MisterDave

We had a nutter accuse us of leaving every gate open (we didn't) speeding (we didn't) and being the main thing that's wrong with the waterways (obviously we're not) on a lock flight earlier this year, deliberately jumped on the side of friends boat to make it rock as hard as he could and raged in my face from about 4 inches away whilst menacing me with a trowel in his hand held in a dagger grip just above my neck, gonna sink our boat and various other threats. Didn't do him any good, I tend to react to people the same way they treat me, up to and including violence, spent half my life facing down thugs, after a few minutes where I'd reduced the final 4" gap between our faces to zero I could see the guy was thinking "shit, intimidation failed, what have I done, how do I de-escalate this". I'm laughing about it now just remembering the look on his face, should have got a photo!

I'd rather have a joint made mechanically sound and then soldered than one just made mechanically sound. Belt and braces beats belt alone every time. Of course, if the soldering is poor then all bets are off, but the same applies to crimping or even screw terminals.

My chemistry isn't the strongest, but surely that's Iron Phosphate, the Phosphorous from the acid is displacing the Oxygen from the Iron Oxide to make Iron Phosphate. I think Phosphorus (Tri)oxide is what you get when it rains on your half-reacted Phosphoric acid and rust, the white crystally waxy stuff that blows up into big scabs under the paint if you don't get every last scrap of it out of all the pits and dimples. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, I used to be good at chemistry 30 years ago but there's a lot happened since then!

It was only an unpleasant story for the previous owner and the guy she'd been in the middle of selling it to, they both ended up thousands out of pocket. Would never have happened if they hadn't been trying to be a sneaky continuous moorer on a quiet stretch of canal and had got themselves a proper mooring where other people might watch out for them. On the bright side it did allow me to buy the shell of a narrowboat for a half pint of Marstons! (even if I have spent a fortune on it since) I have a first last and nickname for the arsonist, still actively looking for him 4 years later, he hasn't got away with it.

Convincing people there's nothing worth nicking won't necessarily save you from being broken into. Before I got it, my boat was broken into by squatters, one of them fell out with the other over a drug debt and set fire to the boat so his "friend" wouldn't have anywhere to sleep for the night. Boat trashed and sunk, nothing to do with it having anything worth nicking, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have got cozy as squatters if they'd needed to climb in and out thru a broken window, it was the easy door access which enabled their squatting. Some people here claim to be able to remove the average padlock in minutes, me too, it's not hard, but I've never met a thieving smackhead who could pick a padlock at all or even one who owned his own boltcroppers!

I tested extensively for this before I used them to help secure my motorcycle collection. Went through dozens of cartridges testing, wouldn't light paper, wouldn't light a mixture of oil and wood shavings, only ways I could get one to cause fire was with petrol or by tying an oil soaked cotton rag very tightly around the cartridge. Seems to be perfectly safe mounted inside a clean biscuit tin, but I'd encourage anyone to do their own testing! Now I've mentioned mounting these inside things, a smart person can probably work out how to use one to cause injury to a burglar. Don't do it, it's not worth the risk, no matter how tempting it is to try to shrapnel a thief.

I've been using pmr446 type walkie talkies for years, the only problems I ever had were hearing the walkie talkie over the sound of a noisy engine, and tons of digital interference at one lock on the GU (lock keepers cottage was covered in what looked like radio antennae, I guess he was a radio amateur). The 1/4 watt of these units is more than enough to communicate from one end of a boat to the other even with multiple steel bulkheads inbetween, communications don't usually start failing until you get 1/4 a mile or more apart in cities, with 6-8 miles easily achieved in flat countryside (I use pmr446 regularly to talk with a friend who lives 8 miles away). My parents also use pmr446 to co-ordinate convoys of motorhomes when they tour europe, works a treat.

Alarms that go beep-beep have been ignored by the majority of people for years now, car alarms with hair triggers have conditioned us all to ignore alarm noises. Things that go BANG! tend to work well as security. I haven't applied any of these to my boat yet, but if anyone tries to break into my storage unit something will go BANG! very loud, at face level, before they can get the door open more than an inch or two. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Henry-Krank-Trip-Mine/dp/8991191355has a tripwire which fires a blank 12g shotgun cartridge. Mount near door, attach tripwire to hook on inside of door allowing 2 or 3 inches of slack so you can get your arm in to unhook it.

Works better if you hang a heavy dog lead beside the sign!

Was broken down on the junction at Kidsgrove recently, it was an interesting place to be stopped, surprising to see how many boats got the junction totally wrong and hit the opposite bank hard (almost every hire boat, and about a third of others as well).

