What a load of bollards!

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

10 minutes ago, IanD said:

If you can't stand the heat... 😉

🤡

[magnetman]

The bollard in the image is blue and white. There is no yellow. 

Edited January 29 by magnetman
image

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

Just now, magnetman said:

The bollard in the image is blue and white. There is no yellow. 

😃no

but  CRT propose yellow and blue for the final thing

[magnetman]

Right. odd that they made it white and blue. Maybe it actually -is- a polystyrene model. 

I'm still a little intrigued how a dedicated disabled mooring bay works in practice. Who patrols and enforces this ? 

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Right. odd that they made it white and blue. Maybe it actually -is- a polystyrene model. 

I'm still a little intrigued how a dedicated disabled mooring bay works in practice. Who patrols and enforces this ? 

 

Hopefully a better job will be done than monitoring blue badge spaces in car parks and roadside.

 

I'm often tempted to deflate the tyres of cars not displaying a blue badge but that would just mean they will be there for longer.

[Arthur Marshall]

15 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Right. odd that they made it white and blue. Maybe it actually -is- a polystyrene model. 

I'm still a little intrigued how a dedicated disabled mooring bay works in practice. Who patrols and enforces this ? 

If I remember correctly, they are marked as for disabled use, but other boaters can use them if no disabled boater is requiring it. How that works if you've gone out for a walk I've never understood, nor how a disabled bloke on a boat would let you know they want to moor there if you're inside. I suppose you are just meant to be a bit aware of the possibility, rather than asking every passing tub if they want to moor and if the driver's got something badly wrong with them.

In practice, like blue badges, there's likely to be an able bodied person driving and a wheelchair user inside... but then they wouldn't need special bollards, would they? The more I think about it, the less practical the entire concept becomes.

[IanD]

6 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

If I remember correctly, they are marked as for disabled use, but other boaters can use them if no disabled boater is requiring it. How that works if you've gone out for a walk I've never understood, nor how a disabled bloke on a boat would let you know they want to moor there if you're inside. I suppose you are just meant to be a bit aware of the possibility, rather than asking every passing tub if they want to moor and if the driver's got something badly wrong with them.

In practice, like blue badges, there's likely to be an able bodied person driving and a wheelchair user inside... but then they wouldn't need special bollards, would they? The more I think about it, the less practical the entire concept becomes.

 

Except you're not a disabled boater, and this suggestion came from them, and they presumably know more about what might work for them (or not?) than you do -- so maybe it's rather patronising for you to think that you know better than they do... 😉

[Jerra]

Assuming we take Ian's point about disabled boaters knowing more about it than we do.

 

Does anybody know/have seen/heard of a narrowboat with no able bodied crew?

 

I am just pondering why disabled boaters felt the need to request special bollards unless they are in the habit of having no able bodied crew.  I am trying to visualise a situation where able bodied crew sit back and leave mooring to somebody not fully able.

 

The people I have boated with who have a disability (two women and one man) would aim to swap tasks requiring agility or strength or good vision etc for jobs they felt more suitable.  Hence my question about able bodied crew.

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Except you're not a disabled boater, and this suggestion came from them, and they presumably know more about what might work for them (or not?) than you do -- so maybe it's rather patronising for you to think that you know better than they do... 😉

 

What was you have just said?

 

Oh right this.....

 

 At least I don't do it with sniping and personal attacks -- unlike some I try and play the ball, not the man... 

😉

Edited January 29 by MJG

[LadyG]

7 hours ago, Jerra said:

My opinion.

 

If it aint broke don't fix it.

 

Bollards of the conventional design have worked successfully for years why change.

Justification for the manager with inflated salary perhaps? Something to put on his cv 

Edited January 29 by LadyG

[magnetman]

1 hour ago, MJG said:

 

Hopefully a better job will be done than monitoring blue badge spaces in car parks and roadside.

 

I'm often tempted to deflate the tyres of cars not displaying a blue badge but that would just mean they will be there for longer.

Yes it is interesting how agitated people get about the blue badge thing.

