Several boats set to be removed from Bridgwater & Taunton Canal

[magnetman]

The CRT do publish numbers for boats whose occupiers have been awarded reasonable adjustments under the equality Act. I don't know where they are but this is public (anonymised) information.

25 minutes ago, Dockeroo said:

As long as not too many people take the mick which they dont it's not really a massive problem unless you want to make it one.

 

Slums are developing in some areas including Paddington arm out of west London. This is not made up. 

 

The issue is that if proper slums/pikey sites develop on canals you get unexpected problems which nobody wants. 

 

It would be better to nip it in the bud or like vegetation it will take over rapidly. 

 

[Dockeroo]

12 minutes ago, magnetman said:

The CRT do publish numbers for boats whose occupiers have been awarded reasonable adjustments under the equality Act. I don't know where they are but this is public (anonymised) information.

 

Slums are developing in some areas including Paddington arm out of west London. This is not made up. 

 

The issue is that if proper slums/pikey sites develop on canals you get unexpected problems which nobody wants. 

 

It would be better to nip it in the bud or like vegetation it will take over rapidly. 

 

While this is true its the canal community who controlls what happens on the canals much like the public controlls what happens in our country.

if you give too much attention to minor problems the problem will grow, it could be news propaganda, or Bob down the towpath, sometimes got to nip gossip in the bud before it becomes reality and grows into a bigger problem.

 

Have to accept imperfections to keep them at bay as it were.

 

The war wouldn't be as bad in Ukraine if millions of people weren't gossiping about what negative journalsm they watched on the news yesturday giving it energy to thrive.

 

Edited July 10, 2023 by Dockeroo

[magnetman]

Good point but I still think if slums are allowed to get out of hand something a lot worse than the CRT is going to happen. 

 

 

[Dockeroo]

2 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Good point but I still think if slums are allowed to get out of hand something a lot worse than the CRT is going to happen. 

 

 

I agree that once it's already out of hand it's too late and authority needs to step in, but it needn't get to that stage and if it did its definitely people gossiping or talking about it   that doesn't help

 

Your always going to get imperfections with people, a boater who don't move with crap on the bank is aking to a small graze on your arm, keep picking at it and it will grow into more.

 

Accept it and it will heal and go away, but there will always be more new small nicks.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Dockeroo

[magnetman]

3 minutes ago, Dockeroo said:

I agree that once it's already out of hand it's too late and authority needs to step in, but it needn't get to that stage and if it did its definitely people gossiping or talking about it   that doesn't help

 

Your always going to get imperfections with people, a boater who don't move with crap on the bank is aking to a small graze on your arm, keep picking at it and it will grow into more.

 

Accept it and it will heal and go away, but there will always be more new small nicks.

 

This is an interesting approach. 

 

I think there may be a flaw in this argument. Humans are generally territorial. It is natural for this to happen. The word is based on terra which is land. 

 

People will naturally start to use land for their own purposes. It is inevitable that this will happen if it is not controlled. 

 

If you had said 'a boater who doesn't move' I would agree with you it is not a problem but once we get people placing items on towpath land we have a basic issue and I think this is an instinct thing which is difficult to avoid and one must be careful not to allow it. 

 

What community is it that you suggest would discourage this behaviour. Is it an itinerant community who move from place to place or a community of people who are always there ? 

 

 

[Jim Riley]

3 hours ago, magnetman said:

How big is your ego?

Ego here, ego there, ego mansplaining everywhere. 

[Dockeroo]

12 minutes ago, magnetman said:

 

This is an interesting approach. 

 

I think there may be a flaw in this argument. Humans are generally territorial. It is natural for this to happen. The word is based on terra which is land. 

 

People will naturally start to use land for their own purposes. It is inevitable that this will happen if it is not controlled. 

 

If you had said 'a boater who doesn't move' I would agree with you it is not a problem but once we get people placing items on towpath land we have a basic issue and I think this is an instinct thing which is difficult to avoid and one must be careful not to allow it. 

 

What community is it that you suggest would discourage this behaviour. Is it an itinerant community who move from place to place or a community of people who are always there ? 

 

 

The community who are naturally pessimistic are the ones who can discourage this behaviour by not procrastinating or spreading awareness of it IMO after watching how we work as humans for my lifetime.

 

Everything really revolves around belief, nothing exists that we didn't belive in first, and the only way to belive something you don't yet know is to get told about it by someone.

 

We should acknowledge the negative so we know how to think positive, but we shouldn't make the negative a thing by wasting breath on it and spreading it.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Dockeroo

[magnetman]

Interesting observations. 

 

In case you were unsure I am not pessimistic or optimistic about anything. 

 

I'm making observations of my own about human behaviour without taking a positive or negative view of what is happening. 

 

 

 

 

[Dockeroo]

1 minute ago, magnetman said:

Interesting observations. 

 

In case you were unsure I am not pessimistic or optimistic about anything. 

 

I'm making observations of my own about human behaviour without taking a positive or negative view of what is happening. 

 

 

 

 

You clearly aren't pessimistic don't worry that wasn't aimed at you, some people always are.

[magnetman]

It gets awkward with all the editing. 

I would suggest less post-editing. 

[Mike Todd]

10 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

Quite, and of course, 'think of the the children' means that parents with school aged children no longer have to comply with the CC guidance (rules)

And CaRT website says quite the opposite.

