Think canals and you think 'laid back,' 'chilled,' and 'relaxed.' You don't think obsessive, narrow-minded, intolerant and bossy.
When I started boating it was because I wanted something that forced me to slow down and stop becoming irritated at the unimportant and the British canal system has delivered that. Most of all I have had great enjoyment from the idiosyncratic population of the waterways, the characters who use, inhabit and deal with the problems of boats.
Boats with character on the bottom end of the Grand Union
Now I hear a lot more complaints about almost everything. Some people are as disparaging and unpleasant about continuous cruisers and live-aboards as others, in earlier times, used to be about Jews or immigrants, and with little reason other than either jealousy or bigotry.
Others complain about the number of boats moored on-line because it means they can't rush past in their hurry to get somewhere. I always assume these are the people who can afford the fees charged by marinas and think every canal user has the same resources.
Surely the whole point of boating on the canal system is the slow pace? What does it matter if it takes you an hour more to get somewhere?
Now we have the row over moorings on the River Lee in London. BW claims they are not carrying out social cleansing because of next year's Olympics when they decide to crack down on the people who use boats on the river, threatening large fines and making extremely aggressive noises through their inaptly titled Head of Boating Sally Ash.
I would like to know whether any of the local towpath users or visiting boaters are upset by these people? Certainly different rules seem to apply to mooring limitations in London as a whole, but in my time there I have not felt excluded by the presence of a floating population. They are part of the scenery and usually pleasant and sometimes fascinating individuals.
Of course, you actually have to be travelling slowly enough to get off your boat and meet and talk to people to appreciate that.
Unfortunately British Waterways senior managers rarely talk to anyone, never mind real boaters, and are sadly out of touch. If they were not they would realise just what most boaters actually feel about them retaining their grossly inflated salaries whilst sacking far to many real workers on the bank.
And if you think this attack on boaters is limited to London and the Olympics, think again. BW has just announced plans to set up more @local Waterways Partnerships@ in the Midlands and North West following on the one on the Kennet and Avon where Sally Ash managed to become heartily disliked by boaters and local councillors.
These partnerships aim to give a say to local councillors, and other parts of the 'establishment' in the running of their local canals. You can bet your life there will not be a live-aboard boater, a continuous cruiser or anyone who actually uses and knows the canal system represented on such boards.
Headed by BW's regional managers and, I suspect backed by the wealthy, shiny boat brigade as well as the sort of people who want to live by canals without the inconvenience of having real boats on the water, they are likely to focus on making life as difficult and expensive as possible for those who have made the canals their way of life.
Expect more restrictions, more fines and more attempts to make canals fit for the denizens of expensive marinas when they bring their boats out for the annual airing.
Sally Ash strikes again! The poorly titled Head of Boating for British Waterways has acquired a reputation as something of a pit bull when it comes to dealing with boaters.
She seems to find it difficult to relate to boaters in any way and usually fails to understand how valuable boats are to the waterways. Many report the feeling that her ideal is a canal and river system with all the boaters neatly penned in marina.
Now, as the Guardian reports, she is using the Olympics as an excuse to hound live-aboard boaters off the River Lea.
If British Waterways is to become an effective charity it will need something more than local councils and the 'great and good' to enable it to keep the canal system going. Most of all, it will need the support of those people who know the canals and rivers best, the people who spend most of their lives on boats on the system.
Sally Ash has done little in her time in office but alienate not just boaters but several of the voluntary organisations linked with the waterways. I wonder if she hasn't become more of a liability than an asset at a time when British Waterways needs friends like never before.
Two things would help - the departure of Sally Ash and the over-paid directors like Robin Evans halving their enormous salaries.
It was the Conservatives under Thatcher who first persuaded us to believe as a country that when any sort of work or service went out to the private sector for tender we were in some way saving money.
That was the same belief that led to the selling off of our railways, coal mines, water, electricity and gas industries to say nothing of our steel and even our airports and ports.
We see it now in every organisation that has any link to government and British Waterways has been a prime example. In order to tick the box of competition they not only use contractors to repair the canals and canal structures they even brought in the ludicrous moorings auctions before distorting them by setting ridiculous reserve prices to avoid boaters getting a mooring for £10.
The results are also all around us. We no longer have a coal industry because it was not sufficiently profitable for the private owners and we now import coal and are having to pay ever-increasing prices as we compete with the Chinese and Indian markets.
Our multitude of railway companies are interested solely in profit and, in addition to rising fares whenever possible also fail to invest in their rolling stock. In stead of the entrepreneurs we were promised we have companies who treat rail franchises as cash cows.
If we still owned the water and power companies then at least their enormous profits would be going into the public purse and there would be more of that invested in green energy.
