Snouts in the trough while frontline staff face more redundancies

The ridiculous and unjustifiable salaries of some of BW's Directors have again been highlighted this week and well done Narrowboatworld for running with this. More front line redundancies are in the pipeline while BW's directors continue to be paid vast sums of our money for sitting on top of an organisation which on their own reckoning is running at a £30 million a year shortfall. It's heartening to see that other boaters and canal enthusiasts are waking up to this one, even if most of the National User groups remain too cowed and fearful to speak out too strongly on this elephant in the room.

As others have said, for many of us to take BW or it's successor seriously, we need a cull of Directors at BW now, and those that remain must align their salary and pension packages to real Third Sector rates. Tony Hale's last words on this seemed to be, that's a matter for the new charity.

In my words that seems to mean the BW Board have washed their hands of this one and the plan is to pass the cost of restructuring BW Directors on to the new charity. How thoughtful!

Narrowboat world highlights the other blatant reality that BW are sacking staff while saying that more volunteering is essential.

Well that would be more credible if charity started at home. Don't forget the BW Board (they who seem to remain blissfully out of touch with reality and content to endorse and reinforce this sorry state of affairs). While modest compared to the sums Directors receive, don't forget the BW Board not volunteers but they are salaried. That's another wage bill that should be made redundant and the funds returned to the front line.

These would not be mere gestures but would represent evidence to convince the doubters like me, that the new Waterways Trust really will be new and better way of running the waterways and that we have actually have learnt from the mistakes of the past and present, instead of just re-branding the existing basket case that is BW's current leadership team.