Inland Waterways 'national trust'.

boatone

boatone

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From the Waterscape newsletter:
"IWA National Festival & Boat Show

BW’s Boat licensing team will be at the show, this year in the main IWA marquee – stop by to renew your licence or sort out any queries you have, or just to say hello and share any thoughts on current waterway matters.

Directors Nigel Johnson and Simon Salem will be hosting Customer Meetings on the Saturday at 10.30am and Monday at 12.30 in the main Festival Theatre - a chance to hear about the plans to establish a ‘national trust’ for the waterways or to ask about any waterway operational matter."
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If you look at the last paragraph you will see that BW are positively promoting the 'national trust' issue at the festival. Shouldn't the EA be doing something rather than just keeping quiet?
Makes it worse that they are actually doing it on our patch !!!!
 
boatone said:
From the Waterscape newsletter:


If you look at the last paragraph you will see that BW are positively promoting the 'national trust' issue at the festival. Shouldn't the EA be doing something rather than just keeping quiet?
Makes it worse that they are actually doing it on our patch !!!!
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A missed oportunity, rumour has it that neither B1 or AQ will be there either :(

BW is sort of independent, whereas the Thames is part of EA wich is part of DEFRA; so there are 'political' implications.

I don't even know that EA will have any representation at the show..
 
TrueBlue said:
A missed oportunity, rumour has it that neither B1 or AQ will be there either :(

BW is sort of independent, whereas the Thames is part of EA wich is part of DEFRA; so there are 'political' implications.

I don't even know that EA will have any representation at the show..
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:confused: Er no - both the EA and BW form part of the DEFRA Family. Both raise some revenue from self funding and from Grant in Aid.

Also the reason that the EA are very quiet is because the Thames Region and Southern Region are going to merge into one huge region called South East Region. If Navigation stays with the EA, then the whole management of the Thames will be carried out from the EA Wallingford Office not Reading.


C
 
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Rumours from a lockie on Sunday said the big decision will be made in October on navigation responsibility, does anybody know anymore about this?
 
Chris_d said:
Rumours from a lockie on Sunday said the big decision will be made in October on navigation responsibility, does anybody know anymore about this?
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Following is from an email from David Foot (Inland Waterways Team, Defra) to Louis Jankel who, amongst other things is a rep for the IWA Thames area.

Date:* Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:39 +0100 (BST)
Louis
Just to let you know that we hope to hold 3 focus groups dealing with EA navigations. There
will be two focus groups near EA waters (Thames) for visitors and charity givers to test the
'cause' + propensity to donate. A further focus group will be held with EA boaters to test the
'cause' + propensity to donate and governance. I must emphasise that these are intended to
generate ideas and views and are not intended to only focus on getting agreement to any
proposals. We need ideas from people on all possible options to help make a civil society
body work.
I am sorry we are having to hold these and other focus groups (around 18 will be held across
the country hopefully) when some will be away on their boats but we need to be ready to
respond to any instructions from ministers to consult quickly once the outcome of the
spending review is known.
David
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Note that "A further focus group will be held with EA boaters to test the 'cause' + propensity to donate and governance."
Who will be on that focus group would be good to know but I suspect it will be the usual stakeholders consulted by the EA.

As I understand it, October is the date for the governments spending review
In 'The Spending Review Framework', the Government published details of the process and principles that will underpin the Spending Review., This will be published on Wednesday 20 October 2010 and will set out spending plans for the years 2011-12 to 2014-15.
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Whether that means firm decisions of the detail will be announced then or just departmental spending allocations God only knows, but you can bet your shallow bottom dollar that the devil will be in the detail. Whatever is decided I cant help but feel it will take a long time to actually implement.
 
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I think we need to be paying more attention to this new notion of 'civil society' rather than 'government' - in other words the idea seems to be 'what can the people get involved in doing themselves' rather than 'what should government tell people to do'.

BW to some extent already benefit from this with the extensive volunteer working groups that champion and help to restore the various canals. Should we (could we) be volunteering to assist with maintenance at mooring sites etc? What else could we users volunteer to do that would improve the resource ?

All very nebulous and likely to get nowhere without a common voice rather than all the various factions that seem to exist at present.
 
While I like the idea of volunteers helping the maintenance of the river and its mooring sites I wonder at the possibilities of a different ethos. I've done a few messy (and fun) days with WRG over the years and suggest that the image of bringing something dead and rotten back to vibrant life has a different impression than apparently messing about with something Joe Public can't see is below par. "Why are you cutting down that bush?" might sum up an issue.

But, if EA would like to give me the keys to a dredger and access to a conveniently located spoil dumping ground I'm good for some voulnteering. Failing that, I can lay bricks and mix concrete quite badly, as opposed to not at all, happy to join in with the Make Boveney and Bray Locks A Decent Size gang:-)
 
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