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C&RT License Survey


Arthur Marshall

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4 hours ago, magnetman said:

Seems to me the moorings are too cheap. 

 

You mean the landlord should raise the price for no apparent reason to stop people mooring there? Sounds a bit like Ian's band generously ripping off their public in order not to upset other bands.

I'm not sure it's terribly good business practice.

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29 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

You mean the landlord should raise the price for no apparent reason to stop people mooring there? Sounds a bit like Ian's band generously ripping off their public in order not to upset other bands.

I'm not sure it's terribly good business practice.

You really are trying to be obnoxious, aren't you?

 

I have many friends who play in other bands -- some who do it for a living, some for fun like we do -- as well as ones who organise and run dance series, and they have the same view I do. Maybe you shouldn't pontificate about something you seem to know little about, especially by trying to claim some kind of moral superiority?

 

Charging less might be good business practice if you want to get lots more bookings as a result (we didn't and still don't) at the expense of "hard-working musicians" who need the gigs to survive -- especially since bookings dropped off during and after Covid. If you want to do that (charge less than the "going rate") then that's your decision, but it's not going to make you very popular -- and yes I know of bands who have done exactly this... 😉

 

And incidentally the public isn't being "ripped off" because at these dances there's usually a standard entrance price regardless of who is playing... 😉

Edited by IanD
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Why are clubs and marinas discussing the whereabouts of individual boats with C&RT?

If a boat is not at its mooring the marina may simply  point out that boats are there to be used by their owners and may go out at any time.

It's not the marinas responsibility to monitor boat movements.

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On 11/03/2023 at 10:52, Midnight said:

The boater didn't, the C&RT did. When I contacted the boater he was unaware that he had been reclassified as a CCer. The decision I believe was based on his sightings and lack of sightings at the boat club moorings. The C&RT did amend his record when I pointed out that he was on a long summer cruise. If C&RT repeat that it will cause a bit of upset. Now semi-retired we will be heading out in April and returning in October - could be interesting.

 

Not yet read to the end of the thread so apologies if this has already been asked:

How can CRT unilaterally declare a boater who has paid for a mooring at a club or marina or elsewhere to be CC? Especially as there is currently no such licence classification. 

1 hour ago, MartynG said:

Why are clubs and marinas discussing the whereabouts of individual boats with C&RT?

If a boat is not at its mooring the marina may simply  point out that boats are there to be used by their owners and may go out at any time.

It's not the marinas responsibility to monitor boat movements.

 

Exactly so. But when an organisation oversteps it's responsibilities and starts making CCers out of boats with home moorings then it's natural to attempt to correct the record.

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2 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

You mean the landlord should raise the price for no apparent reason to stop people mooring there? Sounds a bit like Ian's band generously ripping off their public in order not to upset other bands.

I'm not sure it's terribly good business practice.

 

There ya go again with your "Its not fair" shyte. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

You mean the landlord should raise the price for no apparent reason to stop people mooring there? Sounds a bit like Ian's band generously ripping off their public in order not to upset other bands.

I'm not sure it's terribly good business practice.

When I leave my moorings Dave often pops a boat on there whilst I am away, I am not bothered the moorings are his toy not mine

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1 hour ago, IanD said:

You really are trying to be obnoxious, aren't you?

 

I have many friends who play in other bands -- some who do it for a living, some for fun like we do -- as well as ones who organise and run dance series, and they have the same view I do. Maybe you shouldn't pontificate about something you seem to know little about, especially by trying to claim some kind of moral superiority?

 

Charging less might be good business practice if you want to get lots more bookings as a result (we didn't and still don't) at the expense of "hard-working musicians" who need the gigs to survive -- especially since bookings dropped off during and after Covid. If you want to do that (charge less than the "going rate") then that's your decision, but it's not going to make you very popular -- and yes I know of bands who have done exactly this... 😉

 

And incidentally the public isn't being "ripped off" because at these dances there's usually a standard entrance price regardless of who is playing... 😉

I've spent most of my life playing in various bands (thirty years running ceilidhs) or solo as that's how I mostly earned my living - ie a "hard working musician". I may be a hobby boater, but I was a professional musician for fifty years. I've never resented musicians or bands who charged either more or less than I did - better ones charged more, rubbish ones charged less and quite a lot played for free. People booking bands for dances have to charge to cover their costs, a major one being the band, so if you deliberately overcharge then its them getting ripped off, or if its for a charity, the charity loses out. For a long time we certainly charged less than other bands because I felt bad about pricing people and groups I liked playing for, and who liked us and our style, out of the market. I packed it in when the band decided to charge the "going rate" and wound up doing nothing but weddings, golf clubs and the masons.

