Victor: A silly season?

THE 'silly season' in the newspaper world of old was in August, when people cleared off to pastures new for a bit of a holiday, and so news was somewhat lax, the result being that 'silly' items were included to fill space.

This is indeed something of the past, yet as far as narrowboatworld is concerned the silly season is here, as, most unusually, news—and even comments—is not forthcoming, hence the scarcity of updates.

Mind you it's been a good year for news, with Canal & River Trust, now known to all as Cart, sorry CaRT, keeping our writers well supplied, giving us a grand total of 3,397,834 'Content view hits' as our server calls them, working out at 9,309 a day. Those are what it is able to calculate.

Keep to the facts

I'm hoping that this New Year will bring a sea change in the way CaRT doles out its own statistics, that we all must now be aware are ridiculous. Personally I just do not see the point of it all.

I'm wondering if this new boat owner survey is going to be used for a similar purpose of providing more suspect statistics. Which is why perhaps boaters are telling us they are just not bothering completing it. Was it Stalin who once stated 'I don't care who votes providing I count them'.

Mind you, CaRT would be in good company as even the BBC has been found out to be fiddling the votes sent in for its programmes.  And though it has bugger all to do with boating it was obvious to most that the best 'Strictly' dancer was the woman off Coronation Street, but do you think for one moment 'they' would let her take the trophy. No way José. The reason of course why we are never told the actual voting numbers.

Good lad

Our Mick Fitzgibbons gave a good review of 2013, well covering the happenings of the year, but I do wonder if lessons will be learnt from the mistakes of the past.  We can but hope.

Mick may be pleased to learn that one or two boaters have suggested he should be CaRT's new Chairman!  Could be—for really the present one is well past his shelf life.

Kicked into touch

The absolutely useless Waterways Partnerships should really be kicked into touch. They do absolutely nothing for the waterways, yet CaRT blithely doles out £325,000 for them—to fritter away as they will!

A sum that would be better spent on the waterways surely.

Victor Swift