Canals and River Trust: 'If we lose the canals, we are homeless'

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Arthur Marshall said:

It doesn't really matter what's in the T&Cs, contracts or anything . If there isn't enough money, some canals will close to navigation permanently, rather like they did temporarily last year. You only get what you pay for, and nobody wants to pay for anything - it's always someone else's problem.

But it *does* matter, because if CART have to pay a large chunk of the funding back -- likely to be in the millions -- it will cost them more to close them than keep them open. 

 

"Who pays for the canals?" is a separate issue, about which much has been said on here... 😉

[ditchcrawler]

An old saying you cant get blood out of a stone 

[IanD]

1 minute ago, ditchcrawler said:

An old saying you cant get blood out of a stone 

Not quite sure what your point is? If CART get sued for several million quid and lose -- which seems likely if that is indeed what the funding conditions say -- then it will come out of their £250M annual budget leaving less for useful purposes, the net result being that closing such canals could cost them money not save it.

[ditchcrawler]

5 minutes ago, IanD said:

Not quite sure what your point is? If CART get sued for several million quid and lose -- which seems likely if that is indeed what the funding conditions say -- then it will come out of their £250M annual budget leaving less for useful purposes, the net result being that closing such canals could cost them money not save it.

Thats right, when the pots empty no one will get anything

[tree monkey]

6 minutes ago, IanD said:

Not quite sure what your point is? If CART get sued for several million quid and lose -- which seems likely if that is indeed what the funding conditions say -- then it will come out of their £250M annual budget leaving less for useful purposes, the net result being that closing such canals could cost them money not save it.

Unless of course the actual cost of maintaining that canal would be more than any fine for closing it

[Arthur Marshall]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

But it *does* matter, because if CART have to pay a large chunk of the funding back -- likely to be in the millions -- it will cost them more to close them than keep them open. 

 

"Who pays for the canals?" is a separate issue, about which much has been said on here... 😉

Why should they pay anything back? The canal was open and navigable. Nobody in their right mind (and certainly no court ) would expect this to be in perpetuity. Check out the "lifetime guarantee " on your ten year old laptop. I had one on my satnav that guaranteed me lifetime access to fm road traffic info - all Garmin offer me is twenty quid off a new one. Most of these canals have been open twenty years or more. I think you'll find that that'll be considered enough.

Lifetime access doesn't mean the planet's lifetime, it means the expected usable life of the relevant object. And a poorly funded (for many years) ancient construction, now overused and bashed about by largely inexpert amateur traffic it was never designed for, built in expectation of constant attention and maintenance paid from its generated profits, doesn't have much of a life expectancy. Those of us who have been on it for years have been warning about this for a fair few of them.

And who pays for the canals? No-one, if they can avoid it. Certainly not someone with three minimum wage jobs getting their food from a food bank or a hedge fund manager MP with an off shore account . Nobody wants to pay for anything.

Someone was on FB the other day querying something to do with the 200 grand he was spending on a new boat. Personally, I think he's insane.

[MtB]

2 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

An old saying you cant get blood out of a stone 

 

That's rubbish. I know a bloke who can do this easily.

 

Works for HMRC. 

 

 

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Why should they pay anything back? The canal was open and navigable. Nobody in their right mind (and certainly no court ) would expect this to be in perpetuity. Check out the "lifetime guarantee " on your ten year old laptop. I had one on my satnav that guaranteed me lifetime access to fm road traffic info - all Garmin offer me is twenty quid off a new one. Most of these canals have been open twenty years or more. I think you'll find that that'll be considered enough.

Lifetime access doesn't mean the planet's lifetime, it means the expected usable life of the relevant object. And a poorly funded (for many years) ancient construction, now overused and bashed about by largely inexpert amateur traffic it was never designed for, built in expectation of constant attention and maintenance paid from its generated profits, doesn't have much of a life expectancy. Those of us who have been on it for years have been warning about this for a fair few of them.

And who pays for the canals? No-one, if they can avoid it. Certainly not someone with three minimum wage jobs getting their food from a food bank or a hedge fund manager MP with an off shore account . Nobody wants to pay for anything.

Someone was on FB the other day querying something to do with the 200 grand he was spending on a new boat. Personally, I think he's insane.

Nothing to do with a "lifetime guarantee", it's all down to the terms written into the funding contract. For something like this the normal way would be that if the canal was closed a fraction of the funding would be paid back depending on when it happened, falling each year and reaching zero after a fixed term -- from memory 25 years and 50 years have both been quoted.

 

Still no definite documentary proof of this though... 😉

3 hours ago, tree monkey said:

Unless of course the actual cost of maintaining that canal would be more than any fine for closing it

Obviously -- but given the funding involved in the reopenings and the cost of maintenence of a small part of the canal system, I wouldn't be surprised if closure cost more than keeping them open.

[Paul C]

I love the way we’re all hypothesising about what would happen if CRT are sued for breach of a contract we don’t know the basic details of…

[tree monkey]

27 minutes ago, Paul C said:

I love the way we’re all hypothesising about what would happen if CRT are sued for breach of a contract we don’t know the basic details of…

You're surprised! How long have you been a member here?