1 hour ago, IanD said:

 

Except you're not a disabled boater, and this suggestion came from them, and they presumably know more about what might work for them (or not?) than you do -- so maybe it's rather patronising for you to think that you know better than they do... 😉

 

There are a number of different jokes available, I wonder if disabled people tend to have more time on their hands.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

Yes it is interesting how agitated people get about the blue badge thing.

 

 

Interesting it maybe but understandable too.

 

I don't have or qualify for one but when I see a Blue Badge space being abused it speaks to me of '**** em I can park where I like' with no thought of the blue badge holder they are preventing from parking safely and easily. 

 

For some reason it often seems to be some twenty or thirty something driving a car that once was probably aspirational when it was new, but 15 years on its a pile of rusting junk. And they have kids with em too. What a lesson to teach.

[IanD]

3 hours ago, Jerra said:

Assuming we take Ian's point about disabled boaters knowing more about it than we do.

 

Does anybody know/have seen/heard of a narrowboat with no able bodied crew?

 

I am just pondering why disabled boaters felt the need to request special bollards unless they are in the habit of having no able bodied crew.  I am trying to visualise a situation where able bodied crew sit back and leave mooring to somebody not fully able.

 

The people I have boated with who have a disability (two women and one man) would aim to swap tasks requiring agility or strength or good vision etc for jobs they felt more suitable.  Hence my question about able bodied crew.

I expect it all depends what "disabled" means here, in other words how severe a disability is. I would have thought anyone severely enough disabled to need an able-bodied crew to do all the navigation work (e.g. in a wheelchair) wouldn't be proposing these bollards, so it's more likely to be those who can get around but have trouble doing things like bending down to low bollards.

 

But I also assume that the people involved know rather more about this than me or other posters on here, because it's their life and disabled doesn't mean stupid... 😉

Edited January 29 by IanD

[MtB]

2 hours ago, LadyG said:

Justification for the manager with inflated salary perhaps? Something to put on his cv 

 

It is called "displacement activity".

 

When the whole ship is sinking, the captain orders mountains of pointless and trivial work to be done to distract the crew from panicking about the impending disaster. In the world of business, it is a trope that when a company ha gone beyond the point of no return and is headed for going bust, the bosses have the toilets redecorated and the car park markings re-lined. Same is happening here. CRT is past the point of no return so the board are fecking about designing special bollards for the 7 disabled boaters out there.

[Alan de Enfield]

5 minutes ago, MtB said:

CRT is past the point of no return so the board are fecking about designing special bollards for the 7 disabled boaters out there.

 

Who, because they cannot bend down to drop the line over a bollard, will use their walking stick to drop the 'eye' over the bollard.

Simples !

[MtB]

2 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Who, because they cannot bend down to drop the line over a bollard, will use their walking stick to drop the 'eye' over the bollard.

Simples !

 

My old mate who is genuinely disabled, does just that sort of thing and laughs at all the token 'disabled' stuff out there in the world. It can't be relied upon when one need it so he develops coping strategies. I daren't ask him his opinion of these stoopid bollards, his response would probably embarrass my ears! 

 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

2 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

My old mate who is genuinely disabled, does just that sort of thing and laughs at all the token 'disabled' stuff out there in the world. It can't be relied upon when one need it so he develops coping strategies. I daren't ask him his opinion of these stoopid bollards, his response would probably embarrass my ears! 

 

 

 

 

It's not difficult, I have arthritis in my back and hips and I'm now not very 'flexible', putting shoes on is not as easy as it used to be, so I now use a long handled shoe horn (it was a normal sized shoe horn that I fixed a length of broom handle on to).

Folks adapt.

