Canal Cuttings (29)

This is just one of a series of around fifty old newspaper articles that I have been reading. I have been researching from old newspapers and magazines. Covering the last 200 years or so of life on the inland waterways. With particular interest in the major issues of the day that were effecting the canals. The most active periods for evaluation and change, has always been just prior, during and shortly after the two world wars. It should be remembered that between the wars the ownership of some of the canals changed hands as the railway companies bought up the waterways to get reduce competition. What is not clear is the effect this early form of asset stripping had on the viability of the inland waterways. Its good to take a look back at what people were saying and doing in the past. Most surprising of all are some of the problems that beset the canals back then - are still prevalent today. Reading old newspapers can throw up some rather interesting stories. Here is what we would call today a public interest story.

Caveat: Some of the articles are difficult to read and even using modern electronic  scanning and text conversion methods. The odd punctuation, word or character may have been transcribed in error. 

The Mail
Saturday 21 February 1948

Canals Will Be Busy Again

From Adrian Ball

London. — The bustle and colour Britain's canals knew in the eighteenth century are returning. Shortages of coal, railway wagons, and coastal shipping have brought them back into the news.

The canals, state-owned from January 1, are the subject of a special report being prepared for the Government. It is expected a plan designed to speed up waterway traffic and attract back to the canals many, of the 40,000 war-scattered people who lived on them before 1939 will result. Already Diesel engined monkey boats are replacing the traditional horse drawn barges. These grimy little craft look out of place in the picture postcard surroundings of the canals, but their speed they can tow a train of barges from London to Birmingham through the intricate system of locks in 48 hours makes them invaluable.

Inland ports are likely to be developed extensively under the new State ownership. Reorganisation of the entire canal system along 'railway track' lines would follow. Many of the families who for years have lived on the canals will be 'grounded' by modernisation schemes. Today there are 2,149 miles of canals and waterways in Britain, forming a gigantic St. Andrews Cross, with Birmingham as its apex, and London, Bristol, Liverpool, and Hull its extremities. The earliest canals go back to Roman times, but most of them were formed during the race for coal in the eighteenth century.

Spring Summer Cruise 2014 ❸❸

Beeston Lock to Castle Meadow VM

Overnight weather was quite cold.

Morning: Overcast start to the day. Early breakfast as we need an early start as Mags has to catch a bus to Sheffield. Underway, with travel made easier by the good flow of water through Beeston Lock. Arrived at Kings Meadow by 10 am its a short walk to the coach station. Managed to get a load of washing done as we cruised along.

Afternoon: Had the washing out to dry several times between the showers. met up with a couple of boating friends who joined us on the moorings.

Evening: More world cup football.

Wildlife:
Birds: House Sparrow, Dunnock, Magpie, Starling, Blackbird, Mallard, Mute Swan, Coot, Waterhen, Grey Heron, Wood Pigeon, Robin, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Common Tern, Arctic Tern, Sedge Warbler, Swallow, House Martin and Swift.

Butterflies: None
Bats: Pipistrelle
Dragonflies: Banded Demoiselle, Common Demoiselle.

 

Today's Total.

Miles: 4.2
Locks: 0
Swing / Lift Bridges: 0
Tunnels: 0
Pump Outs: 0
Engine Hours: 2.0
Solar Panels: 7 Ah

 

Accumulated Total.

Miles: 1874.3
Locks: 1141
Swing / Lift Bridges: 295
Tunnels: 26
Pump Outs: 20
Engine Hours: 2870.2
Solar Panels: 15438 Ah

A Little Tug

I was amazed to see this small radio controlled model boat pulling a row boat with three children and one adult on board. But if you look at who was having all the fun - Maybe there were four children aboard after all.

The little tug was able to maintain the whole set up at a steady strolling speed. I did not say anything to the Memsahib, but I want one!

Vanity Unfair.

News of the state of the inland waterways (More asset and infrastructure misery. NBW 12 May 2014) does not make for particularly good reading. Neither does the seemingly deliberate obfuscation over the release of the report given in January to the trustees. I suppose that if its only bad news followed by even more bad news.  It would not reflect so well on the feeble endeavours of those who have been entrusted with maintaining and managing a national asset. This begs the very obvious question what else are the trustees allowing to be swept out of sight under the carpet?

A report that suggests that the ongoing lack of maintenance will lead to unacceptable risk to public safety, and in particular towpath users is very worrying. This goes some way to explaining the ongoing work in brush cutting and the patching in some places and complete restoration in others. So why would you not want to release the report and then be in a position to demonstrate that the trust is responding to the need. The belief that papering over the cracks will make the problem go away. I can only assume is as a result of some misplaced vanity.

