Christmas bile

I see the Christmas break has given all the whingeing holiday boaters time to email Narrowboat World to complain about any boater who is not like them.
This collection of Daily Mail readers are upset because they can't moor exactly outside the pub or shop of their choice when on their two week break.
The people to blame are, of course, boaters they like to label 'continuous moorers' and choose to hate with a passion only available to the ignorant.
The boaters who are not like them are those of us out on the system for long periods, whether or not they are technically continuous cruisers.
Holiday boaters see these people moored in the spaces where they expect to be able to tie when they arrive at 7.00pm after a long day.
They may see them in the same area on the way back a few days later and without any thought they decide they are breaking the mooring rules.
The real picture is not ever going to be seen by those that pass in the night.
Boaters who live on their boats and cruise tend to travel two or three hours a day so they get to prime moorings before holiday boats.
Boaters continuously on the system also tend to stay on morings the full time allowed and will be more inclined to opt for longer stays (7/14 days) if they are available nearby. They need to run their everyday lives whilst cruising - shopping, doctors, post etc. That's why you tend to see them twice in a holiday.
Continuous cruisers also tend to explore whole areas so they will pass through certain areas several times. We spent the early part of this year visiting Chester, Manchester and the Peak Forest. That meant we pased through hotspots like Middlewich, Nantwich, Chester etc  a number of times and could easily be labeled 'continuous moorers' by passing holiday boaters.
Bigotry founded in ignorance from holiday boaters sows poison in the boating community. Of course there are boats around London and on the K&A that don't obey the rules but there are many more continuous cruisers who move a lot and don't overstay.
Bigots will not be persuaded as long as they can't moor by the pub, but a little more logical thought might reduce the bile levels.

Artist's impression or adjustment?

The artist's  impression of plans to upgrade Birmingham's  National Indoor Arena and open it  up to the canal look impressive, but leave some questions.
Take a look at the impression and the reality in the two pictures.
Why have the four tower blocks in the top  right lost 4 or 5 stories?
Is it really planned to destroy the lovely mature trees that edge the towpath at the Old Turn?

Why can't  planners  - and the public - be presented with something  less artistic and more accurate?

Mooring Auctions – and how to push more boaters into continuous cruising

MOST boaters were opposed to the BW (now CRT) mooring auction system from the start. It would, they argued push up prices, benefit only the richer boaters and make the types of mooring in shortest supply simply unaffordable for most.

The British Waterways argument was that they were obliged by Government to go to auctions to demonstrate they were not abusing their near-monopoly position and, in any event, none of that would happen and many moorings might go down in price as well as up.

We are now in the Canal & River Trust era and the moorings auction system seems to be going badly off the rails.
I have observed the site closely over the last couple of years and there are clear trends which are disturbing both for the future income of the Trust and the financial well-being of boaters.

Let’s start with so-called reserve prices – always excused as the price “ below which it would not be economic for us to let the mooring”.

If the object, as originally claimed, was to establish a proper market for moorings then reserve prices would genuinely reflect the cost of supply them – that is the price of installing a few rings and, if you are really lucky, a tap, spread over many years. It would be a few quid, certainly mo more than £100 or so.

That never was the reality but at least there was some potential for getting a cheap mooring. In recent months reserve prices have soared. Take a current example of a 62ft towpath side mooring on the Leeds and Liverpool near Chorley with no facilities at all except rings.

The guide price for the mooring is £1,300 and the reserve price is just £130 less at £1,170. The same pattern is repeated across the country and must I suspect be related to the transfer of mooring auctions from the boating part of CRT to the property and commercial arm where greed has always been much more important than boaters, canals or any other consideration – the ethos of the estate agent rules.

That is clearly a distortion of the market process and that distortion continues when, predictably, the mooring does not sell and it is offered for sale on a ‘Buy it Now’ basis. The price at which it is then offered is not the reserve price but the higher guide price.

My checks on the site indicate that rather than moorings being allowed to go more cheaply during a depressed market they are going unsold instead, depriving the Trust of income and forcing more and more poorer boaters into a form of continuous cruising.

The situation is exacerbated, of course, where moorings or a type of mooring is in short supply, such as London, the Kennet and Avon or residential mooring almost anywhere.

More do get bought but at prices artificially inflated by scarcity, so it is not a problem for well-heeled boaters but the substantial proportion with small incomes cannot compete and are driven out or forced to find another solution.

