All routes out if Yorkshire closed ...again

[Midnight]

On 26/06/2024 at 11:01, Midnight said:

I doubt I'll be passing 🍺

 I didn't 🍺🍺🍺

[Midnight]

So Keadby swing bridge is broken. That's game, set and match again!!!

Good going Mr Parry.

[Rob-M]

12 minutes ago, Midnight said:

So Keadby swing bridge is broken. That's game, set and match again!!!

Good going Mr Parry.

Isn't that down to the council as the stoppage stated North Lincolnshire Council have informed us that Electricians are attending site on the morning of Wednesday the 3rd of July to confirm how much re-cabling is needed to get the bridge operational again.

[Midnight]

2 hours ago, Rob-M said:

Isn't that down to the council as the stoppage stated North Lincolnshire Council have informed us that Electricians are attending site on the morning of Wednesday the 3rd of July to confirm how much re-cabling is needed to get the bridge operational again.

Yes Keadby bridge is managed by the council but the other three routes are mis managed by C&RT

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

You’ll have to go round Curly again 👍

[Midnight]

3 minutes ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:

You’ll have to go round Curly again 👍

Probably for ever 😏

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

1 hour ago, Midnight said:

Probably for ever 😏

Ground Hog Day 😃

 

Luck was with me today and Winkwell Swing  Bridge Worked so all being well I won’t be stuck in the South. 

 

[Midnight]

With regular stoppages on the HNC, Rochdale and Keadby Vazon bridge I'm left wondering how to get back to base. Today the Leeds and Liverpool is an option, if not teetering on the brink.  On Monday it's a toss up for turning left or right off the Middlewich arm. Boating isn't meant to be so uncertain, it wasn't before C&RT. As I said previously Russian Roulette with 5 bullets in the gun!

[Jon57]

2 hours ago, Midnight said:

With regular stoppages on the HNC, Rochdale and Keadby Vazon bridge I'm left wondering how to get back to base. Today the Leeds and Liverpool is an option, if not teetering on the brink.  On Monday it's a toss up for turning left or right off the Middlewich arm. Boating isn't meant to be so uncertain, it wasn't before C&RT. As I said previously Russian Roulette with 5 bullets in the gun!

I'm bitting the bullet going for the Leeds Liverpool. I like a challenge 🤣

[TheBiscuits]

7 minutes ago, Jon57 said:

I'm bitting the bullet going for the Leeds Liverpool. I like a challenge 🤣

 

Don't tell @Midnight because if they decide to go that way too it'll close again!

[MtB]

3 hours ago, Midnight said:

Boating isn't meant to be so uncertain, it wasn't before C&RT.

 

And nor does it need to be if only CRT would charge the boaters a commercial rate for maintaining the system.

 

But instead they try to do it on the cheap and keep licence fees artificially low which helps no-one. 

 

SACK RICHARD PARRY!!! 

[Hudds Lad]

3 hours ago, Midnight said:

With regular stoppages on the HNC,

Some of the Karens on the local Facebook groups are quite incandescent about the "canals and riverside trust" chopping down a load of offside jungle to investigate a leak into the old mills. Firing off emails to all and sundry to complain and demanding to see tree management data and methods of wildlife protection as they've "not seen any birds since". "they often drain it but never dredge it" was my favourite complaint.

One was even moaning last week about lock sides being trimmed as she wanted to see the butterflies with her toddler.

 

Still not reached the peak of a couple of years back with the lone Canada Goose they had given a name to, and wanted to organise a rota to go feed it as it plainly couldn't get out of the canal and was going to starve. 🙄

[ditchcrawler]

2 hours ago, Hudds Lad said:

Some of the Karens on the local Facebook groups are quite incandescent about the "canals and riverside trust" chopping down a load of offside jungle to investigate a leak into the old mills. Firing off emails to all and sundry to complain and demanding to see tree management data and methods of wildlife protection as they've "not seen any birds since". "they often drain it but never dredge it" was my favourite complaint.

One was even moaning last week about lock sides being trimmed as she wanted to see the butterflies with her toddler.

 

Still not reached the peak of a couple of years back with the lone Canada Goose they had given a name to, and wanted to organise a rota to go feed it as it plainly couldn't get out of the canal and was going to starve. 🙄

Give us a link, it sounds fun

[LadyG]

13 hours ago, MtB said:

 

And nor does it need to be if only CRT would charge the boaters a commercial rate for maintaining the system.

 

But instead they try to do it on the cheap and keep licence fees artificially low which helps no-one. 