I don't want to believe that as the trust is deliberately holding back the information. Because it has previously embarked upon another mission. A mission to attract ever more visitors onto the towpaths. We all know that footfall numbers are one of the ways that government measures the trust's performance. The trust could not be hiding from the public and government the scale of the risks from using the towpaths. Yet these two diametrically opposite positions are - seemingly inextricably linked.

That of course is a best case scenario - because we are now living in an era of the Health and Safety Taliban - which, when combined with a nanny state does not bode well. What is blindingly obvious is that the trust never did have enough funding in place in the first place. Which I can only assume is as a result of another's misplaced vanity. So it's not surprising that the escalating number of infrastructure failures now require special measures. Special measures like a national appeal to the public for additional funding by donation. Suggestions that recent major failures are 'rare occurrences' has already been debunked if only be their frequency. The performance of such appeals should also go some way to alerting the trust to where it stands with Joe Public and the change in his pocket.

There has to be openness, transparency and accountability. Its time for the trustees to front up - and ensure the timely publication of information about the scale and nature of the problems.  Its a bit like going into the confessional - you will be able to utter a few platitudes in lieu of a few Hail Mary's. Then we can all get down to moving forward. My worry is that as we teeter on the funding precipice. As the brown stuff arrives at the fan.  Its easy for a trustee to just resign and walk away. If you can't embrace openness, transparency and accountability its time to go. Its time for a paid membership of the trust where openness, transparency and accountability can be ensured.

Spring Summer Cruise 2014 ❸❷

Castle Marina to Beeston Lock VM

Overnight weather was quite cold and the cloud cover continued into the morning.

Morning: Breakfast and then headed for Beeston Lock onto the River Trent. 

Afternoon: A gentle cruise which was an uneventful passage along the Beeston cut.
 
Evening: Moved the boat along the moorings as the boat next to us was playing loud music.

Wildlife:
Birds: House Sparrow, Wren, Carrion Crow, Rook, Magpie, Starling, Blackbird, Mallard, Mute Swan, Cormorant, Coot, Waterhen, Grey Heron, Wood Pigeon, Chaffinch, Robin, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Common Tern, Arctic Tern, Sedge Warbler, Swallow, House Martin and Swift.

Butterflies: Meadow Brown, Comma
Bats: Pipistrelle
Dragonflies: Common Demoiselle, Banded Demoiselle

 

Today's Total.

Miles: 4.2
Locks: 0
Swing / Lift Bridges: 0
Tunnels: 0
Pump Outs: 0
Engine Hours: 4.4
Solar Panels: 345 Ah
Litre of diesel: 54.5

 

Accumulated Total.

Miles: 1870.1
Locks: 1141
Swing / Lift Bridges: 295
Tunnels: 26
Pump Outs: 20
Engine Hours: 2868.2
Solar Panels: 15431 Ah

Boating Lottery

Is the day of the boat for hire coming to an end?

I ask this because almost on a daily basis, I read about one waterway or another being closed. We get the odd stoppage because the police request a closure for one reason or another. However, the majority seem to be as a result of CaRT's ongoing plan to save money by implementing a starvation plan that cuts to the bone the maintenance budget.

Time and again we hear of hire boats being trapped behind a stoppage.  Which must create a huge number of problems for any hire base. Never mind the holiday maker and their family. Imagine if you have paid out a significant amount of money to take your family away on holiday. Only to find the that what you might have planned to do is sunk by an avoidable stoppage which is due to ignored maintenance.

I wonder if any of the television 'rogue holiday' type programs would like to take up the plight of the holiday boater. Compare this with money spent on a package holiday. If you were to witness as many infrastructure problems as the Inland Waterways are subjected to. Your  holiday would be ruined and you would be wanting to claim a significant part of your money back. After all, CaRT would find it hard to defend the refund claim. Because year on year there has been a deliberate underspend on maintenance.

As CaRT are busy trying to attract the public to the rivers and canals. Those unknowing people seeing the boats and thinking to themselves I would like to do that as a holiday activity with my family.  This piss poor performance must be building up into another public relations disaster of epic proportions. 

So should CaRT be offering to pay hire boaters whose holidays are spoilt a refund?

As a boat owner, I want to enjoy the boating season by surprisingly doing some boating. I don't want my plans to be at the mercy of the vagaries of CaRT's cutbacks in spending. Today, I was talking to a boater who wanted to travel a significant part of the system. In his plans he had invested in a gold licence. However, he is now waiting for the upper Trent lock repair to be completed.  The ongoing delay will certainly be already starting to curtail some of his boating activities. 

My expectations are that there is a period in the year when the canals will be subjected to restrictions. Yet in the old day, no such maintenance period existed. A time when essential planned maintenance is carried out. However, due to the 30,000 plus known items in the maintenance backlog. We are playing the boating lottery. A lottery when we might want to go from A to B. But then we also have to play the lottery again because we also have an expectation that we can make the return trip from B to A! 

