David: CaRT on the ball

IF THE Notices I receive from CaRT regarding closures and emergencies are anything to go by, then they seem to be doing a pretty good job with the problems caused by the floods.

The frequent notifications of fallen trees are quickly followed by a notification that the problem has been sorted, even where access was difficult. I have received regular notifications of flood lock closures and their re-openings, while the Don Doors have been up and down like mad. The difficult (and doubtless expensive) removal of the sunken boat on the Gloucester & Sharpness seems to have been done very efficiently.

Pump-out

One notice did rather irritate. It concerned the pump-out at Bull's Bridge Marina and stated that pump-out cards could no longer be obtained from the marina office, but were available from a machine. However, the machine apparently only takes coins.

This is daft—those cards cost £15; how many people have that much money on them in coins? Hardly anyone, I would suggest, so the machine is of little use and even if it were used it would rapidly become the target of thieves. When pump-out machines first appeared, they were coin in the slot—£3 would you believe—and were frequently robbed, which is why they changed over to cards.

Enforcing the rules

Enough has already been said about CaRT's eviction policies. Personally, I'm all in favour of it enforcing the rules and I share the view that CaRT should not be acting as social workers. There are enough of those already; indeed the proliferation of 'agencies' seems to be part of the problem, as there are so many of them that they overlap, compete with each other and pass the buck, so that problems often slip through the gaps.

CaRT should not be wasting its scarce resources appointing someone to deal with social problems.

David Hymers