In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Adrian Stott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >Martin Phillips ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Adrian Stott >><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >> >>>It is appropriate to have a charge related to size only where, er, >>>size matters. To have one where size does not matter would be like >>>charging people with red hair more for cinema tickets than those with >>>other colours. >> >>A logical statement, but akin to the argument of poll tax vs council >>tax. Both are logical ways of funding local government, and both have >>their positive points. In the same way as with houses, very crudely, the >>size of boat might be supposed to have a rough correlation with ability >>to pay. > >First, why should navigation charges be related to ability to pay. >Whose ability (owner? user? hirer?). Do you expect better-off people >to pay more for cinema tickets? They use the same seats as the worse >off, you know.
There are a number of good reasons. Firstly (and cheekily!), all (or at least most) other users pay for the canals via their taxes which are to a large extent related to ability to pay. Secondly, in a period of transition where a government organisation is greatly increasing its prices from what might or might not be argued to be too low a base, it is reasonable to help those who find themselves in difficulties by tweaking the pricing policy where possible - not by means testing or anything difficult like that, but if charging per metre or metre^2 rather than per boat gives a help to those to whom the increases are giving most difficulty it seems reasonable to act in that manner. Thirdly, I believe that cinemas do have a crude means of charging by ability to pay - cheaper seats for children, students, UB40s are I think common (I seldom go to the cinema so may be wrong in this example) - possibly less so in the private sector, but more commonly in the public sector (e.g. museums, art galleries, etc). I recall getting very cheap seats for Covent Garden Opera House as a student. >Second, the size of boat is not usefully correlated with ability to >pay. The largest craft tend to be used for residence, and so >represent a significantly larger proportion of the owner's total >wealth than that of the strictly recreational vessel. And anyone who >owns a large craft knows that its maintenance is very effective at >reducing his wealth. As I said, a crude measure. One could of course argue that boats used for residential purposes are saving their owners a large amount in mortgages etc. Even a seriously expensive narrowboat is cheaper than the most basic of houses. Without any statistics to back me up, I still think that there would be a good correlation between boat size and owner's income. New boats are priced per metre, second-hand ones tend to follow that rule. Residential boats form a rather small fraction of waterways users. >Finally, I think that neither poll tax nor council tax is a logical >way of funding local government, but this is probably not the place to >discuss that (much). Seconded :-) Wassail! -- Martin E Phillips http://www.g4cio.demon.co.uk Homebrewing, black pudding, boats, morris dancing, ham radio and more! The Gloucester-Sharpness canal web page http://www.glos-sharpness.org.uk