 

I recently met a boater who proudly told me that his daughter has a place to go to a leading university this autumn having been brought up CCing. See, it can be done, he said and is convinced that he and his partner gave done so reasonably compliantly. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by Mike Todd

[Alan de Enfield]

1 hour ago, Mike Todd said:

And CaRT website says quite the opposite.

 

And yet when an MP got involved C&RT accepted that they needed to amend the guidance and produced a Powerpoint presentation (which I have, several times, posted on here) showing what they will accept from boaters with children - basically a 3km cruising range from the school.

[magpie patrick]

14 hours ago, IanD said:

No, it was a genuine question, because you seemed to be throwing out generalisations with little evidence to back them up, like many others on CWDF do. So thank you for making it clear that you weren't... 🙂

 

I'd genuinely like to know how many "horse-and-cart" and how many "under-the-radar" infringers there are, and I don't know if anyone -- including you! -- really has a good idea across the whole system. Maybe down here is different to all the areas you mentioned -- which I note excluded London -- because what you stated doesn't stack up with what I see here. Which doesn't mean either of us is "right" or "wrong", it's quite possible that boater behaviour is different in London and elsewhere, I've certainly never seen so many boats packed in anywhere else on the canals...

 

I wondered about including London, but my experience there is out of date, 15 years ago I was retained by BW London (I was already working on the run up to the olympics) as, I quote, "you know what's going on with the rest of the system". Back then London was congested and there were issues with moorings, a booking system was being proposed for honeypots (and I think this has happened?) and amongst the observations was that boaters were doing coordinated shuffles between mooring spots using text messages to agree the date and time of the shuffle - whilst this was within the letter of the law it didn't free up spaces for visiting boaters! We were also looking at carrying waste from Cross Rail on the Paddington arm and another of my roles was to advise BW how to politely tell the many CCers who frequented the branch that heavily laden barges going past at all hours was something they'd just have to live with. 

 

Even back then there were complaints about boats never moving, and the BW management knew the circumstances of each boat - in some (but only some) instances they knew that social services were involved and whilst it wasn't BW's job to look after these people it wasn't their job to make social services life more difficult either. In other instances BW were taking more action. 

 

However that situation was more than 15 years ago and almost certainly completely out of date, it is something of a reflection of the situation around Bath now though....

 

On your final comment I'd agree, I last saw the Paddington Branch 6 years ago, from the towpath, and I couldn't believe my eyes - the K&A is nowhere near that bad yet.

 

The biggest problem with all this (and with so many things) is no-one looks at the dynamics of the situation, they only try and resolve the snapshot of what's happening now. 

[IanD]

2 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

 

I wondered about including London, but my experience there is out of date, 15 years ago I was retained by BW London (I was already working on the run up to the olympics) as, I quote, "you know what's going on with the rest of the system". Back then London was congested and there were issues with moorings, a booking system was being proposed for honeypots (and I think this has happened?) and amongst the observations was that boaters were doing coordinated shuffles between mooring spots using text messages to agree the date and time of the shuffle - whilst this was within the letter of the law it didn't free up spaces for visiting boaters! We were also looking at carrying waste from Cross Rail on the Paddington arm and another of my roles was to advise BW how to politely tell the many CCers who frequented the branch that heavily laden barges going past at all hours was something they'd just have to live with. 

 

Even back then there were complaints about boats never moving, and the BW management knew the circumstances of each boat - in some (but only some) instances they knew that social services were involved and whilst it wasn't BW's job to look after these people it wasn't their job to make social services life more difficult either. In other instances BW were taking more action. 

 

However that situation was more than 15 years ago and almost certainly completely out of date, it is something of a reflection of the situation around Bath now though....

 

On your final comment I'd agree, I last saw the Paddington Branch 6 years ago, from the towpath, and I couldn't believe my eyes - the K&A is nowhere near that bad yet.

 

The biggest problem with all this (and with so many things) is no-one looks at the dynamics of the situation, they only try and resolve the snapshot of what's happening now. 

 

If you last saw the Paddington Branch 6 years ago and thought it was bad, you ought to see it now (as I do every few days), things have got a *lot* worse since then... 😞

 

Your last comment is true, but as in so many other areas when you're fire-fighting problems on a daily basis it's difficult to focus much attention (and money...) on longer-term issues. CART have a daily sh*t-show putting emergency sticking plasters over failures caused by lack of maintenance, and these sticking plasters cost a lot of money and effort, which leaves even less for maintenance, which means more emergency stoppages as more failures happen... :-(

 

This has been getting worse and worse for years now, and it's caused by an increasing gap between the funding available to CART and what is actually needed to maintain the canals -- never mind catch up with the backlog which is what's causing the problem.

 

Unless there's some miraculous solution to magically make repairs and maintenance take half the time and effort (AI? -- that was a joke...) the inescapable conclusion is that there are only two ways to resolve this -- more money or fewer canals. Always assuming that closing canals will save money, which is not clear for obvious candidates like the HNC where large sums would have to be repaid to those who funded the restoration.

 

What is really needed is a government who actually believes the canals are worth saving, probably driven by a minister who believes this -- like Barbara Castle under Labour in 1968. It's not as if the sums required are big by government spending standards, especially given the touted benefits to health and fitness of the canals -- it's investing money in the short term for a much bigger return in the long term, like Sure Start did.

 

But we all know what happened to that given government short-termism though, don't we? 😞

Edited July 11, 2023 by IanD