Steve wrote: > I believe that the the canals are a national heritage, that they are being > used increasingly by the whole of the population and that the whole of the > population should pay for them by a government grant that represents their > national value. The alternative is your way, Adrian. That is to squeeze as > much money as you can from hard pressed boaters.
Or there's the other other option which is pretty much what I said at the AGM: volunteer involvement on a very large scale. The National Trust gets 3.1 million volunteer hours every year (I said 2.3 million yesterday: someone with more up-to-date figures has since corrected me!). Even at minimum wage, i.e. assuming largely unskilled volunteers, that works out at £18m equivalent. If some of the volunteers are skilled then you're getting a lot closer to closing that £29m gap. BW has historically considered volunteers suitable only for towpath clean-ups or for shovelling mud. The NT and lots of comparable organisations, however, have volunteers at every, every level - the "search for volunteer opportunities" bit of their website is really illuminating. A lot of what BW does can be done by volunteers - indeed, on the Chelmer & Blackwater (and to some extent the Avon) it _is_. BW is currently way behind the curve. The good bit is that this is in itself an extra contribution (over and above GiA) from walkers, cyclists etc. - because most volunteers wouldn't be boaters. The difficult bit is that you have to reinvent BW, maybe even restructuring "OpCo" as a charitable trust (one of the things mentioned in the KPMG report), so that people _want_ to volunteer for it, so that people feel a sense of ownership. People need to feel that they're our waterways, not BW's. You should have come along yesterday, Steve, I think you'd have enjoyed the discussions. ;) Richard
