Continuous moorers hijack Parry's meeting

BOATERS on a continuous cruiser licence, wanting to stay in one place without paying for a mooring, known as 'continuous moorers', completely hijacked the Canal & River Trust '10 years' meeting chaired by Chief Executive Richard Parry in Birmingham.

Around six of these boaters obviously planted in the audience continuously interrupted the proceedings, using every opportunity to raise the matter, with our representative at the meeting, Keith Gudgin, writing:

Not all that popular

I have to say it did not seem all that popular, 150 tickets were made available but I estimate that there were only about 50 to 60 there at the most and that includes all the CaRT staff.

It seemed to start off well but it wasn't long before it was hijacked by about half a dozen apparent continuous moorers who just wanted CaRT to changed the rules to suit them.

I got so fed up with them spouting on about it at every opportunity I left early, with many others leaving before me. In my opinion the whole thing degenerated into a farce.

Ridiculous reasons

I just thought they were daft saying the things they did. Some examples being: one was complaining about how he had three kids that needed to go to school and to keep moving him on was a breach of their human rights; one said they had a job to go to and did not like being referred to as a freeloader etc; and yet another said he was a special needs boater and that the CaRT welfare officer should be looking after him and so he should not be moved. Saying these things were playing straight into CaRTs hands, in that they were not continuous cruisers—what an admission.

Richard Parry put the slides up a bit too fast and did not even mention some of the things that were shown, so it was hard for people to take it all in.

Maintenance budget

I did notice that the maintenance budget for the next ten years appears to be 'maintained' at around £80 million per year 'maintaining' their circa £700 million shortfall over the decade. This is worked out using CaRTs own figures of £150 million needed and only £80 million being allocated per year.

Even so, £700 million equates to a shortfall of £350,000 per mile of waterway, assuming 2,000 miles of waterways that is. Puts it into perspective a bit doesn't it?

One other thing that was mentioned was that CaRT want to achieve an 85%+ of boaters satisfaction, and it was asked what could be done about improving consultation results.

Don't ignore opinion

Well the answer to that is when you hold a consultation don't ignore the majority of opinion doing just as you wanted in the first place. Some of us still remember the SE mooring consultation débâcle where private boaters opinions appeared to be completely ignored.

It seemed to me that CaRT were still just spouting the same old stuff at the meeting, so no real change there. As I said, I left the meeting early so did not see the final outcome.

[It surely is imperative that Canal & River Trust define an 'official' distance that continuous cruisers must travel, and surely not yearly, but monthly, and then enforce its rules, as the various boaters associations are demanding. Incidentally Keith Gudgin is himself, like other contributors, a continuous cruiser—editor.]