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George Ward evicted.


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On the telly last night ,one city council caught moving homeless and their camps to another city to get rid of them .......might have gone unnoticed ,except the  dummys used marked council vehicles.

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1 hour ago, magnetman said:

There are significant problems in this country but I still don't think it is the job of the navigation authority to be dealing with people's housing issues.

 

The CRT should definitely make more residential moorings available and yes you can get mooring fees paid for if you have recourse to public funds. This is a fact not just an assumption.

 

>snip

 

An interesting observation, and one which the then BW attempted some years ago, close to Avoncliffe not very far from where George Ward moored his boats. As you probably know, residential moorings require Planning Consent, and an application was submitted, but rejected by the Council after receiving a significant amount of objection from local residents. Despite discussions between BW and the Planning Authority, the application came to nothing.

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2 hours ago, magnetman said:

The CRT should definitely make more residential moorings available

 

I too was thinking this is not within the gift of CRT, however much they might want to.

 

But I'm sure they don't. Being landlord to all the George Wards on the cut is probably their worst nightmare. 

 

Imagine would would have to happen if Mr Ward 'forgot' to pay his rent once in a while. Like every month, ever.

 

 

 

 

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23 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I too was thinking this is not within the gift of CRT, however much they might want to.

 

But I'm sure they don't. Being landlord to all the George Wards on the cut is probably their worst nightmare. 

 

Imagine would would have to happen if Mr Ward 'forgot' to pay his rent once in a while. Like every month, ever.

 

 

 

 

There are, of course, rogue landlords as well as rogue tenants. What CRT have achieved is the worst case scenario of being in effect a landlord with a vast number of uncontrollable squatters, when they could be a decent landlord collecting a huge amount of mooring fees with the odd pain like Ward. As the government in their wisdom have spent a fair bit of time liberalising planning rules, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried again.

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45 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I too was thinking this is not within the gift of CRT, however much they might want to.

 

But I'm sure they don't. Being landlord to all the George Wards on the cut is probably their worst nightmare. 

 

Imagine would would have to happen if Mr Ward 'forgot' to pay his rent once in a while. Like every month, ever.

I would imagine that if his boat were on a residential mooring and he had failed to pay his mooring fees the boat would have been removed quite swiftly (3-6 months) although probably only onto another section of canal outside of the residential moorings where he would then have to comply (or not) with the CC rules.

 

There are probably a lot more legal options for kicking a boat (with or without occupant) out of a mooring space than the blunt tool of section 8 that CRT have to use to remove a boat from the canal totally

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I would think that a court claim could be lodged for debt (unpaid rental ),and an application for sale of the boat to satisfy the order .............I recall one case where a soft headed person allowed a "george " to live in a caravan on his property ......the 'george ' immediately commenced collecting bits and pieces of junk to surround the caravan,.......which was a point of contention with the landowner .........one day "george " took $50 in payment for allowing dumping a truckload of used tyres on the land .........at which point there was an altercation ,a fight ,and "george " was struck with a piece of wood ,and expired.........the landowner got 5 years for manslaughter ,but fortunately for him ,his friends paid the rates and charges on the property ,and he still had somewhere to live when he came out.

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18 hours ago, magnetman said:

People living on towpaths and basically making the place into a pikey camp is not acceptable. Nobody wants to see this happen.

 

I bet if this geyser had been tidy and moved his boat occasionally this outcome would not have occurred. There is a point where you will get looked at. You can get away with quite a bit but moving onto the towpath and dumping endless shit is really not going to help your cause.

 

It's obvious. The very fact he was outside with an open fire, on a public footpath, in the morning indicates that there is a basic attitude problem.

 

That's correct. Like many others I've been living on my boat on various non residential moorings without planning permission for more 20 years. At a couple of moorings questions were asked by local residents. Once at a private garden end mooring on the Thames an ex-copper who lived across the river told me he knew I was living on the boat and knew that I shouldn't be. I said I wasn't causing any problem but he said that wasn't the point. I think he was expecting a hostile reaction from me and from there it would escalate. I offered to cut the weeds on the towpath outside his house while I was doing his next door neighbour's where I often moored my dinghy. He looked surprised said that was fine.

 

It's about being a good neighbour and that's what a lot of gypsies, travellers and others never understand. Their antisocial behaviour is their downfall and then of course when local residents or the local authorities react they play the victim card. On the other hand, if people actually like you being there and see you as someone who benefits the area nobody will complain.

Edited by blackrose
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I'm pretty sure an awful lot of squatters got boats when squatting residential property was banned in 2012. Some squatters were fine and a generally good news story but they were joined by large numbers of people with basic attitude problems and entitlement issues. Then a ban comes along. How surprising. 

I think this is what has happened with the cut to an extent. 

