Cosmic

The public pronouncements of the NBTA are generally created by a small number of individuals without consulting the membership. I get the distinct impression that there are people who see the NBTA as a means to advance their own personal agendas or ambitions, and the membership as a workforce to do as they are told and give legitimacy by proxy to the few ambitious individuals.

Actually, I think it's the reverse. I don't think anybody has broken the non-disclosure agreement. I suspect that the NBTA (or, at least, the people who knew about the case) thought that the very mention of the case was forbidden, hence their silence. Then, once Allan Richards submitted an FOI request, they realised that it wasn't and issued a very hasty press release because they were scared that Narrowboat World would steal their thunder.

I don't think that accusation can be levelled at Alf Roberts - as Cotswoldsman said, he was just posting for the benefit of the forum. If anything I think that, as someone who has recently resigned, it would be more natural to suspect that I might be loose cannon. Certainly, in the sense that I have chosen to leave, there must obviously be significant differences on some level between my views and those of some people in the NBTA.

Yes, that is an important issue. But it is not true that it is the only one, or that any other issue is not real. As I said, the NBTA did NOT bring this matter to public attention. A person took it upon themselves to issue a press release in the name of the NBTA without, as far as I could see, consulting the organisation. This is something that might be justifiable if the circumstances demand an urgent response that precludes a proper consultation with the membership but, as has already been pointed out, some people in the NBTA knew about the case eight months earlier, and it appears that Andy Wingfield himself had discussed the case in a public forum some time before that. So why the unseemly haste to issue a press release so soon after you submitted an FOI request about this? As a result, the NBTA was made to look as if it issues misleading information with the intention of whipping up anti-CaRT feeling. As the then Treasurer of that organisation, and as someone who has represented the NBTA here, that reflects badly on me. I have no wish to be tarred with that brush. And the anti-CaRT caricature portrayed does not do justice to the efforts of many people working within the NBTA to defend the rights of boat dwellers and to bring attention to their needs. The NBTA does a lot of good work to help people living on boats. But I think that the long-standing animosity between CaRT and some people in the NBTA risks overshadowing that and creating precisely the polarised picture we have seen here. No matter what we say, the reputation this creates and that I have tried in vain to break down undermines everything it does. No matter what they say, they will be the "usual suspects", misleading people and whipping up anti-CaRT feeling and can therefore be ignored. I cannot believe that this is the impression the membership want to create.

The OP seems something of a distant memory after all the detailed legal discussions that followed it but I would just like to point out that it is actually stretching the truth somewhat to describe the press release as having been released by the NBTA. To the best of my knowledge, the membership of the NBTA was not consulted about it, the Committee of the NBTA was not consulted about it. And certainly, the Treasurer of the NBTA (which at the time was me) was not consulted about it. In this thread, several people have raised questions about why the NBTA published this, why they worded it the way they did, why they apparently sat on it for eight months before publishing it. These were perfectly reasonable questions. However, nobody from the NBTA answered any of those questions. As a result, many people may have concurred with Dave_P, who said The reason nobody answered is that nobody knew anything about it. I have worked to build up the reputation of the NBTA (I used to post here occasionally on behalf of NBTA London) but I had to sit and watch that work being undone by yet another unexpected press release. And I couldn't comment because anything I could reasonably have said about it would just have made things even worse. I support the aims of the NBTA, and I wish them well in pursuing them. They seem to be the only organisation insisting that whatever CaRT does must be strictly within the law. But they will need to take a long hard look at how they organise themselves if anybody is ever going to take them seriously.