As for contractors on the canal system, it still seems that BW and others have a problem with some simple arithmetic. Contractors employ staff on the lowest possible rates and use the materials that give them the biggest profit margin.
If British Waterways used their experienced staff, who are not paid much more than basic rates, and utilised their expertise they would not be paying the contractors' profits and would get a better job from staff who would know they are valued.
The same is true throughout the system but now we have Cameron wanting everything to be up for grabs by private companies so the taxpayer can pay for their profits - including the NHS, education and any other service the poorest of our community needs.
That will not be cheaper for the taxpayer and it certainly will provide a lower and nastier service, ruled by the profit motive, for every user of every school, hospital or even job centre.
That will take us to a grubby commercial world in which the spivs and cowboys of business, especially those who donate most to Tory party funds, controlling every aspect of our lives, with the government able to wash its hands of any responsibility. "We will, of course, investigate whether the private firm concerned has been ripping you off," they will promise and, of course, nothing will happen.
If we allow this we deserve to be taken to the cleaners - and we surely will be.
A developer is aiming to put a 90 berth marina on the Montgomergy Canal, which will eventually link Britian's busiest canal - the Llangollen - with the pretty Welsh border towns of Welshpool and Newtown. The marina, at Queen's Head near Oswestry, seems to have the backing of the local council and British Waterways but it will prove to be a headache for the naturalists and ecologists who see the canal as some sort of linear nature reserve rather than a navigation for narrowboats. Currently there are severe restrictions on the number of boats able to use the canal and parts of it are within a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Rare plants and insects thrive in the weedy margins of the seven mile stretch of canal currently opened and boaters are limited to speeds as low as 2mph in places with one-way traffic in some sections. It is difficult to see that limit, or the current limit of a few hundred boats a year surviving the influx of a large marina. It may well improve the prospect of opening the currently closed section with another 11 mile stretch around Welspool which is already re-opened. If that happens, the number of boats will increase dramatically as Welshpool will become as popular as Llangollen as a destination. It is difficult to see the harmony of plants insects and boats surviving the return of the Montgomery canal to full working status but both the local councils and British Waterways need the extra income.
It was the Thatcher regime that decreed public sector was bad and private good – and thenwent on to sell off, mostly to Tory supporters, the railways, British Telecom, the electricity and gas companies and the coal and steel industries.
All, we were assured would be much more efficient run for profit in the private sector.
She also brought in what has become a touchstone of national and local government and every public institution from schools to hospitals – the idea that better value comes from contracting out ( or outsourcing as the modern terminology has it) as much as possible. Once again, market forces would be the solution to all our problems.
Thirdly she began the process that removed almost all public oversight and regulation from the banking sector, allowing them to go their own way in the name of ever bigger profits and bonuses.
The results are all around us. As the financial sector collapses from an overdose of greed and stupidity, the UK is left without any substantial manufacturing industry because it has been flogged off and then sold on to foreign buyers before being closed as ‘uneconomical’
Most people are suffering financially because the privatised energy industry is focused on profit and refuses to pass on falls in wholesale prices while it can feather its own nest with increased income.
In the public sector, private contract and private contract either fails to deliver – like the schools payment firm which has just been fired – or costs twice as much as originally planned, as can be seen from virtually every IT contract the government has let.
The result is that we are suffering from an overdose of private greed, disguised as ‘market forces’ and even the Labour Party has been unable, until now, to utter the heresy that market forces are not the answer to every problem.
Thatcher created a demon out of those ordinary people who worked for British Steel, British Rail or cleaned hospitals as employees rather than exploited contractors. She told us it was wasteful to employ people directly and much better to have the flexibility of contractors you could fire when necessary.
Now is the time to question that dogma in every sphere. If we had a regulated financial system we wouldn’t have bought bundles of doubtful debt from America.
If we had nationalised power companies we would not only be able to smooth out the price hikes they have demanded but their profits could have gone into the public purse to pay for the renewable energy development we now need.
Almost every public institution would be better served by direct employees who developed loyalty and understanding as a result of being paid and treated fairly – to say nothing of having a proper pension to look forward to. Who doubts that hospitals were cleaner when the workforce was not provided by dodgy ‘hygiene’ firms?
The mantra of capitalism that private ownership and competition results in the best of all worlds is being proven to be a big lie across the world and in our own back yard. The Labour party under Tony Blair repeated that mantra at every possible occasion to reassure the middle classes but that doesn’t make it right and there is no longer a need to do so.
The Thatcher revolution has ground to a halt amidst debt and bankruptcy because it never took account of the nature of those who ascend to the top of a system based on greed that allows the terminally stupid to control the future of others.