 

SACK RICHARD PARRY!!! 

If the CRT charged more the government would pay less, which is already the plan forward for both parties. However the canals are a National Resource and provide immense (quantifiable in £££££) benefit, but the government are unwilling to pay more and the boaters (who are minor stakeholders) are unable to pay more (excluding MtB who is in the almost unique position of being able to pay more than anyone else).

If I had to pay an extra £5K per annum for example, I would immediately leave CRT waters.

Edited August 4 by LadyG

[Momac]

1 hour ago, LadyG said:

If I had to pay an extra £5K per annum for example, I would immediately leave CRT waters.

So would most other folk. 

Charge too much and there will be too few customers. 

 

[IanD]

16 minutes ago, Momac said:

So would most other folk. 

Charge too much and there will be too few customers. 

 

True, but basic economics says that you need to look at what this does to the total cost of boating, not just the license fee.

 

Estimates for typical total boating cost usually come out around £5kpa, typical license fee is less then 20% of this (£1kpa).

 

Doubling the license fee would increase annual boating cost by 20% to £6kpa, which is unlikely to drive many people off the canals any more than 10% inflation did.

 

Multiplying it by 6x (an extra £5kpa) would undoubtedly make many people quit boating by doubling the annual cost, just like @LadyG said.

 

This suggests the "maximum revenue" point for CART is a license fee somewhere in between these two figures, maybe around 3x-4x what it is today, which would make canal boating about 50% more expensive.

 

You can argue about the exact numbers but this really is basic supply and demand in action, which says that CART are charging much less for license fees than they should do to extract the most money from boaters to maintain the canals -- failure to do which is what everyone is complaining about... 😞

Edited August 4 by IanD

[MrsM]

2 minutes ago, IanD said:

True, but basic economics says that you need to look at what this does to the total cost of boating, not just the license fee.

 

Estimates for typical total boating cost usually come out around £5kpa, typical license fee is less then 20% of this (£1kpa).

 

Doubling the license fee would increase annual boating cost by 20% to 6kpa, which is unlikely to drive many people off the canals.

 

Multiplying it by 6x (an extra £5kpa) would undoubtedly make many people quit boating by doubling the annual cost, just like @LadyG said.

 

This suggests the "maximum revenue" point for CART is a license fee somewhere in between these two figures, maybe around 3x-4x what it is today, which would make canal boating about 50% more expensive.

 

You can argue about the exact numbers but this really is basic supply and demand in action, which says that CART are charging much less for license fees than they should do to extract the most money from boaters to maintain the canals -- failure to do which is what everyone is complaining about... 😞

We found the approx £5k/year was quite accurate for us as leisure boaters that cruised a lot but paid for a marina mooring, but wouldn't the figure for continuous cruisers be much lower?

[IanD]

1 minute ago, MrsM said:

We found the approx £5k/year was quite accurate for us as leisure boaters that cruised a lot but paid for a marina mooring, but wouldn't the figure for continuous cruisers be much lower?

That figure was also what CCers on the forum have usually come up with, they don't pay for a marina but spend more on other things including fuel/gas/repairs (and living expenses in general) because they spend a lot more time on the boat.

[MtB]

4 minutes ago, IanD said:

You can argue about the exact numbers but this really is basic supply and demand in action, which says that CART are charging much less for license fees than they should do to extract the most money from boaters to maintain the canals -- failure to do which is what everyone is complaining about... 😞

 

Exactly. And this effect was made widely known by economist Arthur Laffer back in the 1970s, with his graph plotting the effect became known as the "Laffer Curve". Laffer himself made no claims to have been first to describe the effect, attributing it to 14th-century social philosopher Ibn Khaldun (Amongst others).

 

 

 

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

 

 

[Arthur Marshall]

16 minutes ago, IanD said:

You can argue about the exact numbers but this really is basic supply and demand in action, which says that CART are charging much less for license fees than they should do to extract the most money from boaters to maintain the canals -- failure to do which is what everyone is complaining about... 😞

Except, as we have discussed in another thread, CRT don't really maintain the canals at all any more. They don't have the means to do so. They hire other companies to do it for them, at whatever rate these companies feel like charging. Logically, these companies will charge whatever the market will bear, which, as the government is paying, will be in excess of any sensible economic rate. They have no interest in whether the rates are sustainable, as they have no stake in fhe survival of the system.

And I do wish people would stop banging on about "supply and demand" being an economic law. Stick three economists in a room and you'll get four different interpretations of it, none of them any use in predicting outcomes.

