Spreading the farce

Published: Friday, 07 September 2018

IN ADDITION to the BBC being taken in by the mis-information about the Middlewich Breach, others too have taken up the farce from Canal & River Trust, with John Coxon reporting.

The Metro stated: The trust’s probe has revealed that gates on the locks, which allow water into the canal, had been left open by a forgetful member of the public. 

Cannot get gates open

When will they realise you cannot even get the gates open against the water pressure.

Ooops—hang on—I forgot, CaRTs policy is that it has to be the fault of a boater as it quotes: The ‘human error’ by an unknown Shropshire Union Canal user, probably on a boat or barge, will cost £3 million to repair.

Further it is quoted: It sent thousands of gallons of water gushing along a canal with such force it washed away the banks.

Utter crap

Sensationalistic but utter crap in the extreme, when would leaving a paddle open send 'thousands of gallons of water gushing along a canal with such force that it washed away a bank'?

Then we get: It caused the canal to overflow, resulting in a section of the 200-year-old embankment being washed away.

More utter crap, it would have just flowed over the byweir as it is now with the pumped water.

Caused by speeding hire boaters

When are these idiots at CaRT going to realise that it was hire boaters going too fast along that stretch that caused the breach with the force of their wash as they just did not know how long it would take them to get from Middlewich to the Llangollen so they went flat-out to get there before mooring up for the first night of their holiday and washed the bank away as they passed. If CaRT had heeded the warnings they had been given three years ago then they would not be in the manure cart now.

Blaming boaters for something that boaters will/cannot do is not the answer and will not prevent it happening again, and not just along the Middlewich Branch. Fitting a governor to hire boat engines to allow them to do no more than 4mph will prevent the wash from these boats doing such damage in the future. Perhaps the hire companies will have learnt their lesson from the loss of income it has caused them? Then—perhaps not, a boat yard spend money unless forced to—what am I thinking?

Also, we are told it's going to  cost £3 millions to repair.

The price is going up—CaRTs contractors are really reeling it in aren't they?  Are they going to cock it up like they did at Dutton so they get paid more to fix it again?

The wrong canal!

Even the Telegraph believed: The trust hopes the canal, which runs through Whitchurch and Ellesmere, will re-open to boats by Christmas.

When did the Middlewich branch go to Whitchurch and Ellesmere? Are they now saying it has closed the Llangollen as well?

A flight on the Middlewich

In the Metro there is a picture captioned: How the canal is meant to look.

The picture shows a four lock flight. When did the Middlewich Branch have a four locks flight on it? That's a picture of Hurleston Locks, that is not even on the Middlewich.

The Metro tells that it brings news not as you know it. And this news is certainly not as we know it!