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Is the current infrastructure really any worse than the 70s 80s?


Rambling Boater

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Just now, IanD said:

 

I must be really stupid then, having a very well-paid position high-up in a multinational company and paying 45% income tax... 😞

 

None of which is the point, tax avoidance is always a problem with the very rich or immoral (and I don't think there are many billionaires on the canals), but the basis of the UK tax system is that those with higher incomes pay a higher tax rate -- so money paid by the government to maintain the canals comes more from people on higher incomes.

 

Can you remind us again Ian about how wealthy you are and how expensive your new boat is going to be?

 

I'm not sure you've mentioned it enough.

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5 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

I must be really stupid then, having a very well-paid technical position high-up in a multinational company and paying 45% income tax... 😞

 

 

Not quite stupid, misguided possibly.

I worked for others in my youth. Never made any real money till I started my own companies and paid others to work hard by paying them well.

Not a billionaire on the canals now, but then I have been retired for the better part of 30 years.

Should I be paying more for my licence? I bet you think so.

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2 minutes ago, Slow and Steady said:

Agreed - I bet when you go part time consultant you'll earn more doing less, it's the way of the world!

 

Maybe, maybe not -- I've done it in the past, but if I did it working for my current company there are a lot of valuable things I wouldn't get as a consultant which I do get as a permanent employee. Higher hourly rate as a consultant, but not necessarily higher income... 😉

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Just now, Tracy D'arth said:

Not quite stupid, misguided possibly.

I worked for others in my youth. Never made any real money till I started my own companies and paid others to work hard by paying them well.

Not a billionaire on the canals now, but then I have been retired for the better part of 30 years.

Should I be paying more for my licence? I bet you think so.

You know nothing about my position, so I suggest you don't speculate about it because you're almost certainly wrong.

 

Ask yourself the following question: if the CART license fees go up (to improve maintenance, which everyone is complaining about) such that some poorer boaters than you (or me) are likely to get priced off the canals, are you (who can afford it) willing to pay more than they do so that they (who can't afford it) can pay less and stay on the canals?

 

I know what my answer is, because it's what I've been suggesting. What's yours?

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4 minutes ago, IanD said:

You know nothing about my position, so I suggest you don't speculate about it because you're almost certainly wrong.

 

Ask yourself the following question: if the CART license fees go up (to improve maintenance, which everyone is complaining about) such that some poorer boaters than you (or me) are likely to get priced off the canals, are you (who can afford it) willing to pay more than they do so that they (who can't afford it) can pay less and stay on the canals?

 

I know what my answer is, because it's what I've been suggesting. What's yours?

I have had enough of your views thank you.

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7 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I have had enough of your views thank you.

Don't want to answer the question then? 😉

 

You're the one who keeps attacking me, but you don't seem to like getting pushed back...

Edited by IanD
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5 minutes ago, IanD said:

You know nothing about my position, so I suggest you don't speculate about it because you're almost certainly wrong.

 

Well thats not entirely true is it. We know that you have a very well-paid position high-up in a multinational company and pay 45% income tax... 

 

Because you've just told us.

 

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7 minutes ago, IanD said:

Don't want to answer the question then? 😉

 

You're the one who keeps attacking me, but you don't seem to like getting pushed back...

I have not attacked anyone. Please just go away, silly man.

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16 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I have not attacked anyone. Please just go away, silly man.

You don't read your own posts, then? Including that one, silly girl?

 

"I will gladly let Ian pay as much as he wants.  He can pay mine as well if he wants. "

"Get off your high horse Ian, its only winding you up. This is a discussion forum not a soap box. We all do what suits us best, whatever the political belief. "

"Its no dafter than charging depending on the owners boat value."

"Not quite stupid, misguided possibly.

Should I be paying more for my licence? I bet you think so. "

 

Someone refusing to answer a simple question -- like a politician, or some people on this forum -- usually means that somebody knows that if they answer truthfully it'll make them look bad, but the only alternative is to agree with the person they're arguing with.

 

I suspect that's the hole you've dug for yourself, you've been arguing that a progressive license fee is wrong (see second line of your question) but can't admit that this means you'd rather somebody was driven off the canals by a license fee increase than pay more yourself because this makes you look selfish (like a Tory politician).

