Martin Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Adrian Stott
>>why should navigation charges be related to ability to pay. >There are a number of good reasons. Er, replace "good reasons" with "possible justifications", I think. (I would have said "questionable" instead of "possible", but it's the season of good will after all). >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. That is just an artifact of the way the waterways are funded now. If, for example, the annual grant that now forms the public contribution were replaced with a capital endowment, in the form of a the long-term loan of revenue-producing real estate assets already owned by the government, then it goes away. >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. If you can successfuly make an argument for financially helping the less well-off so they can (continue to) go boating (which I doubt, as I think that that will never be a government priority in competition with other calls on its purse), then the question arises of how to provide that help. Fudging the price(s) of boating would be a very bad way of doing it. IMHO, the best way would be to give those folk money, so they can pay the same prices as everyone else (and so that everyone else doesn't get the undeserved benefit of the fudged prices). You can't wiggle out of this question by saying that this approach might be "difficult". Doing something dumb just because it is easy is not a sensible policy. Of course, the problem you then face is that (I suspect) quite a lot of those folk would take the money and spend it on something other than boating. People have an annoying way of setting their priorities differently from how you (or I) might want them to. >Thirdly, I believe that cinemas do have a crude means of charging by >ability to pay - cheaper seats for children, students, I believe that is not an example of social policy, but actually a marketing tool. BW has considered the same thing -- by introducing lower prices for "new boaters". Trouble is, it has come up with no way to identifying who those people are that avoids the break being available to those (less desirable) "old boaters". >>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. Yes. Too crude to use. >Without any statistics to back me up, I still >think that there would be a good correlation between boat size and >owner's income. Without knowledge of Columbus, I still believe the world is flat. Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
