THE Canal & River Trust are hoping that we will believe that there are not 360,000,000 visits to the waterway anymore but now 380,000,000!
In its obviously much distorted press release of its Annual Report, it states that notwithstanding that we are told by the weather people it has been the wettest year so far on record and many boaters tells us that visitors are few are far between, there have been 20,000,000 more visits to its waterways this year!
Every man, woman and child
Taking the population of the entire United Kingdom, every single man, woman and child would have to visit a CaRT waterway six times during the year, even from way up from the Highlands of Scotland and from across the water from Northern Island to make up that figure. Or put another way every single person from America and Canada! Believe it? Of course not.
In fact can you really believe that over one million people visit the waterways every day? Calculating the number of miles of waterway, it equals 500 people visit every mile every day! That is what CaRT wants everybody to believe. One day last September we only saw two in 12 hours whilst on the second most popular waterway in the county—The Oxford. Here's a picture of the towpath at Onley that gives a picture of its actual usage.
Where are they?
We often moor on the Soar, and are very lucky to see half a dozen anywhere. The last time we saw two ladies and a man with a dog near Kegworth. With CaRT telling there are 500 visits for every mile every day, and with virtually none on the river for mile after mile, must mean there are two, three or whatever times as many somewhere else... Where are they? Alas we are not told.
Spending
The Trust then goes on to tell us that during the 12 months it has spent 8% more money—£128 million on locks and the like. And there has been 'a drop in unplanned closures'!
Which is why boaters tell us the system is in a worse state than it has ever been and we now have as many as three closures in a single day!
Perhaps we should quote the very famous Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli:
'There are three kind of lies: lies, dammed lies and statistics'...