However, I do apologise for the reference to you in my post above about mooring costs. It was unnecessary and needlessly unpleasant. Us melodeon players shouldn't fall out, and if we disagree,  we should do it politely, which I didn't. Sorry.

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3 minutes ago, magnetman said:

One wonders if the CRT are allowed to check how many people pay for moorings at a marina. If there were 200 people paying and only 100 berths one could smell a rat. 

One would imagine if asked , the marina ,would decline to answer that (or maybe a less polite response).

 I may be wrong but cant imagine C&RT have any rights to interrogate companies in this way. 

 

 

 

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57 minutes ago, MartynG said:

 

One would imagine if asked , the marina ,would decline to answer that (or maybe a less polite response).

 I may be wrong but cant imagine C&RT have any rights to interrogate companies in this way. 

 

 

 

CRT have rights under Network Access Agreements. For example -

Quote

Keep accurate records sufficient to identify all boats being moored in the Basin or at the Moorings together with records of the names and addresses of the users or owners of each boat and to give CRT reasonable access to such records at no cost to CRT

 

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2 hours ago, MartynG said:

 

One would imagine if asked , the marina ,would decline to answer that (or maybe a less polite response).

 I may be wrong but cant imagine C&RT have any rights to interrogate companies in this way. 

 

 

 

I see no reason to decline to answer. It's a two way thing. C&RT get to know if there are any ghost moorers and the club/marina get to correct any incorrect C&RT classifications as in my example. Win, win surely?

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3 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I've spent most of my life playing in various bands (thirty years running ceilidhs) or solo as that's how I mostly earned my living - ie a "hard working musician". I may be a hobby boater, but I was a professional musician for fifty years. I've never resented musicians or bands who charged either more or less than I did - better ones charged more, rubbish ones charged less and quite a lot played for free. People booking bands for dances have to charge to cover their costs, a major one being the band, so if you deliberately overcharge then its them getting ripped off, or if its for a charity, the charity loses out. For a long time we certainly charged less than other bands because I felt bad about pricing people and groups I liked playing for, and who liked us and our style, out of the market. I packed it in when the band decided to charge the "going rate" and wound up doing nothing but weddings, golf clubs and the masons.

However, I do apologise for the reference to you in my post above about mooring costs. It was unnecessary and needlessly unpleasant. Us melodeon players shouldn't fall out, and if we disagree,  we should do it politely, which I didn't. Sorry.

Apology accepted 🙂

 

I certainly wasn't talking about deliberately overcharging, just not deliberately charging less than bands of working musicians to get bookings because we could have -- it's hard enough for bands to make a living especially recently, and the folk world is famously stingy... 😞

 

Which doesn't mean charging the same for every booking -- corporate events and weddings (which are often not fun to play) have deep pockets and can pay more, events that you know would struggle and anything charitable pay less -- sometimes expenses only, or even nothing.

 

For sure, nobody who's in it for the money would play in a ten-piece band for many years, the first move would have been to get rid of half the band -- the other half, obviously... 😉

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18 hours ago, magnetman said:

Seems to me the moorings are too cheap. 

 

How do you come to that conclusion?

 

Setting a price for anything is complex, you can go down the what is the maximum I can charge route, but then you risk going slightly to high and being left with empty unpaid for moorings, also if you are charging a top price for the service and amenities you are offering people will expect everything to be in perfect working order 100% of the time and complain when it isn't.

If you charge a bit less it will be easier to keep the mooring "full" i.e. all paid for, and people will be a bit more understanding/forgiving when sometimes goes wrong or isn't in perfect condition.

So charging a bit less can lead to less work and potentially the same or higher overall income and profit.

 

Arthur's mooring owner seems to have the perfect set up, they are being paid for a mooring by someone who causes no wear and tear on the facilities and infrastructure, and is never there to complain or even notice when something goes wrong.

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I would have thought the way to do it would be price it so there was always something available. I don't know the mooring in question but if it is full and you get an enquiry by someone who really wants a mooring it seems a bit odd not to create availability and get more money. 

 

9 moorings at £1000 each is better than 10 moorings at £900 each and in the former case you get one vacant mooring which at some point someone will want to pay you for. 

 

But I've never run a business so probably completely misunderstand reality ;)

 

 

Obviously depends on demand.. 

Is there a waiting list for example. 

Edited by magnetman
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50 minutes ago, Barneyp said:

How do you come to that conclusion?

 

Setting a price for anything is complex, you can go down the what is the maximum I can charge route, but then you risk going slightly to high and being left with empty unpaid for moorings, also if you are charging a top price for the service and amenities you are offering people will expect everything to be in perfect working order 100% of the time and complain when it isn't.