We have met several Londoners who boat for a hobby but cannot afford London mooring prices. They, quite legally, place their boat on a 14 day mooring in a popular spot with good train connections; leave it there for two weeks to move it to the next place on a subsequent visit.

So all those popular moorings where holiday boaters can’t stop because they are full are likely to be occupied, at least in part by other hobby boats rather than liveaboards.

The RBOA are calling for more, cheap, online, residential moorings in places like London and the K&A but that will not solve anything if those moorings are also part of the current, distorted, mooring auction system which discriminates in favour of the wealthiest boaters.

In fact, the system is so badly misaligned that it has even meant CRT losing out on the most in-demand moorings. Residential moorings for a 62ft boat on the Engine Arm in Birmingham, where there is electricity, water and other facilities are simply not selling because they are too expensive. Currently the guide price is £2,176 and the reserve price £1,741. One is currently up for the guide price as a ‘Buy it Now’ and another is in the auction system. On past form both could stand empty costing CRT thousands of pounds instead of bringing in a lower, more reasonable income – bearing in mind we are looking at Birmingham industrial areas rather than London and the South East.

CRT Head of Boating, Sally Ash, who is no longer responsible for the mooring auctions, claims that one reason for the introduction of the system was because waiting lists were too difficult and expensive to manage.

I would suggest they are neither and are certainly a better way of assuring a steady income stream than auctions which leave berths empty for long periods of time, bringing in no income whatsoever.

CRTs estate agents now running the system have forced up reserve prices to ludicrous levels, distorting and destroying any claim that it represents a truly free market. The only freedom is for mooring prices to rise where the sites are most desirable, there is no scope for them falling in poorer areas and the result is yet more empty spaces.

Empty spaces also mean more reluctant continuous cruisers, taking their chances with the rules, more frustrated hobby boaters and a deteriorating situation across the country.

It is not as if the system actually achieves true market pricing, not only because of the high reserves set but also because prices on an individual mooring site fluctuate madly, vacancy by vacancy. If you get two determined, well-off boaters bidding the guide price can double but a few weeks later, with only one person interested they only pay the inflated reserve. The result is a ludicrous disparity on the same stretch of moorings.

The Trust no longer needs worry about being competing unfairly with its mooring sites as it is no longer a Quango and could easily revert to a waiting list system.

Despite the concerns of Sally Ash it is fairly simple to operate an electronic waiting list system that is fair to all, doesn’t distort prices and gives all boaters a chance of buying a mooring they can afford.

There are already established prices for all mooring sites. Boaters can be invited to join the waiting list for up to a certain number of sites in one area. Once they come to the top of the list and there’s a vacancy they are told electronically and by post and have a set time to accept. If they decline it goes to the next in line and if there is no current demand it can be advertised.

Sites where demand is non-existent can lower their prices until the CRT is getting at least some income and prices can be adjusted to deal with more than just supply and demand.

If there is an areas with an overcrowding problem on busy visitor moorings, holding nearby long term moorings at a lower price may well result in an improvement. Mooring prices then become a tool of CRT policy rather than a failing commercial attempt to exploit boaters to the greatest extent possible.

Mooring auctions are already a failing experiment. The time has come for them to go.

Are continuous cruisers to become outcasts of the system?

I really hope it is not a sign of things to come that on the day of the launch of the Canal and River Trust a senior IWA man was making vague threats and allegations about the minority of boaters who are continuous cruisers.

Tweeting after the champagne launch Jo Gilbertson of the IWA reported: “Much mutual muttering about need to sort out overstaying moorers in IWA , NABO and BMF camps over coffee - will be following this up.”

He went on to assert in a Twitter conversation about CCers with continuous cruiser Peter MacDonald, that: “I'll wager its 80% not making any attempt at a continuous journey.”

When challenged by me and asked how he proposed to prove his assertion, he admitted that, “.. it’s not for me to prove it but for anyone else taking up the wager to agree with me how to measure it with me ...”

It is disturbing that this kind of prejudice appears endemic amongst those who now have tremendous influence over our waterways. Don’t forget that the boater positions on the CRT council are overwhelmingly held by IWA people and that the CRT senior management, in the days when they had BW hats on, have attempted on several occasions to attack CCers, usually financially.

Over the years we too have been hobby boaters, rushing down to our moorings at weekends and holidays, determined to get out and explore the waterways. We have also been static liveaboards in marinas and boatyards, working during the week and getting out whenever we can. We have had a GRP, commissioned a shiny boat and owned a novelty boat.