So the question is - should boat owners who get delayed by a stoppage in the boating season.  Be able to claim a rebate on part of our boat licence fee? After all, paying a refund might help CaRT to realise - boat owners are not a captive cash cow. The cash should flow in both directions. We pay for a service and CaRT rebate if they fail to provide. I am beginning to wonder, does CaRT really want boat owners as paying friends?

Canal Cuttings (28)

This is just one of a series of around fifty old newspaper articles that I have been reading. I have been researching from old newspapers and magazines. Covering the last 200 years or so of life on the inland waterways. With particular interest in the major issues of the day that were effecting the canals. The most active periods for evaluation and change, has always been just prior, during and shortly after the two world wars. It should be remembered that between the wars the ownership of some of the canals changed hands as the railway companies bought up the waterways to get reduce competition. What is not clear is the effect this early form of asset stripping had on the viability of the inland waterways. Its good to take a look back at what people were saying and doing in the past. Most surprising of all are some of the problems that beset the canals back then - are still prevalent today. Reading old newspapers can throw up some rather interesting stories. Here is what we would call today a public interest story.

Caveat: Some of the articles are difficult to read and even using modern electronic  scanning and text conversion methods. The odd punctuation, word or character may have been transcribed in error. 

The Times
30th September 1958

Britain's Canals Pose Problem

By Derek Moon

Mr. Harold Watkinson is a brisk, efficient, even ruthless, business man. He is also Britain's Minister for Transport. From Whitehall, he watches over everything that moves, from the latest Comet airliner to the rustiest canal barges. However it is the barges that are worrying him now. They have been worrying someone or other since just after the Battle of Waterloo. At that time, Britain had about 3,000 miles of canal, no railways and no lorries. The canals carried all the heavy freight. When the railway came, four main canal systems continued to thrive. These linked great inland centres of industry to the ports of the Thames, Wash, Humber, Mersey and Bristol Channel.

Soon, however, the vast inland network connecting London with Birmingham and the North' began to lose trade to the railways. It has gone on losing it ever since. Mr. Watkinson is not the first to have looked into the canals' position. Select committees studied them in 1841, 1872, 1881 and 1883. The chief result of their labours was a law designed to stop railway companies, owning bits of canal, from closing them to traffic and destroying canal competition. This law is so confused that It, is virtually impossible to this day to close any canal by legal means.

In 1909, a Royal Commission under Lord Shuttleworth reported on Britain's canals. They sensibly wanted the main sections improved and unified, the rest allowed to die out. Nothing was done. In 1920, Mr. Neville Chamberlain had another go. He did not even get as far as a final report, and no action was taken on an interim report, again advising unification. Then came Sir Arthur Griffith Boscawen in 1928. He reported that lorries were helping to take traffic from the canals. The main canals should be unified. Nothing happened.

At last unification came in 1947, when most canals were handed over with the railways to the British Transport Commission. However, the Commission, in its turn, appointed a Board of Survey to see what it should do with the waterways. The board reported in 1954 that the sea-going canals were still paying and should be preserved, a second group might be made to pay if improved, and a third group "should be scrapped. However, then Mr. Watkinson thought of some thing else transport was not the only use to which canals were being put. In 1956, he appointed a committee of inquiry to report on the future of the canals as a means of transport and also as a useful institution in other ways. The committee has  reported. Again they say the main group, which pays, should be kept going, purely for the barges.

Other uses.

f However, they want the second group given a new lease of life both for transport and other jobs which have become almost' more important, such as reser voirs, drains and providers of sport to canoes and fishermen. Although this group is bound to make a loss, the position is not as bad as it looks. "The presence of weed on the surface, overgrown towpaths, leaking lock gates, rotting hulks of sunken craft, deserted premises and the absence of traffic can make a waterway appear more decayed than it really is, say the committee. The rest of the canals, they say, should be closed to traffic and either "eliminated" or "redeveloped" as plain sewers, waterworks or fish-ponds. As canals they are finished. This seems like sound sense. Why, then, is Mr. Watkinson worried

Divided.

There is one snag. The committee of eight are agreed on what should be done, but they are split evenly on the question of who should do it. Four say the reprieved canals stay with the British Transport Commission and that a new "Waterway Redevelopment Board" should be set up to deal with the rest. The other four maintain that British Transport is too big to have charge of the canals. They should all be handed over to another new body, an Inland Waterways Corporation. This would both run the good canals and dispose of the bad. Both sides make it clear that "redeveloping" a canal will be fraught with al most insuperable difficulties. So Mr. Watkinson can either set up yet another committee to decide which of the two sides is right, or be the first Minister for 150 years to cut through their verbiage and show how ruthless, efficient and brisk he really is.