 

If you have the courage of your convictions, why not answer the question honestly? I've made my position crystal clear... 😉

Edited by IanD
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2 minutes ago, IanD said:

You don't read your own posts, then?

 

"Not quite stupid, misguided possibly.

Should I be paying more for my licence? I bet you think so. "

 

Someone refusing to answer a simple question -- like a politician, or some people on this forum -- usually means that somebody knows that if they answer truthfully it'll make them look bad, but the only alternative is to agree with the person they're arguing with.

 

I suspect that's the hole you've dug for yourself, you've been arguing that a progressive license fee is wrong (see second line of your question) but can't admit that this means you'd rather somebody was driven off the canals by a license fee increase than pay more yourself because this makes you look selfish (like a Tory politician).

 

If you have the courage of your convictions, why not answer the question honestly? I've made my position crystal clear... 😉

 

Youve been asked to leave it.

 

You are engaging in classic bullying behaviour.

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4 minutes ago, IanD said:

I suspect that's the hole you've dug for yourself, you've been arguing that a progressive license fee is wrong (see second line of your question) but can't admit that this means you'd rather somebody was driven off the canals by a license fee increase than pay more yourself because this makes you look selfish (like a Tory politician).

Maybe because it's only you and MTB on the whole who seem to think a huge licence fee increase is the way forward and please forgive me but both of you can well afford it so I guess you would. And from that financially secure position you want to bring it on everyone else. You yourself, so desperate for licence fees to increase vastly try and play the socialist to excuse yourself, but your schemes for this are ill thought out and you accept some people would be hard hit but oh, well that's the nature of things. In other words it's a price you are prepared for other unfortunate people to pay, because you, Jack, will be alright.

 

Even CRT themselves are trying to get funding elsewhere. If it was as easy as tripling the licence they would have done it, but I suggest they realise that so many would then choose to give up boating or dodge the licence that they would be no better off. This is maybe why they increase it gradually - to retain their customers.

 

Why not try and come up with a real scheme that won't by it's nature shoot itself in the foot?

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45 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

I must be really stupid then, having a very well-paid technical position high-up in a multinational company and paying 45% income tax... 😞

 

None of which is the point, tax avoidance is always a problem with the very rich or immoral (and I don't think there are many billionaires on the canals), but the basis of the UK tax system is that those with higher incomes pay a higher tax rate -- so money paid by the government to maintain the canals comes more from people on higher incomes.

The wealthy are a very small minority of the tax paying population and maybe they do pay a lot , surely it’ll be the taxes paid by the less wealthy that keep the government going. 

So I propose money paid by the government to maintain the canals comes more from the people on lower incomes.
From the 20% tax payer because there’s massively more of them. 

 

It would be interesting to see how much the wealthy paying 40% or more contribute collectively, compared to the masses paying 20%. 
 

 

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21 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

Youve been asked to leave it.

 

You are engaging in classic bullying behaviour.

 

So tell TD to stop throwing crap at me and I'll stop throwing it back at her. All the ad hominem attacks have been in one direction, as have been the refusals to answer simple questions about the views put forwards.

 

10 minutes ago, Goliath said:

The wealthy are a very small minority of the tax paying population and maybe they do pay a lot , surely it’ll be the taxes paid by the less wealthy that keep the government going. 

So I propose money paid by the government to maintain the canals comes more from the people on lower incomes.
From the 20% tax payer because there’s massively more of them. 

 

It would be interesting to see how much the wealthy paying 40% or more contribute collectively, compared to the masses paying 20%. 
 

 

Sorry, but the facts say otherwise, as I said... 😉

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

"More than 25% of all income tax revenue is paid by the top 1% of taxpayers, i.e. taxpayers with the highest incomes, and 90% of all income tax revenue is paid by the top 50% of taxpayers with the highest incomes."

Edited by IanD
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3 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

So tell TD to stop throwing crap at me and I'll stop throwing it back at her. All the ad hominem attacks have been in one direction, as have been the refusals to answer simple questions

 

I dont take direction from you. Complain to the mods if you are feeling 'under attack' by TD.