[IanD]

Perhaps those on here insisting this is all a total waste of CART time and money should help stop the waste, by getting in touch with the disabled boaters involved in this and telling them that they're stupid to try and do such a thing, they should just shut up moaning, get a shoe horn or a walking stick, and crack on. I'm sure such thoughtful advice would be gratefully received... 😞

Edited January 30 by IanD

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, IanD said:

Perhaps those on here insisting this is all a total waste of CART time and money should help stop the waste, by getting in touch with the disabled boaters involved in this and telling them that they're stupid to try and do such a thing, they should just shut up moaning, get a shoe horn or a walking stick, and crack on. I'm sure their understanding and advice would be gratefully received... 😞

 

You seem to have missed the fact that this is a 'discussion' forum. By it's very nature people 'discuss' things, you might not like the views being expressed but none the less they are valid expressions of opinion.

 

To suggest that some disabled people themselves may scoff at these bollards is (as an example) a perfectly valid view. In my job I met many many people with a disability and can be confident that some of them would have said much the same. They are not one homogeneous group who all think the same despite what some think.

 

Gosh they even think like people who do not have a disability.

[Arthur Marshall]

14 hours ago, IanD said:

 

Except you're not a disabled boater, and this suggestion came from them, and they presumably know more about what might work for them (or not?) than you do -- so maybe it's rather patronising for you to think that you know better than they do... 😉

It rather depends on how you define disabled. I got stuck (singlehanding as usual) on the Caldon a while back for three weeks, unable to move or get out of bed with a back in full spasm, fed, watered and embarrasing things emptied by a stream of attending friends. I have two slipped discs which seize every now and then and wonky knees which don't always act as hinges.

If you'd bothered to read my post instead of instantly sniping, you would have noticed I detailed an episode where a normal mooring was physically impossible for me to manage and I subsequently altered my piling hooks to accommodate my (occasional) disability, in the same way as these bollards are suggested to be.

You also make the fundamental mistake of deciding , rather self-righteously, that only members of a self-defined community are allowed to comment on something intended for them, but that not only affects them but everyone else as well. That's like saying only melodeon players can comment on how well the instument is played - self evident nonsense.

And, finally, the practical application of disabled moorings is certainly fit for discussion. They appear to be a very good idea, but virtually impossible in practice, which may indeed be  a shame, but refusing to discuss the matter on spurious virtue-signalling grounds makes improvements impossible. That's what criticism is for.

[IanD]

1 minute ago, Arthur Marshall said:

It rather depends on how you define disabled. I got stuck (singlehanding as usual) on the Caldon a while back for three weeks, unable to move or get out of bed with a back in full spasm, fed, watered and embarrasing things emptied by a stream of attending friends. I have two slipped discs which seize every now and then and wonky knees which don't always act as hinges.

If you'd bothered to read my post instead of instantly sniping, you would have noticed I detailed an episode where a normal mooring was physically impossible for me to manage and I subsequently altered my piling hooks to accommodate my (occasional) disability, in the same way as these bollards are suggested to be.

You also make the fundamental mistake of deciding , rather self-righteously, that only members of a self-defined community are allowed to comment on something intended for them, but that not only affects them but everyone else as well. That's like saying only melodeon players can comment on how well the instument is played - self evident nonsense.

And, finally, the practical application of disabled moorings is certainly fit for discussion. They appear to be a very good idea, but virtually impossible in practice, which may indeed be  a shame, but refusing to discuss the matter on spurious virtue-signalling grounds makes improvements impossible. That's what criticism is for.

I read your post, and I'm not being "self-righteous", I have no skin in this game, except being willing to put myself into other people's shoes and realise that what works for them might look strange to me. People saying "I know people who manage" are doing the usual anecdote thing -- I suspect if all the boaters concerned could "manage" this would never have come up.

 

And this is nothing to due with "virtue-signalling" -- since you seem determined to pop out the usual "anti-woke" catchphrases -- but people telling another (disadvantaged) group that "we know better than you do", when in fact they have absolutely zero knowledge of the circumstances of the boaters involved in this project -- who presumably think it's a good idea.

