The latest smoke-screen

The consensus seems to be that NABO's hard hitting stance against the CRT licence changes as set out in their open letter has had some effect. CRT have dropped some of the more extreme and ridiculous proposals. (My favourite silly idea was the draft clause which taken at face value would have meant you could only change home mooring on the day of your licence renewal.)

It also seems that someone has re-read the Data Protection Act and realised that handing out personal details of licence holders to anyone who asked was probably not such a bright idea after all!

Nonetheless some dubious terms and conditions remain. As ever we will see in due course which of these stand up in Court if they ever come to be tested in that way.

The thing that strikes me above all is that whoever devised these rules seems to have had pretty limited experience in the Civil Courts and has little feeling for how these things work in practise. There is huge naivety in much of what has been put in to the new terms and conditions and a child like (lack of) understanding of the common law.

The problem with that is that it fuels the fire for those who do not take CRT seriously and exasperates those of us who have some experience in this area. At worst it looks like incompetent bullying. Trying to assert themselves in this way makes CRT both feared and laughed at in equal measure, let alone doing anything to improve the boating experience generally.

This of course brings us back to the whole issue of general credibility. Given that CRT is struggling to enforce basic uncontroversial statutory rules such as the 14 day rule , the addition of other terms and conditions seems at best optimistic and one has serious doubts as to whether much of what is written will ever be applied in practise.

Constantly re-writing rules it seems remains the favourite smoke screen story for failing to fairly and effectively enforce the ones that already exist. But then CRT are not alone in taking that approach!