ALL the best for a Happy—and perhaps more importantly—Healthy New Year to all you boaters out there.
And of course many thanks to all the many hundreds of you who have contributed over the past year, making this Your Voice of the Waterways, who in fact make narrowboatworld possible. And this year it broke all records with our server registering 4,086,382 visits during the year, with the rider that it cannot register them all. And sorry, I cannot help but mention that that is a real figure by a renowned company, not a pie-in-the-sky figure of visitors to the waterways!
Not good
Really it hasn't been a good year for boating, thanks—and I have to tell it—to Cart and its seemingly total lack of interest in its upkeep of its waterways. Many of you have been stuck, as in fact we have, in the many stoppages, and though I intended counting even the major ones that closed the waterways for more than three days, I soon became bogged down in sheer numbers.
And would you believe—of course you would—that the disintegrating bottom lock of the Claydon Flight, on the Oxford Canal, pictured, is not mentioned in the winter stoppages, so getting no attention. It will never last another season, that's for sure.
Little wonder less than 7% of eligible boaters voted in Cart's Council election according to the Electoral Reform Society—obviously no confidence, especially after reading that even more cash is being poured into attempting to get more 'Friends' with a new Head of Fundraising including, we are told, a 45 strong team of fund-raisers, even after the last lot lost Cart £3 millions!
But why should people give a fiver a month towards the waterways. What do they get out of it? At its start I told it was a stupid idea, and it obviously still is.
Oh yes?
And here we have the good old Inland Waterways Association telling the River Great Ouse people that it would be to their advantage to have Cart running the river rather than the Environmental Agency!
Did you notice that over the holiday period the EA was out in force handling the floods, yet Cart could not even bother to arranged to raise a dangerous sunken boat that had been stuck for over a week in the Soar. After having us believe raising sunken boats was done in 24 hours—so it said.
Not bothered
It is some six months since the coroner at the inquest into the death of a boater in Harecastle Tunnel wrote to Canal & River Trust regarding safety improvements.
But alas, with the exception of a printed leaflet that is handed to each boater entering the tunnel, nothing has been done.
The coroner pointed out that to allow boaters into the tunnel without safety jackets was 'foolish'. But Cart told the coroner there was no mandatory wearing of life jackets in its tunnels, conveniently forgetting that it is mandatory in Standedge Tunnel, even though boaters are accompanied by Cart personnel!
The coroner also pointed out that in such a low tunnel hard hats should be compulsory, as it was thought the boater who died in Harecastle did because his head struck the tunnel, but again Cart told the coroner this was not mandatory, again forgetting that it is mandatory in Standedge Tunnel, though even, arguably, not as low as Harecastle. The picture shows Jan after steering through Standedge Tunnel. With of course the mandatory life jacket (ours) and mandatory hard hat (Cart's).
So we wait until another boater falls from his or her boat and dies...
As I mentioned, Happy New Year.
Victor Swift