 

 

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10 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

So tell TD to stop throwing crap at me and I'll stop throwing it back at her. All the ad hominem attacks have been in one direction, as have been the refusals to answer simple questions about the views put forwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

More than 25% of all income tax revenue is paid by the top 1% of taxpayers, i.e. taxpayers with the highest incomes, and 90% of all income tax revenue is paid by the top 50% of taxpayers with the highest incomes.

Cor blimey!

 

 

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4 hours ago, IanD said:

 

I think most of what you're saying here is what I said : boat value (and insurance value) is not an ideal measure of ability to pay, for various reasons that you listed.

 

But so far nobody has come up with any alternative which is progressive, better, easy to administer, and doesn't involve a lot of disclosure of sensitive information like income.

 

The "pensioners with expensive boats" issue is the same one that comes up with houses. But any system always has winners and losers, the question is whether a proposed one is better/fairer than the status quo.

 

I contend that -- especially if license fees have to go up to fund maintenance -- it's fairer to have some weighting using boat/insurance value to try and stop poorer boaters being priced off the canals and get richer ones to pay more, than keeping the almost-flat-fee system we have today -- but the weighting for boat width should also be bigger, and maybe also factors for CCing, and anything else to try and make it fairer overall.

 

My guess is that if you look at the income distribution of boaters it's heavily weighted towards the bottom end, so this scheme should have more winners (poorer boaters) than losers (richer boaters). There will be some losers too (poor boaters with expensive boats) as well as winners (rich boaters with cheap boats), but this is inevitable unless you go to full means-testing. But it's still "fairer" than not taking any account of "value/income".

 

The progressive license fee principle is really no different to who would pay if the entire extra cost of the canals was met by the government, which a lot of people on CWDF are in favour of for the obvious reason that they wouldn't have to pay more.

 

But "the government" actually means "people's taxes", and the rich (if they don't use offshore tax fiddles and so on...) pay higher rates of tax (e.g. 45%) than the poor (e.g. 20%, or 0% below the threshold). So trying to make the license fee more progressive echoes the principle that "those with the broadest shoulders should carry the biggest load", which I hope most people (except some Tories...) would agree is a sign of a caring society... 🙂

I don't see the basis for licence fees being progressive any more than the diesel you put in the tank or leccy in the battery. 

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18 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I don't see the basis for licence fees being progressive any more than the diesel you put in the tank or leccy in the battery. 

<sigh> because it's a big and unavoidable chunk of the cost of running a boat, and in response to the complaints on CWDF about infrastructure (subject of thread!) one suggestion was that CART might have to significantly increase license fees (which have also been said on CWDF to be cheap for what you get), and if these go up 100% or more some people on CWDF said this would drive them off the canals, and some people on CWDF have said they'd be willing to pay more...

 

...and the only way I can see to tie all this together is a progressive license fee, so instead of everyone paying (say) £3000 or so (IIRC the current average is about £1200?), some might pay as little as £1000, and some might pay as much as £10000 (just example numbers taken from the thread).

 

If you can see any other way to square the circle, I'd love to know what it is 🙂

 

[please don't nit-pick the numbers, they're just examples to demonstrate the principle]

Edited by IanD
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38 minutes ago, Slow and Steady said:

 

Why not try and come up with a real scheme that won't by it's nature shoot itself in the foot?

 I have a great idea. How about charging by length and width? It's such  good idea that I'm hoping it will conclude this utterly pointless debate. 😆😆😆

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32 minutes ago, Midnight said:

 I have a great idea. How about charging by length and width? It's such  good idea that I'm hoping it will conclude this utterly pointless debate. 😆😆😆

Because it should be taken into account, but it doesn't make a big enough difference, and it penalises poor people in big old cheap boats -- as was said ages ago... 😉

 

Anyway, if we stopped all pointless debate CWDF would be a windy desert populated only by rolling tumbleweed and trolls... 😉

Edited by IanD
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10 minutes ago, IanD said:

Because it should be taken into account, but it doesn't make a big enough difference, and it penalises people in big old cheap boats -- as was said ages ago... 😉

 

Anyway, if we stopped all pointless debate CWDF would be a windy desert populated only by rolling tumbleweed and trolls... 😉

 

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!!

