Midnight

Yes it is! These kind of questionaires are used when you want to know the answer. 'On a scale of one to ten' questionaires are used when you want people to agree with the answer you already have.

I don't see the point of the OP if no details or clues to where so other boaters can avoid the same conflict. How hard is it to decide whether or not to complain to CaRT?

Because it's just one example, among many, of poor management of scarce resources. I suspect many on here will be able to provide further examples.

The Pocklington canal is a great example of wrong priorities. As much as I love it, it is quite difficult to reach and hard going over the first couple of miles in what is little more than a weeded up shallow ditch. Yet quite a bit of money has been spent on it recently with dredging and opening locks that very few will ever use. The canal society have done a brilliant job but the sad truth is it's an out of the way place that few will visit. To put things into perspective, at a recent festival about 500 yards of towpath bank were reserved for visiting boats. Unfortunately the reeds were about 6ft high and stretching out about 12ft across the water making it impossible to moor. When a colleague asked a CaRT environmental officer why they hadn't cleared the mooring was told "We don't really want boats up here .... they disturb the wild life." You couldn't make it up!

Does this mean we now have to book for passage along the Bridgewater even when using it as a transit route? .

Crap management!

"No shortage of funds" near enough to "money wasn't a problem" BUT that's irrelevant the point was the funds that are available could be managed better to keep the system open. Example: Watford locks closed for weeks for a bodge repair. Surely if that lock gate had been reported as failing and the bodge repair done before it totally failed the cost would be same but the canal wouldn't have been shut for weeks.

I'm in the older brigade but think the issue is more about how those scarce resources are managed. Anyway didn't Mr Parry say on TV once that money wasn't a problem?

I don't need to keep up I just wanted to explain my position in that I wouldn't wish to spoil it for those who do like a bit of heated political debate. In regard of this forum I find the level of civility generally quite acceptable. If anyone p**ses me off I usually just stop posting. Never had any thoughts of blocking anyone - not even Nick Norman

I don't do the political section but wouldn't wish to see it withdrawn from those who do. If posts in there upset people to the point they report the poster I suggest those aggrieved readers stop going there - simples!

Probably but then what else would you suggest?

It's already halfway through the door where we are, (No LB I don't want to move somewhere else!) but I still pay my ever increasing license fee for which I am receiving ever-decreasing service. I agree money is a big issue but when I see it squandered on logos, signs, Facebook and TV adds aimed at users who will never contribute while the three canals that lead away from my mooring are regularly closed through poor management I don't feel like sitting back and watching it happen. True this petition may achieve nowt but at least some like-minded people are attempting to make CaRT take a different course.

The lock didn't get washed away but the by-wash and a lot of the adjacent land did.

True, but you can for the way the system is (isn't) managed. For instance, Mr Parry says it's too expensive to employ bank staff so we have this wait until it breaks system with the associated longer stoppages. I wonder how the recently quoted £10 million cost of the Todbrook repairs compares against keeping the reservoir manager on site in the house they allegedly sold off when they took over. A stitch in time springs to mind, but the local CaRT chaps tell me they are no longer allowed to fix anything; and anyway the tools have all been sold off. A few years ago I watched as a paddle board was replaced, one of the CaRT lads was sent to a tool hire company to hire a saw - you can buy one in Screwfix for £7.99. Where we are there's a weir with 'sacrificial' wooden boards which maintain the level of the cut. Two ex BW lads I know used to re-position/replace the boards a few days after any flood damage. Now we wait, sat on the bottom for months and even years. I suspect many on this forum have similar examples. Of course if you are a cyclist, fishist, jogger, rambler or blue sign admirer no worries, but I once believed CaRT were a Navigation Authority.

Not sure about sharp decline all I know is where we moor i.e. Yorkshire, the routes over the Pennines have been closed regularly. This year because of the issues at Figure of Three locks the more reliable route is shut long term and we can't even get out over the Rochdale (3 closures at least so far) and the Huddersfield, which is now a joke, being open and shut more times than your front door. Even the Leeds & Liverpool is less reliable than it was. At least this petition (not mine btw) is an attempt to do something - doing nothing isn't my style is it yours? Sorry Arthur didn't realise you were posh else I would have tried harder - PS there appears to be a speeling mistake in your post.