It is time to turn back to the concept of public service, loyalty, fairness and stability that was inherent in our system when the major elements of our economy were owned and controlled by all the people of this country, not just by a few rich individuals, many of them without any real ties or loyalties to Britain.
If it makes you nervous you don’t even have to call it socialism – let’s have a new creed of pragmatism that says never again will we let the greedy bastards take control of our work, health, education, homes and money.
MY inner miser grudges handing money over to oil companies, multi nationals and governments and, having been brought up in the village where the high-priest of self sufficiency, John Seymour, learned many of his country skills I have always liked the concept of not being dependent on the system. That’s why a car-free life has real appeal.
On the other hand, since my first Morris 8 Series E rattled around the Suffolk Lanes 40 years ago I have also been in love with the ideal of freedom that you always hope driving a car will bring you, that ability to go wherever you want at the drop of a clutch – and that means I have been a petrol addict most of my life.
Miracles do happen - and for the past five months I have been virtually car free – and now I don’t want to go back to my addiction.
Over the years that myth of freedom on the road – when experience says the reality is delay, frustration and expense - has resulted in a wide variety of vehicles passing through my hands, among them a glorious Humber Hawk, a rusting Fiat 127, a new Land Rover Discovery V8 and an almost new Jaguar Sovereign and several less memorable ones in between.
Sometimes life smacks you in the face and insists you re-assess things and for me it was a heart attack at 50, followed by a by-pass operation. Millions go through it, but it brought me up short and we moved out of running a pressurised business, downsized our lives and decided to turn our narrow-boating hobby into a lifestyle.
For the past five years we have enjoyed the freedom of living on our narrowboat on the English canals, able to slip the mooring and head off at a steady three or four miles an hour whenever my journalistic work allows. It has been the beginning of a withdrawal from the addictions of modern life such as TV.
But we had still not shrugged off the tyranny of the car. Having realised (belatedly for me) that it isn’t what you earn but what you spend that decides the quality of your life, I was willing to accept that older, smaller and cheaper cars were necessary to help achieve that financial balance. For some time I ran an ageing Citroen Xantia and my wife an even older Fiesta.
One of the children needed a car and we realised that we could – probably – cope with just the one, especially as I was writing more and more from the boat . We became a one-car couple.
That wasn’t too difficult but, even at the bottom end of the car market you can indulge yourself and I persuaded myself that as I was not longer driving 30-40,000 miles a year I could buy an old, N-reg, Volvo 850 estate – ideal for shifting bags of coal and wood for the boat’s stove and for grandchildren – as well as being big and a bit luxurious in an old fashioned way.
If virtue has its own reward so does economy and I was really pleased to have spent just £1,000 on the Volvo and proud of selling the old Citroen Xantia for £400 – giving me a £600 car – in fact, I boasted about it. But it did mean we were moving further and further away from that obsession with personal motor transport, almost without noticing.
Then the opportunity presented itself to spend several months out on the canal system in our boat, as all my work could be done with the aid of a mobile broadband modem attached to the laptop.
We travelled up to Skipton in the Yorkshire Dales for several weeks, leaving the Volvo at the marina and, on our return, moved our home moorings to Derbyshire, taking the car an hour or so by road before spending over a week doing the same journey by canal.
Within another week or two the car was again abandoned, at its new home, and we headed off again, finally remembering to declare it off-road with the DVLA a month or so later.
Our journey meant we would have to shop on foot and travel by public transport from wherever we moored for the night and over the weeks we travelled around the Midlands, Birmingham, Shropshire and the borders Wales.
After 40 years as a driver, never without a vehicle for more than a few days, could we cope? I even bought a folding bike on e-Bay, in brilliant yellow, from an IKEA employee who had been given it by the company as a way of establishing green credentials.
The bike hasn’t been used much, one trip down the towpath ending in a puncture as my substantial weight on top and a large rock with a sharp edge beneath proved too much for the tyre.
Instead we have covered more ground on foot than at any previous period of our lives and walking shoes and rucksacks have become the necessary accessories of our lives.
Mostly we have shopped in small stores in the villages and towns through which the canal took us and it has been a delight. We shop more often; there is a limit to what you can carry in a rucksack, even if you fill the two foldaway bags that are always stored within it.
Not all small shops are delightful and not every local butcher has a supply of wonderful meat – but enough of them are and do to make it worth finding out. Of course, it costs more to shop like that and we didn’t abandon the supermarkets completely.
When we arrived near a small town, like Market Drayton on the delightful Shropshire Union canal, we might well gather all our shopping bags – about half a dozen – trudge the mile and a half into town and raid the local Morrison’s before getting a taxi back to the boat.