Squatting is only a criminal offence in a residential building. This was commercial so that doesn't apply. It turned out that none of the electricity companies would take responsibility for the supply to the building, so CaRT couldn't get anyone to turn it off (at least, that's the story we were given). We had one lot of squatters who were a decent, friendly bunch, and nobody minded about them. But I understand they left after a while and a different lot arrived, with regular parties, special brew, all kinds of antisocial behaviour. That alone made it pretty much impossible for the kind of fluffy community projects we were trying to get off the ground. When CaRT replaced the plumbing, they did have the sense to replace copper with plastic, making it less nickable. But this happened between December and April and, as Matty alluded to earlier, one of the things we were hoping to achieve was to keep the showers working over Winter for the first time. So that didn't happen. Another project we were planning was to have a reed bed to handle grey water instead of the cess pit. It could have taken black water too, but we knew there would be idiots who would put Elsan, oil, diesel etc. down the toilet, and that would have killed the reed bed. So yes, we knew from experience that some people are too stupid/lazy to walk half a mile. And the problems with some individuals - we were working with several local community groups to make the centre something that would benefit everybody. But we walked into a long-running personal feud between the person who ran the canoe club and a woman who hated him and wanted to get rid of him. She tried to bully the rest of us into going along with her shenanigans but to no avail. Some of us did try to work something out without her group but by that time the damage had already been done. I wasn't around towards the end, but I do know that the person who tried to keep the cafe open was beaten up by the squatters.

No, CaRT didn't put oil down the Elsan, etc. But they ran the whole site so badly that I was able to save more than 50% on the running costs by making two phone calls. Their blatant incompetence led to the site becoming unmanageable. For example, it took them five months to replace the stolen plumbing (their estimate was three days). Then it took them well over a year to get rid of the squatters from the old cafe. That alone resulted in may on the customers of the new cafe we had started leaving on account of the oppressive and intimidating atmosphere. Yes, there were unbelievable problems with some individuals involved in the community groups, but the plans being developed by the boaters would have addressed all of the specific problems mentioned: Oil: We were making arrangements for oil to be collected and taken to the local tip (about half a mile away) Electricity: We had already made arrangements for an electricity supply to be made available and used this successfully Flytipping/vandalism: Stonebridge was the first site at which a formal caretaker mooring was agreed with CaRT. We agreed arrangements for the security gate to the site to be kept closed at night. And the simple fact that there was always a group of people around the cafe meant that flytipping and vandalism didn't happen during the day. And every morning, we used to clear up the litter outside. This gave the impression of a place that people took a pride in, and made it more welcoming. Little by little, we were improving the whole area. What we were doing at Stonebridge, in a comparatively short time, made a massive difference to Stonebridge. Yes, we could have reduced CaRT's costs, but no, we could never have eliminated them altogether. The reason the place is in the state it is is a direct result of CaRT's insistence that they must make a profit from it. I don't know whether the facilities at Stonebridge are the worst in the country. But what I do know is that they are the best example of what happens when an organisation is so completely focused on making a financial profit and pays no attention to the social benefits that an asset can bring.

There's a discussion of various types of toilets, including commercial and homemade composting loos on the LILO site. Linkypoo

There was a large (about 2/3 of a page) article in last night's Evening Standard describing renting a room on a boat in London as a low-cost alternative to the spiralling cost of housing in the capital. It is a slightly edited version of an article originally published here. Amongst other things, it includes the quote Fortunately, the version printed in the ES omitted the next line, which said Unfortunately, about a million commuters could have read this twaddle while crammed on to sweaty rush hour tubes on their way home to zone four.

If this was a case of a group of residents being harrassed by a minority of inconsiderate boaters, I doubt there would be too many complaints. But I must say I was astonished by the attitude of some of the resients when I met them face to face. At one meeting, the caretaker boater (a CRT employee) was proudly outlining some of the improvements she'd brought about. The response of one of the residents was to ask what was the point of a caretaker boater when they just add to the problem by burning fuel. Not dirty fuel but any fuel at all. I think some of these people will not,be satisfied until they have eradicated dirty, smelly boaters from their nice clean neighbourhood altogether.

While running a stall for London Boaters at the Angel Canal Festival yesterday, we were given several copies of a guide produced by Islington Council for boaters. Although they said they didn't have an online copy of it, I've scanned it in and put a copy online here. Thanks to my cheap and nasty software, the file is rotated through 90 degrees - sorry. It contains a lot of general information about the pollution produced by boats, but it also includes their understanding of the law. In particular, it mentions the definition of a statutory nuisance, and implies that a stationary boat is likely to emit higher levels of pollutants while running its engne than one that is moving. They are also using a similar argument in respect of burning wood. For those who are not aware of the background to this, there has been a long-standing problem involving relations between boaters and local residents alongside the Angel visitor moorings. There are particular issues concerning both the acoustics and atmospheric conditions at this site, and CRT and local boaters have made considerable efforts to appease the residents. However, Islington Council has more recently tried to extend the controls to other areas that do not have these issues. As I see it, if their interpretation of the law becomes accepted, boaters may find themselves being threatened with legal action for burning wood or running their engines while stationary anywhere in the country.

