There's a very good piece in the Guardian today by Mark Milner http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2088678,00.html
and a supportive leader short enough to quote below. This all adds to the pressure! In praise of ... canals Leader Saturday May 26, 2007 The Guardian Thousands of Britons will be using the bank holiday weekend to explore the countryside by canal. No great distances will be covered, for narrow boats cruise at just four miles an hour and journeys are regularly interrupted as the craft are guided through locks. But the rhythms of that 15-minute ritual - the cranking of the windlass, the flooding of the water and the steady opening and shutting of the giant gates - are deeply relaxing, and there's no need to travel that far to get away from it all once you float away from the asphalt. When the network was dug in great haste two centuries ago it was about business rather than pleasure: canal water was the lifeblood of the early industrial revolution, carrying goods to market and materials to the factory gate. The heyday was brief, though, for waterways soon lost out to rail. Disrepair and decay set in, and in the 20th century towpaths were often not pleasant places to walk. The new millennium, however, brought investment and has seen the reopening of canals, such as the Kennet and Avon, and the Huddersfield narrow. As the boat show at Crick, near Rugby, will prove today, life on "the cut" is more vibrant than ever - the total of 29,000 boats exceeds the tally even in the canals' industrial heyday. Having overseen this extraordinary renaissance, British Waterways is understandably dismayed at whispers that it could be sold off or broken up. Rather than risk another Railtrack, ministers would do well to ensure BW's steadying hand remains on the tiller. -- Nigel Stanley
