Victor: Narrowboats going electric?

Published: Sunday, 30 July 2017

THE 'all electric brigade' is now in full flow promising all electric vehicles and even one company working on electric lorries, so are we in their sights?  I ask.

Could well be, and of course there will be no charging batteries with petrol generators either, it will be plugging-in as you cruise along.  As to the continuous moorers, now that will be a problem.  If Cart is in charge of supplying power points, then God help us.

As I don't know of any new electricity generating stations actually being built, so like many others I wonder where the stuff will all come from.  And as the government gets billions of tax from fuel sales, where will that also come from? And living in a row of houses, how do people charge?  Miles of cables over the pavements?

Of course the motor industry are at pains to tell how many miles the electric batteries will last, but all of us know of it statistics. It's claimed miles per gallon for its vehicles is a prime example! My car is supposed to do a smidgen under 60, yet the most I have ever managed is 43.4!  So we can take anything it tells with the proverbial salt.  How long will a loaded lorry's batteries last? How long to take to re-charge? Pity a driver from say Italy. Has anyone actually though it through?

Sorry for going off subject, but what really gets me is that there are these people on telly championing this conversion to electricity yet at the same time telling that HS2 should be scrapped.  Obviously not having the gumption to realise that the HS2 is electric whilst at present most of our railways are diesel—that they want to get rid of!  Stupid or what?

narrowboatA9No mate—it needs water

One narrowboat took to the A9 in Scotland, causing a bit of a problem.

Toeing the party line

I see Damian, that self-style Boating Communications Manager is still toeing the party line regarding visitors telling us that 'Increased annual visitor numbers by 33% to 396m with visitor satisfaction hitting 85%', even though it was claimed that there were 460,000,000 last year, which is ridiculous.

As is easily calculated, this means 628 visitors to every mile of waterway every day—have you ever seen them?  In over 20 year having cruised virtually all the waterways many times, we never have, not even 100 in any day.  More stupid people.

Lack of notices

I had a look at British Waterways Marinas Ltd Priory Marina on the River Great Ouse the other day, and one thing that surprised me was the complete lack of notices, that I found most surprising.

Why? you may ask.  Because, my friends, our own Sawley Marina is absolutely plastered with them—around 30 before you get through its gates, and hundreds inside, so I naturally thought it was BWML policy.

Obviously not, which leaves me to believe there must be a 'notice mad' someone at Sawley.

There's a thought

One of our regular contributors reckons that it could be cyclists sawing off lock beams—after all the damn things do get in their way.

And that particular one on the Walsall Flight does stick over the path...

Victor Swift