Looks a lovely boat - I'm sure you'll have lots of fun on it

New mooring rings at Camley Street and above Actons Lock are welcome. It has always been practically impossible to get pins into the grass at Acton's Lock, particularly in wet weather. But it would be highly disingenuous to describe this as creating new moorings, as both locations are are already very busy.

Thanks! Must've missed the data sheet on the site.

I'm going to be doing the top coat on my boat in the next week or two. I need to make sure I've got enough paint to do the job before I start but the paint I'm using doesn't say what coverage I can expect. It's a 57 foot trad, and I'm not intending to do the roof or the well deck for the moment. I'll be using Craftmaster paint. I'm guesstimating the total area will be around 90 square metres, allowing for two coats. So I reckon I'll need about 9 litres of paint in total, assuming it will cover 10 square metres per litre. Does that sound about right? I don't want to get too much but I've only got a week to do the painting and if I run out I probably won't be able to get more in time.

Hi Bohomon, If you're interested in making boating as eco-friendly as possible, there are lots of ideas and examples of things other people have done on the LILO website. It's been a bit in the doldrums lately, but I'm hoping it'll be possible to breathe a bit more life into it in the future. Tony

I'm pretty close to Harefield at the moment. Which boat is it?

According to an article on the Dark Side (Linkydink), CaRT are seeking approval for this from the "Better Relationships on the Waterways in London Group" (BRG), a group that represents nobody, is answerable to nobody and is so secretive that, after around 18 months of its existence, I had to use the FOI Act to find out what they had been up to. NABO's advice suggests that the proposals presented to the BRG in January (assuming that these form the basis of the new plan), might well be unlawful. But their approval by the BRG will no doubt trump that minor technicality. If CaRT genuinely want to address the mooring situation in London, I don't see how this achieves that. Rather, it looks to me as if it will just create another layer of rules it can't justify in law and probably won't be able to enforce in practice.

I looked up the details about whether pallets are poisonous a while back. I posted something on a blog here. Essentially, you need to look for the "IPPC" logo stamped on the pallet. If it includes the letters "HT", it has been heat treated and is ok to burn. On the other hand, if it has "MB", it has been treated with methyl bromide, which is really nasty and mustn't be burned. Most countries have now banned methyl bromide but there are still some (notably Chile) that haven't phased it out completely, so they could still be around for a while. I don't think it was ever used in Europe, so anything with a stamp indicating European origin should be ok too.

I reckon that using the courts this way is a really poor way to make legislation. A person making a well-researched argument and presenting it persuasively, possibly before a sympathetic judge, stands a much better chance of success than someone arguing their case badly and getting the judge's back up. Given that people's homes may be at risk depending on the outcome, that all seems far too random for my liking.

I get it from AutoPaints in Brighton Link They also sell on ebay, but they seem to be cheaper direct at the moment

Thanks - just bought one of those pumps from Aldi for a tenner. They also had two bow saws for £9 - one with a 30" blade, the other with a 12" blade and a spare hacksaw blade included.

Early in September last year, I heard about a proposal that was being discussed within CaRT for what they were calling "community moorings". The main features of these were: 1: a permit that would be available for purchase by CCers allowing them to remain within a restricted area, still moving regularly but in a way that did not comply with CaRT's interpretation of the CCing requirements. 2: this permit would only be available to people whose boats had been seen regularly in the relevant area recently. 3: the permits would not be transferable to another person 4: if a person decides not to renew their permit at any time, they will lose the right to the permit. The intention was to create "grandfather rights", allowing a limited, and diminishing, number of boaters to remain in a popular area while forcing other boaters either to find a permanent mooring or keep moving over a wider area. My understanding is that this is in all significant respects exactly what was being proposed in Uxbridge.

According to her boyfriend, she likes to put loads of coal on the fire in the morning and leave it really low, so it's still going when she gets home. Also, I think the chimney needs a good clean out. (I left them a brush)