There must be action and soon

Published: Monday, 23 July 2018

HAVE a survey yes, but whatever the outcome there must be action and it must be soon and hit CaRT in the long term either financially or by intense public humiliation, writes John Coxon.

Just having a survey and presenting the result to CaRT will be useless if that result does not follow its policies.

A waste of time

For the same reason a petition is a waste of time, whoever heard of one actually making any difference to any real policy decision? The same goes for a one-off public demonstration, it is not sustained and/or hitting CaRT where it hurts, These will be just like water off a ducks back to it.

I really don't see how blocking the canals will hurt CaRT even though Peel Holdings gave in when it happened to them. If this is the action that is chosen then so be it. I am open to any action that is effective.

CaRT would not care

I still think that if boaters blocked say, Fradley, this would only hurt boaters and CaRT wouldn't care about that as it would not be sustained long enough to get major public coverage and sympathy and I fear all it would do would be to set boater against boater (there are still plenty of boaters who think CaRT are doing a good job, I meet them on the cut).

The Peel holdings demo worked because it was local and they had a commercial image to look after, CaRT, being a charity(?) does not..

Completely ignored

How many times has it been reported that CaRT management has be told of the state of the network by boaters only to be completely ignored by them? How many promises have we had from CaRT management that things will be done only to find that months later it is all still the same. Boaters are just ignored all the time as if we don't matter.

Look how quickly Richard Parry capitulated to their doctrine and dropped his 'meet the boaters sessions', they became too embarrassing for him and his underlings! The boaters were winning the arguments so the sessions were dropped. We need to learn from this! Collectively we were beginning to affect them.

Lobby MP's

Boaters who have access to a Member of Parliament need to go to their surgeries and lobby them about it. Pointing out the state of the canals and the lack of any real interest from CaRT. Also point out to them that most of the system has a grade 1 - 2 listing and deliberately letting it deteriorate is illegal. MPs need to be told the real story about the system and not just CaRT's and the IWA's propaganda and inflated statistics.

If boaters don't do something soon then there will not be any canals left for them to navigate or do anything about.

Action now before too late

Whilst boaters chew over the fat or argue amongst themselves, the canals are closing fast, action is needed now before it's too late. Apathy will only make matters worse.

Boaters organisations need to get together and formulate an effective collective action. They need to show CaRT that divide and rule will not work any longer and that we boaters have had enough of their total apathy towards us.