Victor: You must be joking!

Published: Sunday, 04 May 2014

Would you believe the Environment Agency wants us all to believe that there are more accidents at locks where lock keepers are present than when they are not!

Anyone with a modicum of sense can see this is nothing more than yet another ploy to get rid of its lock keepers on the Thames.

It tells us that its study group—not an independent one you will notice—has come up with its findings that for the past year there have been 6.75 accidents when lock keepers are present but only 2.75 when they are not!

Silly sods. Suspect statistics aside, lock keepers have a duty to report all incidents whilst there is no one to report those where there is no one else present.

We all know that the Agency has turned out some crap in its time, but I reckon this beats the lot!

Not happy bunnies

The outcome of the vicious sexual attack on the woman on the Staffs & Worcs Canal towpath has led to a great deal of comment in the local publications of the area about its safety, with of course warnings to women not to walk it alone under any circumstances whilst the attacker is still at loose.

Realising the attacker could be anywhere on the waterway, this has been taken up even at its northern end, well away from the scene of the attack, that I have been told is not at all pleasing Canal & River Trust, doing its utmost to promote its towpaths.

But people have to be sensible when there is such a man on the loose, like it or not.

More obstacles

The latest thing for our waterways is more obstacles for boaters in the form of floating rafts filled with plants, under the name of Floating Wetland Biohavens, the first now installed on the London canals.

We are told the islands have been created to provide a home to wetland plants, as well as a perfect habitat for aquatic insects such as dragonfly and damselfly, and terrestrial insects such as beetles, butterflies and bees. Each island also provides underwater shelter and feeding opportunities for fish.

How much was spent, we of course are not told, but with thousands of stretches of water and wetlands already in the country, why they have to be brought to clutter the already narrowing canals I just cannot understand.  Still another case of spend it anywhere—but on the waterway itself.

I wish it luck

Though I really have my doubts about the new towpath mooring plan for the Kennet & Avon Canal, I wish the Trust luck in its endeavours, as something had to be done.

Even if those boaters with no home moorings do move the required 13 miles, which I very much doubt, they are still cluttering up that waterway from Foxhangers to Bath, which of course is the complaint of visiting boaters struggling through lines of moored boats.

As far as they are concerned it is simply shuffling them about, and is no solution.

Victor Swift