Now we continuously cruise, covering a thousand or two lock miles each year, along with several thousand other boaters.

When we were hobby boater’s we looked on CCers with some envy. They had the freedom to carry on doing what we loved after we had had to return to work. We did not regard them with resentment, as some do these days.

When we started living aboard nearly nine years ago we knew we were part of a minority of boaters and when we began continuously cruising (although we technically have a mooring we never use it) we knew we were becoming part of a smaller minority – but we always saw ourselves as part of the jigsaw of boating types that use the waterways.

We were IWA members from the start of our boating, nearly 20 years ago, but that ended three years ago when we attended a National Festival and found ourselves denigrated and looked down upon as liveaboard, continuous cruisers by the largely middle-class, well heeled membership of the IWA.

We have always regarded that as unfortunate, but we are unwilling to be patronised by those who may have spent more on their boat than us, but have forgotten the campaigning past of the very organisation of which they are now part.

We are now very concerned that the arrogance of the IWA, symbolised by Mr Gilbertson’s attitude to continuous cruisers will permeate the new charity, despite assurances given to the supporters of the Boaters’ Manifesto by CRT trustees, that they were not going to conduct a witch-hunt against CCers and liveaboards.

Assertions like “I bet 80 per cent of CCers are over-stayers,” made without proof, or even any concern for proof, too easily become the propaganda of a hate campaign with CCers as the target.”

Mr Gilbertson is anxious to portray CCers as attacking his style of boater. When I described those who do not live on their boats as ‘hobby boaters’ he declared that was pejorative – as opposed to simply factual, I assume.

Well, I have news for the IWA, the CRT and anyone else who thinks they can isolate CCers and develop any sort of institutional discrimination against us – we are boaters, just like you. It is just that we do more of it at this stage in our boating lives.

Many of us have been hobby boaters and hire boaters - that is where we learned to love the lifestyle.

As we get older many of us may become marina moorers again or even return to a little light hobby boating if health and age forces us ashore.

We are boaters and you demonise us and exclude us at your detriment because we spend more time on the system, know more about the obscure corners and problems and often already do our bit to keep our backyard – even if it is only a temporary backyard as we pass through – clean, tidy and cared for.

And, no, we have not lost our sense of reality about those who over-stay, we know they exist although our full-time perspective is probably more realistic than a hobby boater who only sees a particular mooring spot at a weekend.

We know boat owners, especially in and around London who use every other weekend to move their boat from one location to another rather than pay for mooring. They are not liveaboards or continuous cruisers and numbers are growing in these times.

We know ourselves that we can be seen on the same moorings three weeks apart. In the last three months boaters will have seen us in Nantwich on four or five occasions as we pass through to Ellesmere Port, the Peak Forest, Chester and then Manchester before a final stop on our way to Birmingham.

We rarely stay very long but we could easily be the target of a hobby boaters wrath if they failed to find an Nantwich weekend mooring and saw us there on several occasions.

Some areas have acknowledged problems – central London and the K&A for example – but the problem is not the liveaboards who attempt to work within whatever CC rules the authorities are working to that particular month. The problem is the failure of BW, although hopefully not the CRT, to provide affordable, basic online moorings for those boats. Do so and they cease to become a problem in hotspot areas.

Those people are not CCers, except by default, and I suspect that much of the hatred directed at them is to do with the fact that their boats are often older and untidier than most.

Get over your prejudices, there is room on the cut for all types of boater, rich and poor. I sometimes get the feeling that some boaters would be part of the pack attacking working boat families for their poverty-stricken lifestyles if hobby boaters had been on the water a century ago.

When Robin Evans was interviewed on Radio Four on the same day as Mr Gilberston launched his attack on CCers, he mentioned the importance of the canals for walkers, cyclists and anglers but failed to mention boats or navigation once.

The IWA and its representatives would do better to worry about that and the importance that is going to be given to all boaters, including CCers, under the new CRT regime, unchanged at an everyday level from British Waterways.

Demonising continuous cruisers will divide the boating community, but it is all too easy to pick targets and criticise. I have now try to stop referring to ‘shiny boaters’ as shorthand for those who have spent loads on a new boat and think they own the canal as a result. It is, I recognise, divisive, so I avoid it.

