How silly can it get?

WOULD you believe that in an attempt to possibly impress the government, and consequently get more cash, Canal & River Trust has stated that visitor numbers to the canals increased 30% last year!

So now its not the ridiculous 300,000,000 visits a year but now an even more ridiculous 360,000,000 visits a year! (Itself an exaggeration as figures calculate a 20% increase!)

Dog walkers and cyclists

Yet as any boater would testify, they can travel all day on many parts of the waterways and see only a few dog walkers and cyclists, and during all winter actual visitors to the canals—say a family strolling along the towpath are non-existent.

Ask yourself—how many people do you think have made a visit to the waterways during the bad weather over the past few weeks? Canal & River Trust tell us that the figure is gleaned from a telephone survey! Needless to say it was taken in the height of summer, and we have learned it multiplied a month's 'takings' by 12—ignoring the fact that come the winter months hardly any actual visits will be made to the canals.

Snow and ice

So for the past four weeks, whilst huge swathes of the country have been under snow with ice on the canals, and the temperature hardly reaching 3 degrees, the Trust's statistics would have us believe that the waterways had 30,000,000 visits! Yes, 30 million!

We have taken 32 two weeks cruises over the years, over the whole system, yet with the exception of galas and such by the waterside, have noticed very few actual visitors. During 2012 we cruised during the summer from Tipton Green outside Wolverhampton through the centre of Birmingham down Farmer's Bridge Locks and on to the Digbeth Branch, and in the drizzle saw only people hurrying along the towpaths, clearly using them as nothing more than a right of way. No one who could be called a visitor.

'Loaded'

But no doubt that telephone survey was 'loaded' to include anyone who had been on or anywhere near a towpath, no matter that they had no interest in the canal whatsoever—hence all those hundreds of millions! We are unable to discover the actual 'script' used, or actually how many people—or who they were—contacted in the telephone survey.  As was expected.

But once again we will quote the revered Benjamin Disraeli:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, dammed lies and statistics.

Or as the equally revered Abraham Lincoln succinctly put it:

You many fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time.