owning it and that moving around costs little in comparison, that seems unlikely -- if people can't afford to use them they can't afford to own them either and would sell up. Or if that's a thinly-disguised dig at CRT's increased license fees, these are still very low and are only a small fraction of the annual cost of owning/running a boat -- probably less than 20% for someone CCing on an old (not-depreciating-much) boat, less than 10% for someone with a newer boat on a home mooring, probably less than 5% for someone with a new (or relatively new) boat moored in a marina where depreciation is the biggest (disguised) expense, just like most cars.

As well as the real problems (services, planning permission...) in expanding the use of the canals for residential purposes, the elephant in the room is that this is a tiny drop in the very large bucket which is the shortage of truly affordable housing in the UK -- a need which used to be met by council housing at well-below-market rates as a social need, but not any more... 😞 Filling up the canals -- at least, near towns and cities and villages which is where most of the CMers (yes I'm going to use that term, I think everyone knows the meaning) want to moor -- with end-to-end boats would meet rather less than 1% of the UKs need for cheap housing, while making them much less attractive for boaters -- hire and owned -- who want to move around the canals, and who bring more desperately-needed money to the canals than the CMers. So it doesn't solve the housing problem and would have a big negative effect on the canals, which doesn't look like a good deal to me, or I suspect most others who love the canals. I'm not saying that CARTs current license/mooring policies couldn't be improved, but thinking that allowing mass uncontrolled mooring would magically provide lots of homes for poorer people seems deluded -- the solution to this problem is for the government (directly or indirectly) to restart building large numbers of truly affordable homes which are not then sold off to tenants or private landlords. But this is unlikely to happen with the current makeup of the government because it might lower house prices and depress rents, which is exactly what many Tory MPs (who are private landlords) don't want to happen -- look at their caving-in on leasehold and rent reforms... 😞

Why didn't you use your trombone to just knock it off the wall without getting out of bed? Oh dear, I've just made the assumption you sleep with your trombone... 😉

And the last paragraph is the point -- the SG isn't supposed to be perfect (especially during charging) but that's not its point, it's to tell you what fraction of your battery capacity you've used while discharging, and by all accounts it's pretty good for that -- at least, for LA batteries. It won't tell you that your battery capacity has degraded over time because it doesn't monitor current, but that should be obvious as discharge times get shorter and shorter. If you want something better (current, battery health/capacity) there are more complicated (and considerably more expensive) battery monitors on the market (e.g Balmar, Victron) which also measure current (and need a shunt installing), but for most people (not @MtB obviously...) just concerned about remaining capacity the Smartgauge is "good enough".

I'm not convinced that you can legitimately attach the label "Wagyu" -- especially is it's a cross, which I assume the X means -- to beef which doesn't come from cows treated palatially like those in Japan, complete with special feed and beer and massages, it's not just the breed it's how the cows are raised. Which explains the ludicrously high prices there (also Kobe beef, just as delicious -- or Matsuzaka beef, very similar) as well as the quality, and the reverence with which a chef there treats it, none of this "well done" rubbish -- and if you had the temerity to suggest mincing it up to make a burger you might not make it out of the restaurant alive... 😉 I have a photo somewhere of a butcher's window in Asakusa with a gorgeous piece of Kobe beef weighing several kilograms, and at first I though they'd mistakenly put an extra zero in the price because it cost rather more than my return airfare to Japan... 🙂

Ditto.

Literally true, but in reality I bet 100% of the speeding oiks bought theirs in the last few years so this get-out doesn't apply... 😞

The Duke of York?

What I meant is that charities are more like utilities (NHS, water, power) in that their primary purpose is to serve the public, the primary purpose of businesses is to make money. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's why the private sector does such a bad job (from the public's pont of view) of providing basic services -- water being a perfect example... 😞 Or a good job (from the business point of view) if you can manage to privatise profit and socialise debt --- see Macquarie and Thames Water... 😞

We called there (Plume of Feathers) a couple of weeks ago -- it's a restaurant really not a pub, but the food was pretty good and the beer was decent. Not the kind of place to get wedged in for a session, but good for what it is... 🙂

Since he'll be looking at it just after it's painted to decide whether he likes the result or not, looking at an old faded boat isn't going to be helpful... 😉 Either way photos and anything viewed on-screen really can't be relied on, it depends too much on the camera/screen -- on my monitor right now the photos I posted look pretty close to real life (because I have the RAL swatches here to compare with), but that may not be true on a different monitor, or even if different lighting. Lighting conditions make a big difference, as I found out with reds -- the one I chose (Signal Red) was much more orange in real life and bright sunlight than I was expecting, given that I looked at the swatches in dull winter light... 😞 If he can't find a boat in the right colour @STIG is welcome to borrow my RAL swatch book if he's anywhere nearby, otherwise I'd suggest lashing out £50 or so on one of his own. It sounds expensive but it's much cheaper than having to get a colour changed afterwards... 😉

Cobalt at the top, night at the bottom, and what night blue looks like on a boat in the sunlight...

Mine is RAL5022 Night Blue which is a bit lighter/bluer than cobalt. Don't rely on photos, get a RAL colour fan, preferably the big gloss one so you can fan out your colour choices together, and look at then in daylight and sunlight. Small patches are useless to see what the result is going to look like... https://www.amazon.co.uk/RAL-K5-Semi-Matte-Gloss/dp/B002M9DYQ4 True if you can find a boat in the exact colour you want, and it's been relatively newly painted. If not a decent RAL colour fan is the best alternative, you can then also compare different colours -- you might well change your mind, I did... 😉 P.S. @STIG Where are you? You can borrow mine if you're anywhere near London... 😉

The VMs above or below Star Lock?

Businesses raise prices above costs both to account for inflation, and because they usually work on a fixed gross margin in order to make a living which doesn't get poorer as time goes on -- otherwise they get squeezed between suppliers and end customers. They're not charities...

We looked in at Great Haywood (since we're now moored there) and it looked good, but I noticed the lack of prices on the meat which is never a good sign... Stanforth's in Skipton is the dog's wotsits for pies... 🙂

These are a better size for a hatch -- 8 self-adhesive 100mm x 25mm PTFE sliders for a tenner... https://www.amazon.co.uk/METALLIXITY-Furniture-Rectangle-Self-adhesive-Protector/dp/B0BB6X66KZ/

They are indeed variable, some are excellent, some not so much. Given how much people raved about the butcher in Alrewas, I expected better from them -- the sausages looked good but didn't deliver on their promise. All sizzle and no steak, you might say... 😉 IIRC some of their lamb was a bit tough and tasteless too. Maybe we caught them on an off day, like the Anchor at High Offley (twice)... 😞