 

That video about the area around Bradford on Avon with the irritating woman was eye opening. She seemed to genuinely believe that they should be allowed to live on the towpath, use the land as if it were their own property and not get any problems. Someone even talked about how the CRT should be giving them sustainable woodlands. 

 

I think people like Mr Ward may actually be quite naive in this respect and possibly not fully grasp that if you live on a boat you will be constrained by laws as to what you can do. 

 

It is a remarkably free lifestyle which can still be enjoyed but bit by bit no doubt freedoms will be gradually taken away. 

 

I wonder how many other people are going to get away with this for ten yars. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In some ways it is appropriate for the CRT to be heavy handed because it can have the effect of discouraging others. If everyone just decided to not license their boats it could get tricky. 

Edited by magnetman
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5 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I wonder how many other people are going to get away with this for ten years. 

 

Yes I think you're right, the 'Take Away Lesson" from all this is you can grab yourself a bit of towpath and CRT will let you get away with it for a decade.

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9 minutes ago, magnetman said:

That video about the area around Bradford on Avon with the irritating woman was eye opening. She seemed to genuinely believe that they should be allowed to live on the towpath, use the land as if it were their own property and not get any problems. Someone even talked about how the CRT should be giving them sustainable woodlands. 

 

 

This one ?

 

 

 

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Look George is obviously not one of life's success stories. He is precariously either side of coping, or not. 

Like a lot of us, at various stages in our life.

 

But unless he himself describes himself as such, I must really protest at his life challenges,  being labelled  as pikey, gypsy, or traveller like.

I find this offensive.

His surroundings were those that George Ward alone created. Nothing at all related to his genetics.

By all accounts, reasonable people have very good reason to be offended at the state of those surroundings on public land.

But there is no reason at at all to drag any other self identifying group, or worse, externally labelled group into this.

 

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7 minutes ago, magnetman said:

If you were referring to my post you will notice that I did not label anyone. 

 

Read it again. 

People living on towpaths and basically making the place into a pikey camp is not acceptable. Nobody wants to see this happen.

 

Well to me, referring to an identifiable minority group in an any society by a term that they find offensive, in this case pikey, has crossed the line from being merely disrespectful to being offensive.  

 

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7 minutes ago, DandV said:

People living on towpaths and basically making the place into a pikey camp is not acceptable. Nobody wants to see this happen.

 

Well to me, referring to an identifiable minority group in an any society by a term that they find offensive, in this case pikey, has crossed the line from being merely disrespectful to being offensive.  

 

 

OK. Fair enough. 

 

Are you offended on behalf of somebody else? 

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So who is it that I was offending by describing  

 

Was it 

 

1. You. 

2. The boat geyser. 

3. The people labelled 'pikeys'.

 

Is it all 3 of these? 

 

Other than No.1 how do you know that any of them would be remotely bothered or offended by my description of the mess beside the boat and across the towpath as "basically like a pikey camp". 

 

 

It seems to me that you are defending people who leave piles of random shite and rubbish on public areas. 

 

I personally think this is indefensible. 

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28 minutes ago, DandV said:

 

But there is no reason at at all to drag any other self identifying group, or worse, externally labelled group into this.

 

 

I disagree. I think it's perfectly reasonable  discuss the wider issues including other groups of people who behave in a similar antisocial way in terms of how they disrespect the local environment and their neighbours. You find the term "pikey" offensive which is understandable because it does cross the line, however you then conflate that with more reasonable discussion and seek to shut that down. It's called cancel culture.

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2 minutes ago, DandV said:

Often, when I can see injustice.

 

However, Magnetman did not use the term Gypsy or Traveller, which do describe defined groups. He used a lower case p and a term that accurately describes a subset of travelling folks who have a record of leaving a trail of excreta and discarded rubbish on private and public land when they move on. It seems to me that this is a perfectly acceptable description of how the chap concerned was behaving. Unless you have experienced this personally, I think it is a bit rich for an overseas member to get offended on behalf of someone who is obviously antisocial and has no regard for the norms of expected behaviour. That sort of conduct also describes the subset of travellers referred to.

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Just now, magnetman said:

So who is it that I was offending by describing  

 

Was it 

 

1. You. 

2. The boat geyser. 

3. The people labelled 'pikeys'.

 

Is it all 3 of these? 

 

Other than No.1 how do you know that any of them would be remotely bothered or offended by my description of the mess beside the boat and across the towpath as "basically like a pikey camp". 

 

 

Perhaps to avoid offending our woke friends maybe you should have said "Scumbags living on the towpath are not acceptable." 

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2 minutes ago, Midnight said:

 

Perhaps to avoid offending our woke friends maybe you should have said "Scumbags living on the towpath are not acceptable." 

 

Ah, but "scumbags" will also offend those who wish to be offended.

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