Bruce Napier wrote: > On 29 Sep 2008, at 17:24, Nick wrote: > >> I'm not convinced by this distinction between continuous cruisers and >> bridge shufflers. It really doesn't matter to me if the moorings I >> want >> to use are full of the same boat or a different boat every day - if a >> boat moves between three different moorings in 20 miles of each other >> every two weeks, or never stops the same place twice and covers the >> whole system, it is still using a mooring every time it stops and if >> there aren't enough moorings, then there aren't enough moorings. > > > I see your point there. The distinction here is that some of us don't > pay for a mooring because we don't need one. we choose to live on a > boat because we want to boat all the time. Most bridge hoppers don't > pay for a mooring although they do need one, they just don't want > to / can't afford to cough up for one. > > That's why I'm in favour of reducing or removing the connection > charge element from mooring fees, where there is one, and recovering > the revenue by increasing everyone's licence fee in step. Note that > this isn't in my own interest, as a genuine ccer.
The more I think about this one, the harder I see it is to argue against. If it really worked, I'd find my mooring charge going down by about the amount my license goes up, you'd end up paying more - but you would be paying for the mooring you are using (it's a virtual mooring distributed over the system) as would the bridge hoppers. Some of those might then find it worth the extra to get a proper mooring, as the difference in cost would be less. The thing that strikes me as messy is that I bet there are a thousand ways to work out what the mooring charge that should be added to the license is, and I bet very few moorings would go down commensurately.