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50 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

...and the only way I can see to tie all this together is a progressive license fee, so instead of everyone paying (say) £3000 or so (IIRC the current average is about £1200?), some might pay as little as £1000, and some might pay as much as £10000 (just example numbers taken from the thread).

When my parents started boating in the 1960s, boats were smaller. Our first hire was a 24ft centre cockpit cruiser, later hires included narrow boats up to about 40 ft. We later bought a 20ft cruiser which could accommodate my parents in the cabin and me and my sister under the cockpit canopy. All around us, most other pleasure boats were shorter. It was normal to share narrow locks, because two pleasure boats almost always had a combined length of less than 70ft. And quite often you got 3 boats in a lock.

Over time people have acquired bigger and bigger boats, and that can only be because the costs of buying and running those boats were affordable. So if we are now on a situation where boating costs are rising, then the natural market response will be for some people to downsize.

At current rates the licence fee for a 57'5" to 60'8" boat (which I guess represents the current 'average' leisure boat) is £1,067.50 (before the prompt payment discount). To licence my parents' old 20ft boat would now cost £602.24. So a 50% licence fee hike would still see my parents' successors paying less than the current 'average' licence fee. So boating would still be affordable, but just in a smaller boat.

Edited by David Mack
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1 minute ago, David Mack said:

When my parents started boating in the 1960s, boats were smaller. Our first hire was a 24ft centre cockpit cruiser, later hires included narrow boats up to about 40 ft. We later bought a 20ft cruiser which could accommodate my parents in the cabin and me and my sister under the cockpit canopy. All around us, most other pleasure boats were shorter. It was normal to share narrow locks, because two pleasure boats almost always had a combined length of less than 70ft. And quite often you got 3 boats in a lock.

Over time people have acquired bigger and bigger boats, and that can only be because the costs of buying and running those boats were affordable. So if we are now on a situation where boating costs are rising, then the natural market response will be for some people to downsize.

At current rates the licence fee for a 57'5" to 60'8" boat (which I guess represents the current 'average' leisure boat) is £1,067.50 (before the prompt payment discount). To licence my parents' old 20ft boat would now cost £602.24. So a 50% licence fee hike would still see my parents' successors paying less than the current 'average' licence fee.

So are you suggesting that if the license fees went up drastically to raise more revenue for maintenance, people should swap their 60' boats for something much smaller like 20' ?

 

Apart from practicality,  I'm sure I don't need to point out the license revenue problem if everyone did this... 😉

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5 minutes ago, David Mack said:

When my parents started boating in the 1960s, boats were smaller. Our first hire was a 24ft centre cockpit cruiser, later hires included narrow boats up to about 40 ft. We later bought a 20ft cruiser which could accommodate my parents in the cabin and me and my sister under the cockpit canopy. All around us, most other pleasure boats were shorter. It was normal to share narrow locks, because two pleasure boats almost always had a combined length of less than 70ft. And quite often you got 3 boats in a lock.

Over time people have acquired bigger and bigger boats, and that can only be because the costs of buying and running those boats were affordable. So if we are now on a situation where boating costs are rising, then the natural market response will be for some people to downsize.

At current rates the licence fee for a 57'5" to 60'8" boat (which I guess represents the current 'average' leisure boat) is £1,067.50 (before the prompt payment discount). To licence my parents' old 20ft boat would now cost £602.24. So a 50% licence fee hike would still see my parents' successors paying less than the current 'average' licence fee. So boating would still be affordable, but just in a smaller boat.

In the 60s, you didn't pay BW a fee to moor. This is now something like two thirds of the licence fee (for EOG) - in effect almost doubling it. So your 50% hike would raise the basic cost of keeping the boat on CRT water to about £1000, not the £600 you quote.

Pretending the mooring fee isn't part of the licence cost is like pretending National Insurance isn't part of the income tax system - a good wheeze and it fools a lot of people, but it doesn't make it true.  A leisure boat has to have a mooring (unless you freeload it onto the towpath and pretend to be a CC), so you have to take it into account.

As in the 60s, your ordinary mooring costs, to the mooring provider, are extra.

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