If you charge a bit less it will be easier to keep the mooring "full" i.e. all paid for, and people will be a bit more understanding/forgiving when sometimes goes wrong or isn't in perfect condition.

So charging a bit less can lead to less work and potentially the same or higher overall income and profit.

 

Arthur's mooring owner seems to have the perfect set up, they are being paid for a mooring by someone who causes no wear and tear on the facilities and infrastructure, and is never there to complain or even notice when something goes wrong.

The problem CART have is that it's not like they have a free choice between keeping boaters happy and raising more money -- they have to do the second, and making boaters less happy is an unavoidable consequence... 😞

 

Given the cost of licenses and number of boats -- especially the increase in recent years of CMers only interested in the canals as a cheap place to live -- it seems obvious that from a point of view of maximising their revenue the license fee is too low, and so long as they don't increase it too much this won't drive many boaters away, regardless of what the NBTA says...

 

Their problem is working out how to do this while losing the fewest boaters, and that's what the consultation is all about.

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51 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I would have thought the way to do it would be price it so there was always something available. I don't know the mooring in question but if it is full and you get an enquiry by someone who really wants a mooring it seems a bit odd not to create availability and get more money. 

 

9 moorings at £1000 each is better than 10 moorings at £900 each and in the former case you get one vacant mooring which at some point someone will want to pay you for. 

 

But I've never run a business so probably completely misunderstand reality ;)

 

 

Obviously depends on demand.. 

Is there a waiting list for example. 

Moorings on the Macc are in fairly short supply, so when we have a vacancy it fills pretty quick (occasionally by someone on here). The farmer who owns the land is choosy over who he'll rent to as he likes a quiet life and anyone troublesome doesn't get renewed. It's non-residential. There are no facilities except short term parking and we maintain the moorings. He's not put my fees up since I've been there, about ten years - I presume as he does nothing for us, it's free money for him. Boats that hardly ever turn up are even less trouble than the ones that never move off the mooring, which is most of them.

The rent when I came was the same as the farm mooring I moved from further up, so it was probably about par then. I'm sure he could double it without losing most of us as there's really nowhere else to go but at the loss of goodwill, which matters on a mooring like this. And, of course, farm moorings don't suit everyone - many want power hookup and water etc facilities on site.

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20 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

We have one boat on our mooring who in reality continually cruises but maintains the mooring for when he needs to leave the boat somewhere secure while doing other things. It's been almost a year, I think, since he was there. I'm not sure how he classes himself to CRT, or how they classify him. It's not a ghost mooring, because it's genuine, so he pays farm rent and EOG to CRT. Currently it makes no difference but it certainly would be an injustice if they reclassified him CC, raised his licence fee but still demanded the EOG. I just hope they have a facility for dealing with anomalies.

 

Quite.  If they double my "Boat without a home mooring" licence fee I'll once again pay for a mooring that I won't use.

 

I did that for four years, and I never had the boat on the mooring for more than 14 days except for one continuous 7 week period during a stoppage nearby.  

 

That's why I decided to go Cc'ing and spend the mooring fee on diesel instead.

 

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7 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Quite.  If they double my "Boat without a home mooring" licence fee I'll once again pay for a mooring that I won't use.

 

 And surely that would be acceptable as C&RT would get a proportion of the mooring fee. Problems for you would only occur if the mooring operator rented out your vacant mooring to another boat which declared a home mooring. e.g. moorings with 20 berths and 30 boats with home moorings declared there. At the club we love boats to go out for the summer so we can offer temporary moorings to visiting boats - double money - but any visiting boat that tried to declare a 'ghost' home mooring would soon be discovered. C&RT maybe be dim but not that dim.

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1 minute ago, Midnight said:

 And surely that would be acceptable as C&RT would get a proportion of the mooring fee. Problems for you would only occur if the mooring operator rented out your vacant mooring to another boat which declared a home mooring. e.g. moorings with 20 berths and 30 boats with home moorings declared there. At the club we love boats to go out for the summer so we can offer temporary moorings to visiting boats - double money - but any visiting boat that tried to declare a 'ghost' home mooring would soon be discovered. C&RT maybe be dim but not that dim.

 

Nah, it's an AWCC boat club so it's often got visiting boats for a fortnight.

 

I'm quite happy for the mooring officer to use my allocated space if I'm not using it, and in the event of any pushback from CRT I would simply show them my annual mooring invoice.

 

For clarity, I wouldn't be pretending to have a mooring, I'd actually have one that other boats mostly use.