There are many who attack hire boaters and even some who poke fun at historic boat owners and their obsession with ‘the oldest rivet on the Cut’.

It may be a natural part of such a mixed community, but it is a nasty habit and anyone indulging in it – including me – deserves to have their hands slapped by the rest.

Lovely canal - so why neglect it?

We have just completed a week or so on the Upper Peak Forest, a canal we visit at least annually and where we used to have moorings.
It is one of the most attractive and scenic canals in the country, with wide views of the Peak District and is likely to see more visitors than ever this year, thanks to southern drought restrictions and the Olympics.
So why is it so neglected by British Waterways?
From Marple to Whalley Bridge it is in dire need of dredging and if it were not for the weekly visits by coal boats even boats of a normal draft of 30" or so would have even more problems.
The offside vegetation is so overgrown that it is difficult for two boats to pass in many places, especially if there is a moored boat.
Mind you he would have been lucky to have found a mooring as collapsed banks and submerged coping stones are the order of the day. The moorings on the Peak Forest section of Marple are in bad condition for almost their entire length and have been for at least 4-5 years. There are collapsed banks at almost every swing bridge making it an art form to drop crew without grounding.
At Disley on a narrow section of towpath just where the canal breached a few years ago a collapsed edge has been fenced off with orange rash and ignored for at least a year and the same is true for a long section of the visitor moorings in Whalley Bridge.
Add in a couple of trees that fell earlier this year but have been left for boats to scrape past at the expense of their paintwork and the sad picture is complete.
Why has BW chosen to let this lovely canal deteriorate?
We don't have an answer - just a suspicion that all these problems affect boaters rather than walkers, cyclists or fishermen. Somehow boaters' needs are bottom of the list. Certainly well below paying bogus bonuses to BW bosses.

Is charity a dirty word?

Charity for me is something handed out from the haves to the have-nots. The givers, whether they are wealthy individuals, religious groups or even ordinary people get to feel good about themselves. They can polish their self image and tell themselves they are good people, even if they spend the rest of the week exploiting their employees and ripping off customers or fellow believers.
The recipients of charity get to feel demeaned and diminished, forced to beg for help and to hope they are one of the prefered good causes of the 'philanthropists' currently so praised by politicians of all pastel shades.
That is one of the key failings of charity, it is not help handed out to those most in need, it is help given to those causes rich individuals or organisations with a particular religious or social agenda decide are worthy of help.
Charity is not only a cold and shameful thing for the recipient, it is discriminatory and benefits the giver at least as much as the recipient - even without a tax break.
The proper way for a society to look after its people, culture, landscape and whatever else is precious to the members of that society is collectively.
That means all the members of that society making a contribution through the tax system which is commensurate with the individual's means and collectively sufficient to do whatever is necessary.
That is how a civilised society looks after its poor, sick and weak, defends its borders, polices its citizens, educates the young and cares for the old.
In America the total tax take is smaller than ours and those in need depend much more on the whims of philanthropists. The result is more homeless, hopeless people at the bottom of the pile.
In Scandinavian countries the total tax take is larger than ours, around 50% of income. They have universal health care and education, proper pensions for the retired and a social security system that doesn't produce abject poverty.
This government wants to drive us towards the American approach. If they succeed the poor, the old and the sick will be increasingly beholden to the whims of eccentric millionaires and extreme religions.
I have no liking for 'philanthropy' I want a society that looks after all its members properly and equally. That means taxation and more of it. If it falls more heavily on the rich, as it should, they must stop whingeing and see it for what it is - enforced philanthropy for the benefit of the society which has rewarded them so well.