ENGLAND'S WASTED WATERWAYS

This is just one of a series of around fifty old newspaper articles that I have been reading. I have been researching from old newspapers and magazines the last 200 years or so of the inland waterways. With particular interest in the issues of the day that were effecting the canals. The most active periods for evaluation and change, has always been just prior, during and shortly after the two world wars. It should be remembered that between the wars the ownership of some of the canals changed hands as the railway companies bought up the waterways to get reduce competition. What is not clear is the effect this early form of asset stripping had on the viability of the inland waterways. Its good to take a look back at what people were saying and doing in the past. Most surprising of all are some of the problems that beset the canals back then - are still prevalent today. Reading old newspapers can throw up some rather interesting stories. Here is what we would call today a public interest story.

Caveat: Some of the articles are difficult to read and even using modern electronic  scanning and text conversion methods. The odd punctuation, word or character may have been transcribed in error. 

The Maitland Daily Mercury
Saturday 6 December 1913

ENGLAND'S WASTED WATERWAYS.

The conference of municipal corporations has passed unanimously a resolution moved by Mr. Neville Chamberlain in favour of the state acquisition of canals. The English canals fell into the hands of the English railways, and the English railways were allowed to remain in the hands of private companies. Large national interests were sacrificed to small private interests. Very much the same arguments as justify the nationalisation of railways; and the experience of Germany teaches that both canals and railways contribute best to the wealth and well being of a nation when they are both alike under the direct control of the state. Germany, Belgium, and France have developed their, system of internal water traffic of recent years parliament has with the development of their railways, while our total tonnage of forty millions has remained stationary for twenty yours (says the Pall Mall Gazette). We are simply throwing away our national advantages. With our great ports mostly situated on the estuaries of rivers which can be easily canalised, if they are not canalised already, and with our great manufacturing centres grown up inland in proximity to the coal fields, the cheap transport which canals afford is a most important factor in industrial success. How many of our canals are deserted and stagnant ditches; others are as dry as the Sahara. We hope Birmingham will take the lead and awaken the country to realise that we must continue to develop the work of our careful fathers if we would keep the position which they gained for us at the head of the world's trade.

Ideas (1)

During the winter, I replaced the worn out grate in our stove. We have a villager puffin rated at 4kw. Its a small stove that keeps the boat quite warm even in the coldest weather. However, the cast iron grate seems to last about two winter seasons before requiring replacement. The cost of the genuine part is £85 inc vat. Shopping around, on-line the cheapest cast iron replacement I could find cost £55 a time plus postage. 

So this time I decided to look around for a replacement. But this time one made to improve performance. I asked a friend who has a fabrication business if he could make me something to do the job to my own design. He agreed and so I have had a couple of new grates made out of high carbon heavy plate steel. I also had the slots run from the front to the back rather than from side to side. It is much easier to use the poker to keep the grids clean. This layout certainly makes removing stove ash much easier.

So at the end of its first winter season the grate displays little sign of being used and is performing quite well. A pair of my new grates cost me less than the price of a single manufacturers replacement. 

The original cast iron stove grate as it came to the end of its life, always sagged in the middle before eventually fracturing. I had the slots cut shorter in length to leave a wider centre support. I am hoping that the thicker centre section will help to reduce sagging and fracturing. 

The slots have also been plasma cut slightly narrower than the slots on the cast iron version. Which means that small pieces of partly burnt solid fuel tends not to fall through into the ash pan. 

The problem was that sometimes the small bits of partly burnt, solid fuel material fell through the slots into the ash pan. It was then slowly burning in the ash pan. This could cause a small leak of the fumes of combustion into the cabin through the front air vent. Now that the material remains in the firebox until fully burnt, we have not had a recurrence of the leakage problem.

If your stove grate is getting to the end of its life and is ready for replacement. Think about having one made up by a jobbing fabricator.  The fabricator who produced the grate for me is located in Sheffield. I can supply his details or alternatively you can shop around for a fabricator that is more local to yourself. 

Measure the length and width of your old grate. Then knock off four millimetres on the measurements to allow for any expansion. I also discovered that it was much easier to remove the grate when cleaning the firebox out. Look for any weak point's that the stove grate may have. Then try to come up with a design that will improve the working life. Then have a replacement and a spare made.

Spring Summer Cruise 2014 ❸❶

Beeston Lock VM to Castle Marina

Overnight weather was quite warm and from first light the sunshine was warm.

