CaRT overloaded with top brass?
LIKE Victor stated, it's just a two-bit charity so why so many in high management? Asks John Coxon.
If there's such a surfeit why is the network in such a poor state?
Coined £219.908
If the average salary for the 51 is around £60,000 [A chief Investment Officer coined £219.908 way back in 2017—Editor.] that means that circa £3,060,000 is being paid to these directors, heads, managers, controllers, partners, advisors, lawyers, etc. Add to that their company pension contributions and expenses, the upkeep of their offices and company cars etc. plus the upkeep for their office support staff and you have a very large pot of money indeed, probably nearer £12,000,000 or nearly a quarter of a million pounds per manager/director etc per year!
Most people will also be familiar with the old saying 'too many cooks spoil the broth' well here is a prime example of too many cooks? As the last decade's history of the canal system has so amply demonstrated the only thing that seems to be having any real increase is these superfluous people and support teams with the physical state of the system deteriorating at an ever increasing rate.
A stoppage a day
We now have a stoppage on average of one a day, some of them lasting for months i.e. the Anderton Boat Lift and the Seven's Bevere Lock. Only a small percentage of these stoppages can be put down to environmental issues such as water shortages. Most are through lack of maintenance and the 'wait until it breaks policy' that CaRT management have adopted.
CaRT really do like making themselves a laughing stock don't they? Now we have them refusing to attend certain areas because a few school kids are calling them names! Have these staff members not got the sense to call the police? That's what they tell us boaters to do if we encounter any anti-social behaviour!
Would they refuse to attend the towpath to log boats if we called them names, not on your nelly they wouldn't, they need our licence fee to pay their top brass and their teams. Seems as if wokeness has arrived on the towpath, we mustn't allow a few little naughty kiddies to upset all these big strong men must we? This is real life, not a St. Trinian's film!
If the canal should breach
By the way, if the canal should breach in this so called no-go area at 12.30 in the afternoon, will they still not attend to put in the stop planks until 9.00 the next morning?
Re: the water tap in Victors piece. I have to ask where was the CaRT specification and supervision? How did the contractors get CaRT to sign it off like that? Was it actually checked by one of their numerous highly paid managers? If so is he/she qualified to sign off structures like that?
What is the point of fitting something 90% of the target users cannot even connect to it? Is it a ploy to save more water? I think not, more like total incompetence, but then we're getting used to that from contractors are we not?
I can't wait to see what they do with their next job?
9% of network unusable
With CaRT saying that 9% of the network is unusable at the moment because it's closed, instead of putting the licence fee up by another 4% due to reasons beyond their control, they should be giving all boaters a 9% rebate on this years licence!
After all, what we paid for at the time of payment is now reduced by 9% due to reasons beyond the boaters' control. Fair's fair if you ask me?
As for farmers extracting water from the canals, one has to ask if there's enough for farmers to pump it out 24/7 then why cannot CaRT pump it back up the lock flight for boaters to use? After all, it is our water.