Can't see the elephant for the smoke and mirrors?

I have long described the absence of a realistic and transparent financial picture of BW's affairs as being an elephant in the room that BW have been doing their best to deny with 'smoke and mirrors'. Allan Richards hit the mark for me in his article revealing that in response to his FOI request DEFRA apparently don't have current figures about the maintenance costs of the waterways.

Social Cleansing continues?

Nice to see a bit of the mainstream media again picking up on some of the current issues: Guardian Article, 27 April.

The Guardian of course picked up on this a few weeks ago. In the item on the River Lea and Olympics. Despite a subsequent 'correction' and a letter from the much misunderstood Sally Ash of BW the cat is out of the bag: "Some people will have to suffer".

Temporary Visitors Moorings for the Olympics are now for sale at various locations on London's canals via BW's Waterscape site.

River Lee and Olympics

Just a quick hello to highlight the London Boaters' website: http://www.londonboaters.org/home

A particulalrly useful section here is the Documents section, which shows in some detail the way BW go about arguing these things.

Secret war a secret no longer

I claimed last year that I thought BW was continuing its long standing tacit policy to price out residential boaters through a process of exclusion and gentrification. In a remarakable statement reported in the Guardian, BW's Head of Boating Sally Ash confirms this in the starkest terms:

"... we have to control the number of boats, which have increased by 40% over the last four years on the Lea. The only way we can do this is through price, and some people will have to suffer."

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.

The Continuous Cruising myth

That Continuous Cruisers are the main culprits when it comes to overstaying on visitors moorings is a myth that BW continue to perpetuate in order to justify differential charges and other targeting of Continuous Cruisers.

Many Boaters in the boating forums rail about Continuous Cruisers in this way too. I was therefore very relieved when a glimmer of reality pierced through the prejudice and outright bigotry one too often reads in such forums when one contributor bothered asking the question, "what's the evidence"?

The answer is, NONE!

Beyond that, when challenged, the evidence BW have supplied to date, seems to prove that very point!

Several potential new members of the doubters club?

Good to see someone in politics is not wholly convinced by all the spin. Nice to know one's not the only one with concerns on this front!

I can hear them muttering in Watford right now: "Who do they think they are suggesting that British Waterways and it's successor needs independent scrutiny?" 

What a hypocite!

Happy New Year to everyone. I was sitting here thinking about saying hello again after a silent period and wondering what there was to say at the moment when Victor's latest column in Narrowboatworld hit my buttons.

Due to work commitments I couldn't get to the BW AGM this year and it may have been a good thing having just read the report of Tony Hales' comments:

To the knockers who can only find ill to say or blog, I say you not only diminish the achievements of my colleagues, but you also diminish the achievements of so many dedicated partners, including so many passionate campaigners and contributors from the boating world. 

All I can say is , if you really said this, you are at best completely ignorant of what your directors are doing Mr Hales!  At worst you are a bare faced hypocrite.