What has two years brought?

JULY 2014 was an important anniversary and I cannot understand how it passed me by without a big celebration. Yes it was the second anniversary of the formation of the Canal & River Trust, writes John Sloan.

I, like so many, saw it as the dawn of a new age time for change. In my eight years of continuous cruising I cannot remember being quite so pleased to see change.

What has changed?

So here we are after two years and what has changed? What has been delivered? Now I am sitting here thinking very hard and struggling to come up with very much, so I have gone back two years to look at the promises or should I say blurb issued at the time.

So here is the first bit I found:

To mark its launch, the Trust has unveiled its first appeal, 50 projects across the nation that will breathe new life into towpaths and riverbanks. By pledging money or time people can get involved in projects such as creating new habitat for rare water voles, planting linear orchards for people and wildlife, and restoring neglected towpaths.

Missed them?

Have I missed the 50 projects? or should I be counting all the changes to visitor moorings as part of these projects? Linear orchards!! Well I am not quite sure what a linear orchard is. Now this one really made me smile 'restoring neglected towpaths'. That one I have definitely missed; all I see now is neglected towpaths overgrown and in many cases dangerous. I guess they are good if you like to step off your boat into the unknown, but that is not too good for the more elderly boaters.

Oh and this one:

And The Co-operative Bank will offer those who enjoy or live on the waterways the option of supporting the conservation work of new Trust through everyday banking products.

Maybe the less said about that the better!

Who runs the waterways?

Next we come onto the question of who runs our waterways in this new age. Well I am not quite sure where to start on that one. We have The Trustees, then we have The Council with about 40 members, we have 13 Waterways Partnerships, Navigation Advisory Group, oh yes then we have a bunch of people in Milton Keynes headed by Richard Parry, so no wonder some of us get confused!

So do we have a better system now or am I being naive and expecting too much? What I see is a lot of unnecessary changes that seem to come about with no logic or reason. A lot of PR telling me how much better things are. I see an Enforcement Department that is not fit for purpose and cannot even do the basics of enforcing those boats we all know that are out there that do not move from one day to the next. Overgrown towpaths and a lot of unhappy boaters.

Ah well things can only get better—or worse.