A matter of class

George Galloway's humiliation of Labour in Bradford highlights one distinction between socialist parties and Labour - a willingness to ackowledge that class is not a thing of the past.
New Labour under the slimy Tony Blair and friends began the drift away from the party's working class roots by deciding they couldn't get elected as the party of the working class because key middle ground voters didn't want to be identified as working people. They made the cynical decision that those who still saw themselves as working class had nowhere else to go so it was OK to sell out to middle England with all it's pretentions and prejudice.
That was probably true but Milliband would be deluded if he calculates that him and his current batch of university educated, middle class, well-heeled ministers and MPs can continue to depend on the loyalty of the mass of working class voters.
Quite apart from those running into the disturbing embrace of the far right, an increasing number are realising Labour has abandoned them for the white van men who see no further than the next hike in petrol prices and need to be wooed by regular attacks on the poor (scroungers) and non whites (asylum seekers).
If Labour wishes to return to its roots, a large if, then it needs to return to the analysis of class, especially at a time when the redefined upper classes, judged by wealth as well as birth these days, is unashamedly tipping the balance in favour of capital and the controllers if wealth by removing or selling off anything owned by society as a whole and benefiting the poor more than the rich. That runs from reducing the rights of unions to selling off the NHS. Difficult, of course, as Blair and Brown had been doing something very similar.
Most of all - instead of abandoning class - we need to revisit the concept of class.
We may no longer have legions of blue collar workers. Instead they wear suits and work in call centres or office jobs, or they wear uniforms and help Tesco make its billions.
The problem is that many of those people have been conned into believing they are not part of the working class.
A socialist Labour Party would be working with the unions to recruit that mass of white collar working class people, explaining how they are being exploited and convincing them that by joining together they can and should challenge the owners of capital.
This country is still overwhelmingly working class, even if the bank workers, shop salespeople, call centre employees and other labourers at the technology workface have been encouraged to see themselves differently.
The task facing Labour is to out itself at the head of an angry new, white collar working class and teach them that having to wear a tie doesn't turn them into little Tories.
Stand up for these working people, encourage them to join unions, tell them they should and must stand together against rapacious employers.
It is still all about class, us and them, and Labour's tragedy us that has allowed the Tories to change perceptions, ever since Thatcher's massive con-trick of council house sales.
Time to reattach testicles, get some real working class people at the top and claim back the working class voter, whatever they currently think they are.

How credible are IWA council members of the Canal and River Trust?

Four IWA candidates have been elected for the four positions designated to represent boaters on the council of the Canal and River Trust - but are they credible representatives of all boaters on British Waterways waters?
To begin with they were elected by just a quarter of those entitled to vote - hardly a ringing endorsement.
Secondly they were backed by the IWA, the biggest waterways charity and the most able to influence boater members by producing recommended candidates.
That makes this result predictable (in fact I predicted it to John Dodwell when the Boaters' Manifesto group met with him) especially with the inevitable low turnout of a hurried election conducted in the winter season.
Thirdly there will be those who conclude that the IWA is a campaigning organisation of boaters so what does it matter that they have all four seats? The answer is that the IWA is no longer a campaigning body but a collection of committee people happy to do business behind closed doors. It is run by and for often elderly hobby boaters and no longer represents the whole boating community. That is amply demonstrated by its hostility to full-time boaters, especially continuous cruisers.
So we now have the CaRT council with too few boater representatives and those handful that are in place completely controlled by just one view of boating - and that view hostile to thousands who boat as continuous cruisers.
Not only that, they were elected by just one in four voters in an election which allowed a single body to distort the result by jamming the list with nominees.
I suspect that some of the so-called apathy that led to the pathetic 25% turnout was a boycott by boaters who see the election and CaRT as a stitch-up between a Government anxious to offload responsibility, a BW management happy to take perks for as long as possible and 'trustees' from the 'great and good' unwilling to challenge or question the BW management propaganda.
That can only leave full-time boaters more wary and more suspicious of CaRT than we already were.
Here is a so-called charity that is being run by the same people as mismanaged British Waterways - Hales, Evans and the other bonus boys - being monitored by a handful of IWA yes-people who are, in any event outnumbered on the council.
Of course, there are also increasing doubts about the power or relevance of the council as the trustees appear to be colluding in the establishment of commercial structures within CaRT that may end up making the financial and commercial decisions that will decide the future of our waterways.
Those IWA council members may be powerless to prevent Evans, Hales and co from awarding and collecting yet more undeserved bonuses, flogging off more key equipment, investing in more failing ventures as they spend what little funds there are available on anything except the waterways themselves.
I began the Boaters' Manifesto because I feared just such a stitch-up amongst the greedy BW bosses and the professional committee people of the trustees, the IWA and others.
Along the way I met with, argued with and enjoyed the company of a lot of proper boaters.
As I have been politically active for nearly 50 years I never really expected to win but it is always worth getting important truths an airing.
Boaters like me are now privately resigned to more bonuses, more financial failures, less spent on the network.
We can't look to the IWA council members to fight for our interests and we are reduced to standing on the sidelines once more keeping a beady eye on this ridiculously over-committeed structure that will probably become CaRT evetually.
They are not our friends and we will to continue to question, criticise and complain when necessary.