Morning: Up early, quick breakfast, walk dogs, say goodbye to friends. We were off by 7:30 and the first job was to wind the boat in the lock approach. A steady plod along the Beeston canal. There were plenty of people biking the towpath at high speed and even a few joggers getting in a few miles before the day really warmed up. On the one tight bend with boats moored we met a boat coming the other way. Soon we arrived at Castle Marina where Rosie is to have her bottom blacked. The slipway buggy soon had us on dry land and the process started with a scrape to remove any deposits. This was then followed by a power wash before moving Rosie onto a hard standing.

Afternoon: I tackled a tiller bearing problem that had needed some attention for a while. As the boat dried off in the hot sun I was pleased that the signs of any deterioration of the previous blacking were minimal. The buildup of canal crud and weed on the waterline make things look much worse than they are. Tomorrow, its a rub down with a wire brush to remove any loose flakes that the power wash might not have loosened. Two other boats have joined us, for the same process to be carried out. 


Evening: A quiet night watching some tennis and world cup football.

Wildlife:
Birds: House Sparrow, Wren, Carrion Crow, Rook, Magpie, Jackdaw, Starling, Blackbird, Mallard, Mute Swan, Cormorant, Grey Lag Goose, Canadian Goose, Coot, Waterhen, Great Crested Grebe, Grey Heron, Wood Pigeon, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Common Tern, Arctic Tern, Sedge Warbler, Swallow, House Martin, Swift and Oyster Catcher.

Butterflies: Meadow Brown
Bats: Pipistrelle,
Dragonflies: Banded Demoiselle,Common Demoiselle.

 

Today's Total.

Miles: 4.9
Locks: 0
Swing / Lift Bridges: 0
Tunnels: 0
Pump Outs: 0
Engine Hours: 1.6
Solar Panels: 220 Ah

 

Accumulated Total.

Miles: 1870.8
Locks: 1141
Swing / Lift Bridges: 295
Tunnels: 26
Pump Outs: 20
Engine Hours: 2860.4
Solar Panels: 15306 Ah 

Canal Cuttings (27)

This is just one of a series of around fifty old newspaper articles that I have been reading. I have been researching from old newspapers and magazines. Covering the last 200 years or so of life on the inland waterways. With particular interest in the major issues of the day that were effecting the canals. The most active periods for evaluation and change, has always been just prior, during and shortly after the two world wars. It should be remembered that between the wars the ownership of some of the canals changed hands as the railway companies bought up the waterways to get reduce competition. What is not clear is the effect this early form of asset stripping had on the viability of the inland waterways. Its good to take a look back at what people were saying and doing in the past. Most surprising of all are some of the problems that beset the canals back then - are still prevalent today. Reading old newspapers can throw up some rather interesting stories. Here is what we would call today a public interest story.

Caveat: Some of the articles are difficult to read and even using modern electronic  scanning and text conversion methods. The odd punctuation, word or character may have been transcribed in error. 

Morning Star

Saturday 6th July 1912

ENGLAND'S CANALS AND THEIR TRAFFIC

The canals that wind about between London and the Midlands were most exceptionally busy during the recent strike. But probably a good many people would be surprised to know that many hundreds of barges are constantly going up and down these leisurely inland waterways, both by day and night and that they still succeed in competing with the railways. The fastest canal barge needs a week to go from London to Birmingham and back, but the number of such barges increases every year.


THIRTY YEARS ON BARGES.

So says Mr R Damper, who works as a missioner on the canals and has his headquarters at the Boatmen's Institute Brentford. Probably he knows more about canals, and their people than anyone else in the country, he has worked, for nearly 30 years among them, and in a report just issued he says that last year, he spent 1109 hours in visiting the hundreds, of barges that the public know only from the train.

Canal boatmen, he said, live a strangely separated life. They live only on their barges, and every night is spent in the utter silence and darkness of their floating homes. Usually their children are born in the little cabins, and they grow up on the towpath and eventually become boatmen, themselves. Almost as soon as they can walk they help in driving the horse. Their customs and dress are wholly different from those of the land, population, with whom they have but little intercourse.

The education of canal children has always been a problem, and no entirely satisfactory solution has yet been found. There are at least 300 families living on the canals and they are always moving. How are the children to be educated.

In many cases they are not educated at all. There are scores of young men, who are quite unable to read or write. Mr Damper visited several barges, at the canal slide at Brentford recently, and in most cases was prevented from giving any books and magazines by the inability of the crews to read them. Every time he had to say, let me see, can you read? and usually the answer was a reluctant No. They were young men of little over 20, and it was clear that they by no means enjoyed admitting they could not read.

One young giant said apologetically, it isn't my fault. I was walking behind the old horse along the towpath when I ought by rights to have been at school. Never mind, said Mr. Damper who is some thing of a poet you can always read the book of Nature, and if you read it properly you needn't want much also. But great efforts are made at the Boatmen's Institute to ensure that the present generation of canal children shall be educated. A school is held there, and there, are already 288 names on the books, but the attendance fluctuates considerably, the highest being 53 and the lowest - one.

