Tiny

After his H&S efforts for them the miners raised money to send him to Chubb, to BW, to anywhere. (with homage to Peter Sellers recording 'Balham - gateway to the south.'

Likewise my experience of the private sector found at least three incompetents promoted. In one case the man was promoted twice in rapid succession as job opportunities were only open to those not wanted by their departments. He ended up as a senior manager who was so bad at his job that all his junior managers resigned yet he was never sacked. He actually joined the same day as me - failed the same exam twice even though it was the same paper and so on. Another lady was so usless she spent all her time moaning that the job was to difficult but still was passed have got null points - two moves later and she was sabataging senior meetings to the point that we used to tell her the correct time but have a get together without her and vote on what was to be done as we knew she would want the opposite out of shere cussedness. As to the third person she got promoted twice by the same boss until she got a job accessing others work and gave everyone minus marks - after which she had a breakdown due to hitting one to many stationary car as she spent to much time worrying about her lot in life to watch where she was driving. At this point I have remembered a couple more who also got on mainly because they were no threat to the boss as they were so thick We sent one to train Indians in call centres - god knows what they made of him. I won't bore you further.

While we would both be happy with volunteer lockkeepers (or anyone!) setting locks on flights or even odd locks the wife prefers to actually be in control of the paddle gear - though she is happy if others open/close gates. The permanent lockies we know respect this. As for volenteers we have seen a number but none helps boaters as they are more the litter pickers. Having said this one whose actual title is 'canal ranger' was telling all his mates he was 'the lock keeper at ...' We let him get on with it if it makes him feel big. However what we did not like was some of the rubbish he was spouting about how efficient BW were, how canals are monitored daily by a process that we could not understand so any breach would be detected and fixed before it happened. There was no discussing this with him - he worked for BW and knew it was right. Strangely enough this every thing is sorted, wonderful line has come out in conversations with much more rational seeming volunteers. Basically BW can do no wrong. We wondered if by training these chaps and indocrtinating them Bw were ensuring there would always be a large number of pro-BW persons to fill in their questionaires - ones we never get offered to make our comments on.

No doubt many might suggest better uses for the scaffolding poles.

I've thought for years that any day they will put a wire safety cage over this and other aqueducts. But maybe the cage would be better used to contain Mr Moron and his mates who are more of a danger.

When we were up North we noted that on the navigation (canalized) portion of the rivers some of these chaps created a wave around 3@ high up to a half mile in front. Mind you they 'ran' so fast that at our full speed we could not keep up even if we did share the odd lock with them. We learned all the offline places to moor and even then they could move the water up to half a mile offline as they raced by the entrance to the bit we were in.

While waiting for the tube in LOndon I regularly saw a rat who popped out of the signal cable box. No-one ever seemed to notice him staring across at us lot but I quite liked him. He was nothing like those grubby rats you see more and more along canals eating dumped on the towpath chips etc. I often wished him good morning. Mind you I regularly say hello to those larger wet floor cones they stick in the middles of isles in supermarkets. Often they are doing a much more useful job than the youngers staff members who are to busy chatting to mates than to answer queries. For them find an old boy or girl - they seem to value customers rather than tolerate them. As for the creature maybe its a Volat with a voles body and a rats tail.

It seems since that child illegally rode over a lock tail bridge on the Staffs & Worcester at Stourport, fell in and drowned that the 'Health and Safety' police of BW have been wasting money putting hand rails for illegal crossers - and us lot who ain't needed them in over 200 years - on the various lock bridges along the Staff&Worcs. The problem is that some locks are not deep and while the old bridge across the lock tail was raised above head height the new beam for the safety rail is actually driven into the locks sides - meaning it neatly at a height to brain anyone steering out of the lock who doesn't duck under it. Of course we know that health and safety of boaters is tha last thing on BWs desk jockey designers minds but one might hope that in a fair world the first one to brain themselves by nutting the beam is one of the nuts who designed it!

And the new build has real rivets - not welded washers. She made 7 trips bringing back 7,000 soldiers.

Try this http://www.medwayqueen.co.uk/index.php/news/webcams to see another famous boat but one they are building from the base plate up. This one I went on from Southend to Clacton as a kid on a holiday trip. On the way back they came across Maplin Sands checking depth using a weight for the known shallow bits. The Queen was also was one of the steamers that went to Dunkirk. It had rusted away before it got saved but it doesn't get the big grants of the famous ships still it's coming in its dock in Bristol (near the Great Britain).

Until now I forgot it is a bank holiday on Monday.

Maesbury appeared when the locks at Aston were complete and went missing in around 2003 some years later. Locals were mistified at the start and only found out later at the end.

One on the Monty came when BW wanted to block boats from using it and then melted away when they got a large grant to restore that bit.