 

Of course I'm not saying that nobody without direct experience of something should be able to comment on it -- for example I don't play the trombone, but as a musician I could certainly tell if you were a good player or not -- but that's not what's going on here, is it? The whole project -- and by implication or direct statement those involved in it, or might want to take advantage of it -- is being castigated by those who only know what little they've read about it from a brief online post from CART -- if they've bothered to read it at all -- and are either having a knee-jerk "CART are money-wasting idiots" rant (which is bad enough), or seem to be harking back to the old days of "disabled people shouldn't be seen or heard" -- which is worse... 😞

 

I expect accusations of being a paid-up member of the Guardian-reading tofu-eating virtue-signalling wokerati will follow shortly, from people who think insults are a substitute for actually debating the issues... 😉

[MtB]

18 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

but refusing to discuss the matter on spurious virtue-signalling grounds makes improvements impossible. That's what criticism is for.

 

And corporate virtue-signalling seems to me to be the motivation behind CRT commissioning the design and prototype-making of these bollards.

 

I find myself wondering what the brief was, that prompted the group of disabled boaters to come up with the design. Did they spontaneously approch CRT requesting 'bollards like these please'? Or did CRT assemble a group of boaters and ask them to design a "disabled boater bollard"? 

 

P.S. I haven't read the NBworld link as I refuse to award them my traffic. 

 

 

 

Edited January 30 by MtB
spelling

[David Mack]

14 minutes ago, MtB said:

P.S. I haven't read the NBworld link as I refuse to award them my traffic. 

You don't need to. It's all in the CRT Boaters Update link I posted earlier.

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/boating/boating-news-and-views/the-boaters-update/boaters-update-26-january-2024

14 minutes ago, MtB said:

I find myself wondering what the brief was, that prompted the group of disabled boaters to come up with the design. Did they spontaneously approch CRT requesting 'bollards like these please'?

According to the link, that is exactly what happened.

 

“Dick Vincent, a boater and the Trust’s national towpath advisor, introduced a prototype of a new accessible mooring bollard.

“It was created in response to discussions on the Disabled Boaters’ Forum (on Facebook) over many months.

Edited January 30 by David Mack

[IanD]

12 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

And corporate virtue-signalling seems to me to be the motivation behind CRT commissioning the design and prototype-making of these bollards.

 

I find myself wondering what the brief was, that prompted the group of disabled boaters to come up with the design. Did they spontaneously approch CRT requesting 'bollards like these please'? Or did CRT assemble a group of boaters and ask them to design a "disabled boater bollard"? 

 

P.S. I haven't read the NBworld link as I refuse to award them my traffic. 

 

That may be the case, or it could just be your unfounded suspicion, along with all the others on CWDF about why CART is so evil and wasteful and useless.. 😉

 

The other viewpoint is that this might be a genuine attempt to make the lives of some disabled boaters a little bit less difficult, but that seems to be getting little traction on here. I wonder why?

 

I suppose somebody could actually bother to ask CART or even the disabled boaters concerned how this came about and what the motivation was, but then getting riled up about it on CWDF is much less effort, isn't it?

 

P.S. I see @David Mack has actually read the article and answered your question... 😉

 

“It was created in response to discussions on the Disabled Boaters’ Forum (on Facebook) over many months. Whilst it is acknowledged that there is no ‘one size fits all’, this bollard addresses most of the issues faced by many boaters with mobility challenges.

 

 

Edited January 30 by IanD

[Midnight]

The point of the original post was about a concern that C&RT are thinking of replacing lock bollards at a huge expense while the system - the locks themselves - fall to bits with alarming regularity. A bit like those unneeded three square wooden bollards Evans & Co installed then gave themselves a bonus for achieving the target. I remember talking to one of the contractors installing them on the Stratford. When I pointed out they were surplus to requirements and probably a trip or snagging hazard he told me he was being paid £200 a lock and would probably get another £200 for removing them when someone tripped over one and fell in.

Like some have said, the disabled boaters I know cope very well with what there already is. Most boaters wrap their ropes around the bollards and tie them back on the boat. Maybe what's needed is to fix these things to the bows and stern of the boat instead of the land? 😆

 

 

Edited January 30 by Midnight