And public transport is not wonderful in rural areas, although it was fairly cheap and simple to get a train from Staffordshire into Manchester when I needed to visit an office on business.
Five months later we are back at our Derbyshire marina and rather pleased with ourselves as we have walked further than ever before and enjoyed not having the car.
The freedom means you can stop at a pub for a drink and not worry about the breathalyser, you can see so much more as you walk, as well as hear and smell the world around you, and you are not handing large lumps of money to government and those big businesses on a regular basis.
We have complained at times about the cost of taxis, buses and trains but the biggest shock came when we looked after our daughter’s house for a week, borrowed her fuel efficient modern car - and spent £65 for three-quarters of a tank of diesel.
And now we are back, are we going to stay car-free?
We have thought about it, and we would really like to, but the reality is that our children are between an hour and two hours away in three different directions, to say nothing of grandchildren, and making those journeys on public transport would be expensive and time consuming.
Those may just be excuses, but our cowardice means that we have put the Volvo back on the road. It was an exercise that cost well over £500 without any fuel, as it needed work done to pass an MOT.
The irony is that, after complaining about train and bus fares, we did it without thinking twice about the costs of car ownership. On top of that £500 there is another £400 for insurance, a further £100 for the second six months of tax and probably £600 at the least for petrol in coming months.
That is £1,600 – cheap motoring by many people’s standards - but it would buy a lot of train fares, to say nothing of new walking shoes.
Perhaps we will be a bit braver in a couple of years’ time when I hit 60 and the free bus pass makes the economics even more compelling. I know we could do another car-free six months next year – and maybe we can manage longer as our new base marina is in a small town with two rail stations, regular bus services and even reasonably-priced taxis.
At present we still walk when once we would have driven and we still like to get trains. One on our doorstep takes us into delightful Buxton in the Peak District in less than half an hour and Manchester city centre is the same journey time the other way.
We constantly measure the fares against the cost of taking the car. Most of the time it is more expensive for two to take the train than for two to use the petrol – but we don’t allow for the fixed costs of the car.
Longer journeys can be either dramatically cheaper or more expensive, depending on the whims of the ludicrous train pricing system that day, but they almost always take considerably more time – seven hours to wonderful Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast, rather than three in the car.
Once the car has gone, of course, we can measure our total spend on public transport against what the car would have cost us over a year and the sums may make more sense, they certainly will once we both have our freedom passes and senior rail cards.
PEOPLE are queuing up to take money from us in order to tell us how to run our homes in hard times – and it’s understandable when you consider what a throwaway society we’ve become - the average household throws away between £15,000 and £24,000 worth of food in a lifetime.
Although it’s almost certainly very annoying, the truth is that anyone over a certain age has a great advantage in dealing with even a short and minor recession.
If you were brought up in the decade after World War 2 you will have had drummed into you that nothing must be wasted, from patching clothes to making bubble and squeak.
My late mother would have been horrified at the idea that food is just thrown away because we can’t be bothered to do something with it before the sell-by date (not that they had any such thing in those days).
Most of the baby-boomer generation – at least those with parents on a working man’s wage - were brought up to enjoy slow-cooked cheap cuts of meat, eat offal and not turn their noses up at a suet pudding.
It is ironic that the combination of the threat of a recession with a new consciousness of our ever-increasing impact on the climate and resources of the world has brought back to our homes a sense of frugality.
Today’s generation of parents have not been informed by a decade of rationing and war and have been trained to get their information from the web or some sort of expert.
This brings us back to people selling economy and frugality. Just on the market is a £12.95 tome called The Use-It-All Cookbook, in which Bish Muir offers over 100 recipes and ideas for using your leftovers, and using up that sad-looking carrot or half tub of yoghurt at the back of the fridge.
Soups, stews, pies, and risottos sit alongside the information to transform leftover bread into bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, and make a chicken go from roast dinner into stock, soup, risotto and a sandwich
There is also advice on planning your shopping, storing your food, basic tools for the kitchen, and essential ingredients for the store cupboard; and each recipe features the comparative average cost if bought in the supermarket.
The book’s publicity clams that changes in people’s shopping habits and fears over food hygiene, means food wastage is increasing at a rate of 15 per cent every decade – so take that to its logical conclusion and we will soon be throwing away more than we buy.
I can make one money-saving suggestion of my own – you could save £12.95 by going and talking to your granny or anybody old enough to remember what true poverty and food shortage was really all about.
Collect a few of their recipes and tips and you may well make some real savings.
Journalist for the past 44 years. Worked on daily newspapers, in TV news and on radio. Won awards for investigative journalism and been a political specialist, interviewing every PM between Wilson and Major. Run two PR companies. Now freelancing a drifting around the UK canal system.
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