But, according to a NOP conducted for the windfarm owners only 6% of the population think the turbines are ugly with a majority saying they improve the view. Obviously I only meet members of that 6%. This extract from an article in today's telegraph might be of interest... "I was recently approached, for instance, by Felix Williams, mayor of the little Suffolk market town of Eye, over a plan for two huge 3.4 megawatt (MW) turbines that would loom over the town from the site of a former wartime airfield nearby. Although the scheme was almost unanimously opposed by the town council, it was approved by Mid-Suffolk district council, on the grounds that it was necessary to meet the local target set by the Government, itself determined by our commitment to the EU to generate 32 per cent of our electricity from renewables by 2020, mainly from tens of thousands of new turbines. The developers tried to appease opponents of the scheme by offering Eye £7,000 a year. What Mayor Williams wished to know was how this compares with the profits they might make from it. The developers specify the capacity of their turbines – which will be taller than the spire of Salisbury Cathedral – as 6.8MW. But they admit, because wind is intermittent, that the actual output will only be around 2MW. In fact, even this is optimistic: turbines in England generate on average only 20 per cent of their capacity, so it’s unlikely that the average output of the Eye turbines will be more than 1.4MW. Sticking with the developers’ own figure, though – how much would their 2MW earn them? As a rule of thumb, the annual income per MW fed to the Grid from wind energy is around £800,000, half from the sale of the electricity, the other half from the subsidy we all pay through our electricity bills under the Government’s Renewables Obligation. (These can only be rough averages because the value of each varies.) So the income from the Eye turbines might be around £1.6 million a year – which hardly makes the £7,000 offered to the locals for the blighting of their skyline the bargain of the century. (As Mayor Williams says, the town already pays £5,500 a year just for its new unisex public lavatory.) Compare this with what the BBC describes as “the huge windfall” being offered to villagers in Powys by the German-owned energy giant RWE, to win their support for a plan to build 65 3MW turbines, each 450ft high, at Llanbrynmair, on the hills of central Wales. This “sweetener”, as the BBC calls it, will amount to a staggering £18.8 million over 20 years. But from RWE’s own figures we can see that the wind farm’s possible income of £50 million a year will amount to £1 billion (£500 million of it subsidy) over the same 20-year period. This is how preposterous the finances of the great wind scam have become – to yield, very inefficiently, only a fraction of our electricity. (One medium-sized gas-fired power station can produce 800MW, reliably, all the time, at a fraction of the cost.)" With those sorts of profits no wonder these people want to ruin the countryside.

Once we used to have a lot of nowheres but over the years we find other people using them too in ever greater numbers. Comparing notes with some we all seem to use most of the same nowheres if BW cut the edge. If not a set of cutters can cut you a somewhere to make your nowhere though more than once we have had some moron arrive and try to join use in our little bay expecting us to move up to make room when there is no space but the bay exactly our size. Normally at this point - when we refuse we are told we don't pay like them and are no doubt on the dole while they in their hire/share... Finding a nowhere can be fun but other people may not be if they see it!

They did some tests, found the LLangollen could provide 11 million but in the tests sent the water to Crewe. Crewe said they would like more so the flow goes to them went up in 1989 from 6 to 11 million gallons a day and one assumes the money to BW increased too. How much this earns BW is subject to work confidential but if the flow ceases for more than a couple of days then BW have to pay penalties. At that stage (1989) BW could still fit back pumps if Frankton had opened but now the ecos don't like them. The water to Crewe takes priority over both the Monty and Hurleston flight water so in drought no water for the Monty and in extreme conditions none for Hurleston but plenty (11 million gallons) on the rest of the Llangollen.

Reading ‘Waterways World’ I did like the suggestion for a new connector canal - a lock free canal between the bottom of Adderley on the Shroppie and the bottom of Frankton on the Monty. According to the proposer there are no major works needed apart from a short cutting and getting under one railway. The canal would solve a lot of problems (for boating the Monty by providing plenty of water which the rationing at Frankton does not allowing boats to get to Maesbury and beyond - to Newtown even if the ecos can be stopped building their 'No filthy English Water in Wales' stop lock at the border. Of course one assumes BW/CART would oppose the so called 'Wem canal' as the bosses are very pro eco on the Monty but building the canal would bring the business that BW promise but can't deliver given boat numbers. With the Wem canal in place the objections to back-pumps at Frankton would disappear as the new canal would bring the plentiful waters of the Shroppie to the Monty to supply the locks (many yet to be restored)all the way to the restored Welshpool length 17 miles down at Wern or for back-pumping up the Frankton locks to allow them to be open full time. And to add to it's usefulness as a water source and quick through route to the Monty, the Wem canal would be part of a new ring made up of itself, Frankton locks then down the lower Llangollen and up the Nantwich to Adderley Shroppie. Or be used as a route to Frankton and thence up the locks then turn left to allow a new route to Llangollen All this lot for minimal outlay.

A lot of people say that to the wife but my job is to tell her whet to do and as she rarely gets it wrong the famous finger does not twitch. If it does paddles raise or lower quick of slow as required to make our passage as smooth as possible. Likewise I let the wife of the back of the boat to work the lock but keep just off the bank until it's ready and stop in the lockmouth if it's possible to climb back on there. The wife steps off, wanders to the lock and sets it for the boat, never stepping across, I drive in and by the time I'm in and stopped near the back she has closed the back gate and is heading for the front so I stay on. After that a good memory for the way different locks push and pull the boat helps in winding the paddles slowly straight up or a turn at a time. There's a load of other stuff for individual locks be they wide or narrow. Incidently I recall a story by a waterways photographer in the old days. He took a shot of an old boy performing rope magic on a lock gate. The next thing he heard was the ping of an airgun pellet hitting the wall by his head and the old boy saying that he better not ever see that photo in print. The photographer took the hint.

Looks like I was for giving reassurance.

We find where the Vikings start from can effect their attitude. The ones near Casper are often first timers who are on their way back and think they know how to do the lift bridges near Casper. One old dear insisted her husband worked the bridge open and closed which he did very slowly forcing a number of boats bothe private and hire to literally pile up on both sides of the bridge. Meanwhile the lady driver bounced off the boats on Caspers side waiting for him to get aboard and drive them to the next bridge 200 yards away. On another occassion, after five really hot days day 6 was hot wet and windy making it freezing cold. Normal gear that hirers bring was hardly warm enough as evidenced by the vast majority of the Viking LLangollen fleet heading home flat out passing us and other moored boats at speeds vastly greater than normal - as in 'we are cold so tough!'