"Allan Cazaly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >****Whatever Next?**** > >I think that suggesting to introduce Traffic Wardens and the like for >boats is sheer nonsense! I thought us boaters took to the canals to >get away from all the beaucracy (Mis-spelt perhaps?) God forbid, >don't lets go down this road! > >Live and let live, the canals are about the only place left to have a >bit of freedom away from the "dictatorship" of the rest of the >country. I know this is creeping into BW affairs but my suggestion >to them is keep a bit of flexibility.
When demand for something is hugely less than its supply, then there is little sense in having a market for it, let alone need for regulation. Think of how hunting used to be in prehistoric times, when there was a lot of game in the woods but few people stalking it. And so it pretty much was on the waterways in, say, the 1960s, when freight traffic had almost all gone but leisure traffic had just started to appear. Moorings (e.g.) were readily available almost everywhere, and they were very inexpensive. But nowadays many more people want to hunt and game has become scarce (as a result), and responsible jurisdictions limit the taking of it (by, e.g. requiring an ever-more-expensive hunting permit) to prevent it s being even more over-exploited (aside: too bad most do such a bad job with respect to fisheries, though). And on the waterways, the number of craft is now at an all-time high, and unsurprisingly moorings are hard to find as mooring rents run behind market levels. No wonder the demand for, and abuse, of short-term moorings is rife. And, again, a responsible authority will increase regulation, or establish a market, in such circumstances. In this light, fees for short-term mooring (like pay-and-display parking) as trialed at Llangollen seem highly likely to become more common. This isn't dictatorship, or bureaucracy gone bad. It is a reflection of increasing demand and competition for the valuable and hard-to-increase-the-supply-of resource of that the waterways are now being recognised as. You want to go back to the "freedom" of the 1960s? Sure. Just come up with a way to get, say, 2/3 of the current leisure boaters to go away while having the government still grant as much (or, actually, rather more) support money to BW. Please keep your answer to fewer than 25 words. Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
