Captain Beeky wrote: > On 20, Nov 2007, at 18:09, Neil Arlidge wrote: > >> Meanwhile...over in Ireland everything is tickety-boo ;-) > > Don't keep telling everyone or they will all be over there ! > > Beeky
You are quite right, we are a victim of our own sucsess in inspiring others to the waterways of England / Wales. I am thinking of pulling all the TNC pages, apart from the Irish ones, so as to act as Pied Piper and lead droves of English narrowboats over to Ireland. To be quite honest, if a couple of marinas were built on the Grand Canal and a couple on the Royal, assuming average British use of boats, you could loose a couple of thousand narrowboats no prob. The only outcome is that WI would get more income, the WI lockies would have something to do and WI could cut down on the immense amount of weedcutting they do, due to lack of use. This boat useage will LOWER the cost of maintaing the Irish "canals". As many locals say, it is only the English that will put the Grand / Royal / Barrow to extensive use, simply because these waterways are best operated by a steel craft and by someone that likes a modicom of self operation. BW / DEFRA / Treasury / Gordon Brown will push boaters to the limit, I honestly am so sick of them I hope BW over cook their greed and they see what happens...it is not going to be a nice place to boat. We have the farce of a "waterways" Minister that in an other guise is Fisheries Minister...is he going to be more interested in what happens to the waterways than Barry Gardiner???!!! Everything boaters seem to do over here acts as another nail in their own coffin! We / waterways ombudsman made a fuss when BW tried to catch out share boats for the hire licence boat licence fee, so BW decieded to narrow the gap between the cost of a private and hire licence. They have obviously decided how much the "users" (well the ones that they can easily screw) are going to pay and they will make sure they get it. BW have selected private boaters as the easy target, with the gap closing between the cost of a private and hireboat licences (we must not scare away the hire boater, must we) it will soon be cheaper to form a private boaters "hire company" and then they could optimise the use of their boats, make a bit of money to offset the increased costs and more importantly BW would listen to them! I think it is generally well known that BW set out on this quest to gain more income from the "users" long before any cuts were announced. I had every intention to bring Earnest back here in 3-4 years time, but I am saddened to say it will probably never happen. The whole country is going down the pan and once the WWW has retired we shall probably join the growing band of "old" Brits that leave the country. A few TNC suggestions... More use of openess and accountabiliy...especially concerning the accuracy of some of BW's costings for use and the amount of unlicenced boats More use of Waterways Ombudsman...do we know how many cases are pending against BW??? Ah!...nothing like a nice moring rant with the TNC rant fiter off! -- Neil Arlidge - NB Earnest - Shannon Reg 7410 Read about our Irish travels at: http://www.tuesdaynightclub.co.uk/Tour_07/index.html