9 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Exactly. And this effect was made widely known by economist Arthur Laffer back in the 1970s, with his graph plotting the effect became known as the "Laffer Curve". Laffer himself made no claims to have been first to describe the effect, attributing it to 14th-century social philosopher Ibn Khaldun (Amongst others).

 

 

 

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

 

 

And you can prove anything with a Laffer curve by deciding what taxes to include and what to leave out. Which, of course, like all pretty economic theories, makes it meaningless.

[IanD]

5 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Except, as we have discussed in another thread, CRT don't really maintain the canals at all any more. They don't have the means to do so. They hire other companies to do it for them, at whatever rate these companies feel like charging. Logically, these companies will charge whatever the market will bear, which, as the government is paying, will be in excess of any sensible economic rate. They have no interest in whether the rates are sustainable, as they have no stake in fhe survival of the system.

And I do wish people would stop banging on about "supply and demand" being an economic law. Stick three economists in a room and you'll get four different interpretations of it, none of them any use in predicting outcomes.

All economists agree on supply and demand and the Laffer curve for obvious reasons, any disagreement is about the exact shape of the curve -- but for sure the CART license fee is well down the left hand side.

 

Regardless of the methods CART use to maintain the canals, are you seriously suggesting that they wouldn't do better if they had more money to spend on them? That just makes no sense... 😞

[MtB]

7 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

 

And you can prove anything with a Laffer curve by deciding what taxes to include and what to leave out. Which, of course, like all pretty economic theories, makes it meaningless.

 

Indeed, a point made in the link I provided.

 

So let's argue then. I imagine you agree the start of the curve (i.e. the boat licence tax is free) CRT income will be zero. And upthread a couple of people have suggested if the licence went up to £5k they would leave the canals so putting aside the likelihood a richer person would buy their boat and pay the £5k, lets take £5k for a licence tax as the upper point at which CRT income falls back to zero. 

 

I propose that the top of a Laffer Curve so drawn might show a licence fee of about £2.5k would maximise CRT income. Where would you put that point?

[IanD]

9 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Indeed, a point made in the link I provided.

 

So let's argue then. I imagine you agree the start of the curve (i.e. the boat licence tax is free) CRT income will be zero. And upthread a couple of people have suggested if the licence went up to £5k they would leave the canals so putting aside the likelihood a richer person would buy their boat and pay the £5k, lets take £5k for a licence tax as the upper point at which CRT income falls back to zero. 

 

I propose that the top of a Laffer Curve so drawn might show a licence fee of about £2.5k would maximise CRT income. Where would you put that point?

I'd put it higher than that, because as you say even at £5k/year some better-off boaters would still carry on. But it would drive a *lot* of people away and effectively lead to social cleansing, definitely not good... 😞

 

My guesstimate of 50% increase in total boating cost for the top of the curve would be about £3.5k/year license fee, or about a 250% increase on what CART charge today. That would drive some poorer boaters off the canals, so CART income wouldn't be 3.5x higher, it would be about 2.5x higher -- that's the way the Laffer curve works.

Edited August 4 by IanD

[MtB]

11 minutes ago, IanD said:

My guesstimate of 50% increase in total boating cost for the top of the curve would be about £3.5k/year license fee, or about a 250% increase on what CART charge today. That would drive some poorer boaters off the canals,

 

I'm not sure I buy that. Firstly because the very poorest and fiercely independent don't buy a licence anyway. Secondly because those capable of claiming benefits get their licence fee paid as housing benefit, I'm pretty sure I've read Alan De E say and provide evidence. So increases in licence fees would not affect poor boaters. The first level it would impact on would be those with enough money to fall outside the benefit system. 

 

 

[Midnight]

12 minutes ago, IanD said:

I'd put it higher than that, because as you say even at £5k/year some better-off boaters would still carry on. But it would drive a *lot* of people away and effectively lead to social cleansing, definitely not good... 😞

 

My guesstimate of 50% increase in total boating cost for the top of the curve would be about £3.5k/year license fee, or about a 250% increase on what CART charge today. That would drive some poorer boaters off the canals, so CART income wouldn't be 3.5x higher, it would be about 2.5x higher -- that's the way the Laffer curve works.

Whilst I agree the license fee is cheap there would need to be a noticeable increase in maintenance to justify a huge increase in license fee. I could afford an increase but would sell up anyway if there was no improvement in the system. I'm already fed up with the uncertainty of getting out and getting back each year.