ONLY PICTURESQUE  PEOPLE LEFT.

Mr Damper emphasises the importance, of the educational side. He has nothing but good to say for the canal workers. He finds them as fine a body, of men and women as any in the country. He knows them all, and is welcome in every cabin. He says that they are the only pictures people left in England. Certainly their only rivals the Gypsies of the road are rapidly disappearing. The agricultural labourer, too, is no longer, the artist's subject that he used to be. The fisherman is not guiltless of the bowler hat. Only the canal workers have still a costume and character of their own.

Canal Character

There are many people who provide those most welcome, extra services for boaters, on or around the canal side. Here is one such individual. Please support them in passing.

Farcical lack of transparency.

My current Kindle read is a book that shines a light into the dark corners of our Government. Any ideas I might have had that we now live in more democratic and enlightened times are blown away by this book. We need transparency for the state and privacy for the citizen; instead it is the wrong way round. The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy. Written by Heather Brooke, is the second book in a trilogy made up of the following titles "Your Right to Know", "The Silent State" and "The Revolution Will Be Digitised." 

The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy. Its back cover description says it all. "Revealing that the MPs expenses scandal was just the tip of the iceberg. Heather Brooke exposes the shocking and often farcical lack of transparency at all levels of government. Heather is a journalist and freedom of information campaigner. She helped to expose the MPs expenses scandal, which culminated in the resignation of House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin." heather Brooke is Professor of Journalism at City University, London's Department of Journalism.

Wikipedia says:-

In October 2004, Brooke started to request details of MPs' expenses, via the House of Commons Freedom of Information Officer, Bob Castle. However, the information was in a bulk format, and could not be broken down to individual MPs. In January 2005, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 came into force, allowing members of the public to request disclosure of information from public bodies. She started out requesting all 646 MPs' expenses, but the Commons claimed that would be too costly.

Too costly to us the tax payers or too costly to the cheating lying MPs. Heathers book shines a light on the putrid heart of what we have been led to believe is British democracy. And the myth of being the mother of all parliaments. The book exposes just how little real information is disclosed to the electorate by MPs elected local government officials, the police services and even the judiciary. The public are entitled to transparency and openness about how money is spent, and how decisions are made. The growing secrecy of the British political establishment is a major threat to civil liberty and effective governance.

Heather then asked for request for travel information. (refused) Heather then asked for information on second homes for the details for all MPs, but this was also refused. Then heather asked for the names and salaries of MPs' staff. Which was (refused) this time personally by the Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin. I wonder why 'Gorbals Mick' refused the request. After all, the tax payer was paying out for second homes that would reap a huge profit when sold later. What was there for the speaker to hide?

As a nation we pay for huge amounts of data to be gathered. This is essentially done on our behalf. Much of the information collected is about us. Yet we are often denied access to that information. We are presented with a public relations press release that has been subject to the work of a spin doctor. Information is given that bears little or no resemblance to the true facts. Because if the news is bad which MP wants to publish and be associated with it. 

Heather Brooke then reduced even further her FoI request. Which she now limited to just ten MPs. The requests were for party leaders and a few ministers. After again being refused, she made an appeal to the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas. Her request was considered for a year. The Information Commissioner ordered the release of some information. Once again our beloved MPs closed ranks. The house of commons authorities objected to this order. They cam up with a fudge in the form of the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill which sought to exempt MPs from the FoI act. The amendment bill was ultimately withdrawn prior to second reading in the House of Lords because peers were unwilling to sponsor the bill.

After referral to an Information Tribunal, it was ruled that Commons authorities must release the requested information. The Speaker 'Gorbals Mick' appealed the decision. Directly challenging the requests for publication of expenses for Gordon Brown, David Cameron, John Prescott, Menzies Campbell, Margaret Beckett, George Osborne, William Hague, Mark Oaten, George Galloway, Barbara Follett and Ann Keen. Plus three former MPs including Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and John Wilkinson. The appeal was heard at the High Court of Justice, which ruled in favour of releasing the information.

The court said: "The House of Commons expense system has a shortfall both in terms of transparency and accountability. We have no doubt that the public interest is at stake. We are not here dealing with idle gossip, or public curiosity about what in truth are trivialities. The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs' salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers."

No appeal was lodged against the High Court ruling. Subsequently the Leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harman, tabled a motion to exempt MPs' expenses from being disclosed under a Freedom of Information request. Labour MPs were placed under a three line whip to force the motion through the Commons. When large scale public opposition emerged. The proposals were ultimately dropped. The Commons authorities announced that full disclosure of all MPs' expenses would be published on 1 July only after the European Elections due to take place in early June.


