No chance to give the 'help'

I’M SURE many of your members must have received the email that 'we can’t improve without friends help', writes Dave Irving.

I’ve previously explained to Canal & River Trust by email why I stopped my ‘friends’ subscription, but I’m not sure they ever read it. So I thought I’d tell them again.

Juddering halt

The survey came to a juddering halt when I declined to select ‘A sports club’ in my supported charitable causes. Actually, it wouldn’t go past that page regardless of which charities I supported. Don’t they test these things before they send them out?

I was really looking forward to asking why they didn’t include articles of interest to boaters in their magazine, why their canals weren’t dredged, why the Coventry Canal (where we are now) was down to 1/3 width due to reeds in so many places, why lock paddles were languishing unrepaired, why they put up so many new, unneeded blue signs while not fixing the broken old, important, safety ones.

Could have explained

I could have explained that I understand their funding constraints, but I still don’t understand how they’re going to get more funds from all these new canal users they’re chasing. To ask why they’re selling off the family silver that attracts folks to the canals, why they’re not doing maintenance to the level required to keep boats actually moving.

But I didn’t get the chance. Another chance to get real boaters feedback, wasted. Oh well.