2008/9/19 Julian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Its with quite a lot of sadness that I watch the reaction of people on this > list to the BW proposals. > There has been but one constructive message and all the rest have said that > everyone else should pay more but not me! > The problem is Julian that even though your suggestion is born out of a genuine concern for fairness, it is nevertheless also born out of your own circumstances which make your 'cruising range' solution more beneficial to you than it would be to me. And to many it might not seem fair that a 57ft boat in Bath should pay a license premium over a 70ft boat moored next to it because if might, sometime, at some stage, cruise the Calder and Hebble a couple of hundred miles away.
But I agree with you absolutely about unity. It is this bickering between us that BW will rely on to increase license revenue which is, after all, their intention, regardless of their spurious consultations. Me, I come into this from an entirely different direction. I think that the canals depend on boats to bring them to life, and I think that anything that threatens boats using the canal also threatens this life. I also think that though, as boaters, we have to shoulder our fair share of increases, we have shouldered too much over recent years and it is now time for goverment to recognise that regardless of all the 'largely self sufficient' nonsense from BW, the canal system will, as a national asset, continue to depend primarily on government funding for its future, and we should unify to get this message home. Canals for All, yes. But all should pay for them too, not just boaters as sitting targets. After all, we wouldn't expect other national asset sites like Stonehenge to be economically self-supporting, would we? We wouldn't expect them to be commerically developed to the point that what we value most about them is destroyed which is what is happening on the canals. Steve [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