Before the election The Daily Telegraph obtained and began publication of unedited details of all MPs' expenses. Including address details which showed the practice of "flipping", that is, changing the registered main address for various tax and expense fiddling purposes. Cleaning moat's and duck houses were amongst the more unusual claims. The disclosures led to several MPs resignations and it then became a national scandal. The fallout from the expenses scandal continues today. The perception of distrust by the public towards MPs, is only second to the level of distrust we hold for bankers. The rest as they say is history. Heather Brooke's ability, and persistence, to get at the truth, places her at the cutting edge of modern investigative journalism.

Spring Summer Cruise 2014 ❸⓿

Nottingham Steps VM to Beeston Lock

Overnight weather was quite cool but the early sun soon warmed everything up.

Morning: The longest day of the year. Breakfast early and then headed for the lock onto the Beeston cut. Kings lock proved to be a problem as the bywash pinned the boat to the side. Had to open the sluices into the lock to reduce the bywash pressure. 

Afternoon: The sunshine picked up and it became very  warm. Stopped for a shopping trip at Sainsbury's before continuing on our way. A few boats on the move today. Round Nottingham cycle event taking place on the towpath.
 
Evening: Went for a pint to cool off at the marina pub at Beeston Lock.

Wildlife:
Birds: House Sparrow, Wren, Carrion Crow, Rook, Magpie, Starling, Blackbird, Mallard, Mute Swan, Cormorant, Grey Lag Goose, Canadian Goose, Coot, Waterhen, Great Crested Grebe, Grey Heron, Wood Pigeon, Chaffinch, Robin, Blue Tit, Common Tern, Arctic Tern, Sedge Warbler, Swallow, House Martin, Swift.

Butterflies: Meadow Brown
Bats: Pipistrelle
Dragonflies: Common Demoiselle, Four Spot Chaser, and Banded Demoiselle

 

Today's Total.

Miles: 9.2
Locks: 4
Swing / Lift Bridges: 0
Tunnels: 0
Pump Outs: 0
Engine Hours: 9.5
Solar Panels: 166 Ah

 

Accumulated Total.

Miles: 1865.9
Locks: 1141
Swing / Lift Bridges: 295
Tunnels: 26
Pump Outs: 20
Engine Hours: 2858.8
Solar Panels: 15086 Ah

Changing a maggot into a fly.

In the lead up to the transformation of British Waterways into the Canal and River Trust. Which one wag at the time likened the change of a maggot into a fly. The inference being that neither was wanted! Instead of an ending to the long running hostilities between the old BW board and boaters. There was a bit of additional discord created amongst the Waterways community. There was a even touch of the clandestine 'cloak and dagger' when an attempt was made by the transitional team, for CaRT to be made exempt from the FoI legislation. 

This attempt at a clandestine exemption spectacularly backfired. In the main due to political pressure being applied by inland waterways activists. This act was viewed by many as a deliberate attempt to avoid any openness and transparency. So before CaRT came into being people were already being alerted in advance of the future direction. That rather than an all singing and dancing all encompassing change to a charitable ethos. There would be a continuation of obfuscation by the fledgling trust. I now believe this was a very significant missed opportunity. 

Now we have a situation where some parts of CaRT are exempt from FoI and other parts are not. In a perverse sort of way - the Freedom of Information - that CaRT wanted to avoid, has now come full circle. In the perfect world, CaRT would collate and publish all FoI requests that they receive. Along with their replies creating a knowledge base of queries that people could consult. CaRT with its myopic view chose not to. Adopting this one simple act alone could have given some credence to Richard Parry's promised change. An opportunity for wearing the mantle of being an open, honest and transparent charitable trust. 

There has been much written over the years about the lack of transparency. Often questioning the accuracy and veracity of any information provided by the management of the old British Waterways Board. This perception seems to have carried over into the new Trust, along with the old BWB management personnel. Published facts and figures are often challenged because different people give different information.

As a result, another website now fulfils the role. Which is a public website that hosts many of the 'Freedom of Information' requests that are made in the UK. 'What Do They Know' is a place where you can see many thousands of such requests that are made each year. WDTK replaces the unwillingness of some to publish the requests. So you are after all, able to share the requesters experience. Not only that it makes it much easier to make such FoI requests. You can also see working examples of requests.

Now here is the rub, rather than being a last port of call. A FoI request is beginning to be seen by some as the first port of call. It is seen as reducing the length of time required to illicit a meaningful answer. There are well over 200,000 FoI requests hosted through WDTK which are in the public domain. Anyone can comment on the individual requests. FoI requests then become a living, growing history of the issues. 

Quote WDTK website: 'Canal & River Trust is subject to Environmental Information Regulations and also subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 with respect to functions inherited from British Waterways. The Canal & River Trust have undertaken to voluntarily release information where they can regardless of whether they are obliged to do so.'

