The past and hopes for the future

Published: Wednesday, 01 January 2020

WE HAVE come to the start of a new year (and new decade) and it is traditional at this time to reflect on what has happened in the past and hopes for the future, writes Bill Ridgeway.

I have written a number of articles (but not as many as some) for narrowboatworld—mainly commenting on statistics from CaRT.

Needs to raise its profile

I appreciate that CaRT needs to raise its profile with a range of people from users through to politicians and, therefore, would tend to publish statistics showing itself in a good light.  However, the figures it produces are so bloated (even to an untrained eye) as to be unbelievable.

This raises the question just how effective is CaRT?  There is an adage 'To measure is to know'.  That depends on the measuring process being accurate (within an acceptable tolerance) in order to be a usable starting point from which decisions can be made.

Does not believe in its statistics

I hope that CaRT does not really believe in its published statistics but maybe it has an internal set of statistics which it uses for its own internal purposes.  Questions remain as to the capability of CaRT management, how they were appointed, how they remain in their position, who manages CaRT and what, in turn, are they doing to monitor and manage CaRT.  That's a whole lot of questions!

From the user level there are several user organisations which together should act as a brake on the most outlandish, unproductive, non cost-effective ideas of CaRT.  I am not in a position to comment on individual organisations but the checks and balances of user organisations do not seem to have any substantial effect on CaRT.

As far as it goes

narrowboatworld is, in effect, a forum for users.  Of the several articles I have written (some asking the question what can be done to rein in CaRT), few have generated more than one (or maybe two) responses and I have the distinct feeling this is as far as it goes.

It would, therefore, seem that CaRT does what it likes and there is no effective organisation ranging from user to government which can effectively stand in its way.

Apologies for the tone of this article but the question needs to be asked—'What do we do now?'.