Victor: Not so happy or healthy

Published: Sunday, 25 November 2018

THE current diktat from those at Cart is about the advantages of being by water.

A recent blurb tells us that 'research proves that being by a canal or river makes people happier, healthier and feeling less stressed when they visit their local waterway'. Completely ignoring of course that many lose their lives in the waterways, not only intentionally but unintentionally too as they are dangerous.

Anyway, I have to ask, what was the research?  Should there have been any.

I can't see how anyone visiting their 'local waterway' on a damned cold day like today, staring at the mucky water would make anyone happier, would you?

Hire boating

Our old friend James Henry rather told the facts about hire boating this year and the many closures that must have made it a nightmare for many hire companies, especially, as he pointed out, for those in the North, with virtually all the waterways closed through lack of the wet stuff.

But not only the hire boaters, what about the owners with nowhere to go, and during the major holiday season at that.

It's gone away

A year or so ago—I forget when—the new boating site, The Floater, burst on to the scene, with the intentions of putting the boating world to rights with the promise 'The Floater just won't go away'.

But alas it has, with its owner, Peter Underwood, telling there will be no more news stories from the Floater, and by the end of the year its email address will also close.

Peter was joined by our former contributor Allan Richards, who together did excellent work in disclosing the somewhat nefarious activities of Cart and its many misleading statements, by using the Freedom of Information Act, but they were drastically curtailed when Cart successfully managed to  claim it is vexatious. (CaRT refusing Freedom of Information requests).

Even then Peter still managed to show how Cart 'fiddled the figures' in its Annual Report and suchlike revelations, but as he remarks he just cannot be bothered to carry on.

What he says

In closing down Tho Floater Peter wrote:

So my dilemma was whether I had the energy and commitment to carry on researching and writing what were, in essence, the same stories over and over again. The names might change but the facts rarely did.

 The answer is that I have decided I can’t be arsed to carry on. Boaters have had enough information by now to be in little doubt that CaRT has been transformed into a hollow husk, populated by over-paid executives who want nothing to do with real boaters and waterways. Almost every navigation function is contracted out—guaranteeing the least work for the most money—or handed over to well meaning but limited volunteers.

 The trajectory is downhill. I am a boater, and a liveaboard and will remain one, but I am now going to get what I can out of the system before it slowly closes down or CaRT is forced to hand it back to government.

At least you tried Peter, and will be missed.

Victor Swift