The 'What Do They Know' website also highlights the length of time taken by CaRT to supply a meaningful answer.  WDTK currently holds information on 186 Freedom of Information requests that have been made to the Canal and River Trust. Only 39 requests have been successful and a further 41 have been partly successful. Around 50 requests have been refused. Around 50 others remain unanswered or unclassified.

When people use the What Do They Know website their request can be seen by large number of people. Not only those with an interest in the inland waterways. The FoI request also turn up in web searches. You could also get additional feedback not from CaRt but from other comments and opinions on your FoI request, left by other individuals. There may also be other individuals who are pursuing the same or similar lines of enquiry as yourself. You may be able to exchange information for mutual benefit. As usual, CaRT have missed yet another golden opportunity to demonstrate the promised open and transparent access to information. 

Canal Cuttings (26)

This is just one of a series of around fifty old newspaper articles that I have been reading. I have been researching from old newspapers and magazines. Covering the last 200 years or so of life on the inland waterways. With particular interest in the major issues of the day that were effecting the canals. The most active periods for evaluation and change, has always been just prior, during and shortly after the two world wars. It should be remembered that between the wars the ownership of some of the canals changed hands as the railway companies bought up the waterways to get reduce competition. What is not clear is the effect this early form of asset stripping had on the viability of the inland waterways. Its good to take a look back at what people were saying and doing in the past. Most surprising of all are some of the problems that beset the canals back then - are still prevalent today. Reading old newspapers can throw up some rather interesting stories. Here is what we would call today a public interest story.

Caveat: Some of the articles are difficult to read and even using modern electronic  scanning and text conversion methods. The odd punctuation, word or character may have been transcribed in error. 

Rockhampton Bulletin
Monday 24th September 1924

WASTED WATERWAYS.

WORK FOR MILLION MEN.

To the average Briton the word 'canal' conjures up a vision of a tow-rope, a sagging horse assisted by a slower donkey, and a shouting bow legged, stick-whittling lad, whose mother sits on the helm of a barge with a baby on one arm and a half darned stocking on the other.

During the last eight years our canals have fallen largely into disuse. In many instances they have fallen into actual decay. Yet, strange to say, during the last forty years or so France has expended something like one hundred and twenty millions sterling on her internal waterways. Her canals interconnect all her chief rivers. It is easily possible to penetrate into the remotest districts without resorting once to road or rail. On the Continent there are canals capable of floating barges with a carrying capacity of over a thousand tons, whereas the biggest barge we possess is hard put to it to carry ninety tons. Moreover, we possess less than 300 miles of artificial waterway capable of taking a barge of even ninety tons; whilst, of a total canal mileage of some 4000 miles, half will take a boat of sixty tons, and the other half baulk at anything exceeding twenty!

Is transport so cheap in this country that we can afford to give our water transport possibilities the cold shoulder. Ask the farmer or market gardener. He finds that unless his farm or garden is close to a big town, foodstuffs from Denmark, Holland, France, and even from America and the Argentine, can be run up the Thames, Mersey, Clyde, or Humber as cheaply and often as expeditiously than he can transport them to the town by rail. In other words, he finds that foreign produce can undercut him because it has been transported by water and not by land.

Give our farmer the same chance cheap, expeditious, reliable, transport, and the balance will turn in his favour. A quickened market will produce a quickened and increased supply, which will not only benefit the farmer but increase the security of ourselves and our prosperity. At the same time, a cheapened transport will reduce the price of foodstuffs.

What, then, should be our policy during these times, when we hear so much talk about work of national utility which will prove the paying of a national investment when better days come round to this. To deepen and widen our existing canals; to construct new trunk canals linking up all our rivers and great ports; the reconstruction of existing canal docks and the construction of many others; The establishment of convenient delivery stations, quays, subsidiary waterways or backwaters linking up remoter agricultural districts with no main waterways; the enlargement of still existing locks; the widening of bridges in short, such a transformation of existing crude conditions  that farmers possession  of a fleet of barges to carry hay, corn, potatoes, fruit, dairy produce, fodder, and so on, to or from the canal station, will be as much a better of course as his present possession of half-a-dozen wagons.

Have we so little imagination that we fail to see this country intersected by thousands of miles of canals, on which ply roomy barges, clipper built, linked to a wire which stretches on and on endlessly, alive with electrical energy, typical of the new electric forces of an awakened people. These electrically propelled barges will enter and leave hydraulically controlled locks which a child can manipulate, take mountains in their stride, cross rivers by fine aqueducts, skirt every town en route, and establish there docks, wharves, and warehouses which will give the most inland place a hand shake with the ocean and the whole earth.