On 14/10/06, Will Chapman
Please, if you have an axe to grind by all means write
to BW but whilst this campaign is on I think it makes
sense to put the BW-bashing on the back burner on this
list and uk.rec.waterways, regardless of which point
of view is correct.
Deal? Do we have a truce?
I'm afraid I do not agree with you, Will. This is the only forum which we
have as boaters to discuss issues of importance to us. The Save Our
Waterways campaign has my 100 per cent unqualified supporrt, and I only wish
I wasn't so infernally busy at the moment that I couldn't do something more
practical to help it.
But nevertheless there are serious questions to be asked among ourselves
about why this situation has come about, and for better or worse some of
these are not answered by saying simply that DEFRA cut the cash, didn't it,
that explains everything. Well, no, it doesn't. Maybe an organisation so
committed to a policy of self sufficiency might have been better realising
that it was never actually going to BE self sufficient, and that the public
grants on which it depends needed defending more robustly before they were
cut, not just afterwards.
If we are going to have a truce, as you call it, then maybe the truce should
be across the board. I spend a lot of time visiting IWA branches around the
country; I have some general sense of the attitude of boaters, not just
towards these latest cuts, but to Robin Evans policy generally. It is asking
much, for instance, to ask boaters around on the Sharpness and Gloucester to
put what you call 'BW-bashing' on the back burner while they are having
their services cut and bridge keepers made redundant for reasons that have
nothing at all to do with the DEFRA cuts.
This is the biggest challenge facing the waterways for many years. And you
want to call for a moratorium on discussing it?
Steve
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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