Email: All-out to impress

There is little doubt that the Canal & River Trust is going all-out to impress its paymasters—not us boaters I hasten to say—but the others, the government.

This is borne out by the fact that CaRT is flogging its visitors to the canals for all it is worth, even resorting to what we all know are ludicrous claims, but as we know those at parliament live on statistics, those of 360,000,000 visitors a years can do nothing but impress, and so keep the money rolling in.

So perhaps though we know come October and the colder days, there are very few actual visitors, we counted seven all day yesterday from just outside Gargrave along the locks to Greenberfield on the Leeds & Liverpool during a steady seven miles.  One a mile! My wife argued there were eight, but I pointed out to her that the lady with the black spaniel was seen twice—going and coming back, so was only one visitor!

The trouble as I see it though, with such preposterous claims of all those millions, it makes it hard to believe anything that CaRT tells us.

Jim Cracken