The existence of housing benefits or indeed any benefits at all is a fallacy for many people! I tried claiming benefits for a while when I was seriously ill and bedridden, they only paid me for 1 week out of the 24 weeks of proper doctor's sicknotes I submitted across the period of my claim, and I never saw a penny of housing benefit. Not one person in the DWP was even able to tell me with any certainty why my benefits were stopped or what I should do to get them started again. The whole debacle ended with them declaring that they had already paid me for the period I hadn't been paid and adding the missing amount to my taxable income for the year, although I have still not seen any of the money to this day. After spending my last £20 on phoning them up and making myself ill visiting their offices, and with no solution in sight, I had no choice but to give up on the benefits system and try to return to gentle part time work against the express instructions of my neurologist (am still only able to work about 12-16 hours a month, gives me an income about half of what benefits should be if they existed). I know a couple of people who have been in enforcement in the last year and the only reason they were in enforcement is because the DWP let them down in pretty much exactly the same way. With hindsight, I'd be better off if the benefit system didn't exist at all. Knowing that I had to rely on myself would be far better than having a government department purporting to help people and then deliberately letting them down. If they hadn't lied to me about availability of benefits I would have saved a bigger emergency fund back when I was working full time and earning real money. The wait time for an appeal against a decision was 18 months last time I asked. Do you think CRT would/should wait 18 months plus for mooring fees while DWP sorts its act out?

Probably Diethyl Sulphide or Tetrahydrothiophene, couldn't tell you which but apparently those are the second and third most popular stenching agents after Ethyl Mercaptan

I never saw any padlocked gates on the journey. Travelled east, got multiple idiot youths shooting at us and trying to steal things off the boat between Miles Platting and Failsworth, ended up stuck at Failsworth basin for 3 days due to no water in the next pound. According to the "Oldham Council youth street team", Failsworth Tesco is where Manchester youths and Oldham youths gather to cause trouble, not a nice place to moor. A lock or two further up it's completely different, much nicer, everything was ok from lock64 eastwards. The entire West side of the canal seemed to be short of water, and as far as I could see it mainly gets water from the summit. There's a leak in the second pound down from the summit on the East side, local CRT lady gives instructions on how to let water through the top 2 locks to re-fill the pound "until the 2nd fence post is under". As far as I could see the water is leaking out into an adjacent field then draining through a sports field drainage system back into the next pound down, only skipping past one lock. As a consequence there's a bit too much water in the East side from there onwards, with towpaths awash and water 8-12" over the top of some lock gates.

You are almost correct. All these products are based on an acid reacting with the iron oxide, the post office and many (most?) courier firms won't ship strong acid so manufacturers dilute it. A product that can't be mailed is harder to sell!

I did west to east a few weeks ago, struggled for water all the way up out of Manchester. Whatever you do, don't stop until you're past Failsworth!

Surely the answer then is to solve the perceived problem and make affordable moorings available, not to turn the problem into an intractable one by making lack of mooring equally unaffordable. I'm starting to think that the answer is to stop charging for linear moorings altogether, make them free, increase license fees a little for all canal users to pay for it. If it costs the same to have a mooring as it does to not have a mooring then the financial "excuse" would be removed and the only reason for cm'ing would be lack of moorings available in a geographic area.

Do buy a license and you have entered into a legally binding contractual agreement with CRT that you will abide by everything in their T&C. They could bring action for breach of contract if you fail to abide by the terms and conditions which legislation does not support. Something does not need to be "supported" by legislation to be an enforceable part of a contract, it only needs to not be voidable. (Now all we need is some lawyer to turn up and explain how the contract is voidable, then I'll shut up) I think maybe I wasn't as clear as I could have been, my bad, allow me to try again. The people in question will not be re-licensing their boats. Neither person is the sort to calmly deliberately break rules. They are removing their boats from the network due to their inability to agree with the new T&C, withdrawing their custom and their money, not joining the scofflaw club.

I'm more worried about CRT's own circumnavigation of the rules governing them. If CRT themselves are acting outside the law surely this will provide encouragement for others to do likewise. I know of 2 boats which have always been fully compliant but will soon be unlicensed because their owners refuse to sign their name on CRT's unlawful power grab. One thing nobody has commented on here, if you don't buy a license then you haven't consented to the new T&C, which makes them somewhat toothless against many of the people they were aimed at.

In the last few years I've come to the conclusion that most "state agencies" will themselves extract the urine (and all your money) if they realise they are dealing with someone who doesn't know the rules.