MtB

Illustrated by the other side of the coin, boats on that site available to rent. There is just one, a nice-looking cruiser for £1,200 a month. Its in a nice spot on the Thames at Chertsey in, I think, the weir stream. From memory it is miles from anywhere to park the car and a two-bed house in the same area can be rented for the same money. The boatlord makes it very clear in the listing it is for living on not cruising around. Good luck with that I find myself thinking!

In my experience there is no such thing as "popping" anywhere on a boat, especially not in a fattie. Moving, finding a space, getting moored up then walking back to get the car takes ages. You might like to explore Newbury too. It's a straight and fast run up the A34 to Oxford. About 45 mins.

So if keeping a coal mine open means a forest big enough to absorb the whole of its carbon output of the mine is not cut down, does that make the coal mine 'carbon neutral'? Just playing Devil's advocate. This seems to be the sort of stupidity underpinning the term.

Cockney rhyming slang!

Ah, so this raises the perenial question of what it means to "live" <somewhere>. Could you borrow an address to tell them you "live" at? Or is the actual question "What is your postal address?" perhaps? (It might be different from where you sleep most nights.) What if you tell them you live on your boat in the Oxford area and move around? How would they know where you were on any given night? Just questions for you to consider. No need to answer them here. Another idea if you need more space on the boat is to get an additional boat. Then you could be living in two places at the same time!

I was wondering if Stimpson was actually the author of that set of websites.

Unable to turn around, presumably?

In my world, the least capable engineers sink to working for insurance companies. I've no reason to think it is any different in the sphere of narrowboats.

Fatties strike me as quite unsuited to river use. Ok, unsuited for any sort of proper boating.

You wouldn't know if you've "Not been for a while"... Or you might have been suggesting its "Not been (wall-to-wall CMers) for a while". Similarly here. I married one person and after a number of years she had turned into five. Found out what was causing it though...

The panda eats shoots and leaves.

Ambiguous!

Isn't Dukes Cut wall-to-wall CMers nowadays? Would Reading be close enough? There is an excellent train service to Oxford. Thames and Kennet Marina has bags of widebeam berths and is the only marina I can think of on The Thames that turns a blind eye to living aboard. Or used to anyway.

And best of all, mebbe we'd have fewer of Higgs' half-baked arguments about it! On reflection, probably not.

Use the search box to find the numerous threads on exactly this subject. The main problems are the onerous extra requirements if you plan to let your tenant go out cruising, along with what you do if when you want the boat back, it is nowhere to be found. Possibly lifted out and cut up for scrap while you are away! In summary, don't do it.

Even if a resi dentialmooring at say, Engineer's Wharf is taken for £8k a year, it's still under £10k to live on a fattie in London. I'm almost tempted myself!! How can they possibly be moaning about that!!!!

I was trying not to exaggermerate. A small one bed flat in say, Vauxhall is typically £25k a year. Plus council tax probably a further £3k. So with some other incidental expenses a round figure of say £30k to live cheaply in London. Remind me, what does it cost to license a one-bed fattie in London, with all the loadings included? £3k a year perhaps?

Even with the 75% increases, living afloat is still one quarter of the price of living ashore in London. London boaters will suck it up and carry on filling up the canals, despite all the whining.

AND.... Someone has to go first and show what can be done. Just as electric cars were viewed as something only nut-jobs thought worth driving until Musk came along, its the same with low-carbon economy. Yes there will be stuff we do that is a waste of money and effort but other stuff we try will be successful beyond all expectation and the rest of the world will copy the wins. Also I suspect the world does not need to totally cease burning fossil fuel. Just big reduction might suffice and the carbon cycle soak up a bit of extra load. But I know very little about it.