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5 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Nah, it's an AWCC boat club so it's often got visiting boats for a fortnight.

 

I'm quite happy for the mooring officer to use my allocated space if I'm not using it, and in the event of any pushback from CRT I would simply show them my annual mooring invoice.

 

For clarity, I wouldn't be pretending to have a mooring, I'd actually have one that other boats mostly use.

 

That's what I mean't when I said it would be acceptable. At our club any boat that doesn't use it's home mooring for two years would not get a renewal. During those two years, if asked by C&RT, we would confirm it was the boat's home mooring.

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3 minutes ago, Midnight said:

That's what I mean't when I said it would be acceptable. At our club any boat that doesn't use it's home mooring for two years would not get a renewal. During those two years, if asked by C&RT, we would confirm it was the boat's home mooring.

 

Fair enough.  At our club they didn't care if I used the mooring or not as long as I paid for it, did my share on work parties and was active in club events.

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1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

Quite.  If they double my "Boat without a home mooring" licence fee I'll once again pay for a mooring that I won't use.

 

Just rememebr that as a 'boat with a home mooring', you do not have the legal protection of the '14 day rule' which is only applied to 'boat with no home mooring'

BW / C&RT have "allowed" for boats with a home mooring to moor for up to 14 days (unless otherwise posted) but it is discretionary and can be withdrawn at a moments notice.

 

I used to enjoy my back and forths with Nigel Moore - one of his postings on the subject.

 

 

From the very first enabling Acts, the towpath was not to be obstructed; it had to be available to all for the use it was designed for – accordingly, overnight stays would have been the only (perhaps) tolerated use for mooring. In one of the major canal company’s Acts, in fact, pleasure boats were even banned from ANY use of the towpath (and that clause has never, to my knowledge, been explicitly rescinded).

 

Over the latter part of the 20th century, longer temporary use of the towpath for mooring became tolerated on a pragmatic basis, with 14 days fixed upon as a rough guideline for reasons lost in obscurity (for all that BW came up with postulated origins during the Select Committee hearings on the 1990 Bill).

 

Obstruction remains on the statute books as an offence, updated even in the 1995 Act, and overstaying stated times on selected sections has been used with County Court approval to qualify the boat – being thereby regarded as an obstruction - for being moved under s.8(5) of the 1983 Act. Anything longer than an overnight stay, as I see it, is simply permissive – with the exception of boats without home moorings, for whom only, the right to 14 days (or more if circumstances dictate) is enshrined in law.

 

For boats with home moorings when cruising away from those, the 14 day limit would apply only as a permissive one based on a fair-play comparison with the ‘continuous cruisers’. It is simply, in other words, that CaRT would find difficulty in justifying the application of differing standards based only on the nature of the boat licence application.

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Just rememebr that as a 'boat with a home mooring', you do not have the legal protection of the '14 day rule' which is only applied to 'boat with no home mooring'

BW / C&RT have "allowed" for boats with a home mooring to moor for up to 14 days (unless otherwise posted) but it is discretionary and can be withdrawn at a moments notice.

 

I used to enjoy my back and forths with Nigel Moore - one of his postings on the subject.

 

 

From the very first enabling Acts, the towpath was not to be obstructed; it had to be available to all for the use it was designed for – accordingly, overnight stays would have been the only (perhaps) tolerated use for mooring. In one of the major canal company’s Acts, in fact, pleasure boats were even banned from ANY use of the towpath (and that clause has never, to my knowledge, been explicitly rescinded).

 

Over the latter part of the 20th century, longer temporary use of the towpath for mooring became tolerated on a pragmatic basis, with 14 days fixed upon as a rough guideline for reasons lost in obscurity (for all that BW came up with postulated origins during the Select Committee hearings on the 1990 Bill).

 

Obstruction remains on the statute books as an offence, updated even in the 1995 Act, and overstaying stated times on selected sections has been used with County Court approval to qualify the boat – being thereby regarded as an obstruction - for being moved under s.8(5) of the 1983 Act. Anything longer than an overnight stay, as I see it, is simply permissive – with the exception of boats without home moorings, for whom only, the right to 14 days (or more if circumstances dictate) is enshrined in law.

 

For boats with home moorings when cruising away from those, the 14 day limit would apply only as a permissive one based on a fair-play comparison with the ‘continuous cruisers’. It is simply, in other words, that CaRT would find difficulty in justifying the application of differing standards based only on the nature of the boat licence application.

 

That's now changed with the specific item in the June '22 T&C's - "5.2. Whilst travelling Our Waterways when away from Your Home Mooring, You may only moor for periods of up to 14 days, or less where a local restriction applies."

 

Edited by DaveP
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