local authority improvement grants for boats used as liveaboards

Re: Stop bullying teecha

It wasn't a joke. It was a comment on the assumptions behind your posting.

I'm not convinced that you are ready for humour yet.
 
aargh!

Have you made this up? Looks perfickly real tho. Jeez! At least the scouser wd've had to do some flippin woodwork for his money.

Evidently I am what they call "completely out of touch" as when Tblair was told that yoofs like to buy ASBO's on the internet as a fashion item...
 
Re: aargh!

TCM Have a look at this. Leader from today's spectator. (Save you reading it in WH Smiths). /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

The Leader
Disrespect

The Prime Minister is right about one thing: ‘The liberty of the law-abiding citizen to be safe from fear comes first.’ It is indeed the first duty of the state to ensure that its citizens can live peacefully and go about their lawful business without fearing that they will be attacked or have their property stolen or destroyed by others. Mr Blair is also right to note that ‘the criminal justice system [is] failing people’, because it is failing to ensure that they can live without that fear. His intention to try to do something to improve that situation is laudable.

Unfortunately, his latest set of proposals — which go under the unlovely title of ‘The Respect Action Plan’ — is unlikely to have the desired effect. The proposals include a series of measures which aim to force parents to take responsibility for their errant and disruptive children. These include new powers to evict families from their homes and place them in new accommodation for periods of up to a year; to force them to attend classes in ‘anger management’ and ‘parenting skills’; to introduce ‘Baby antisocial behaviour orders’ (or ‘Basbos’) which will be targeted at children below the age of ten; and to increase from £80 to £100 the on-the-spot fines which the police can impose for offences such as spitting at people.

The new powers sound tough. But in fact, the laws already on the statute book give powers to restrain or detain violent, dangerous or disruptive people. The problem is not the feebleness of the existing law; it is the reluctance of the police and other authorities to enforce it effectively. Police officers are loath to tackle young thugs, not least because they fear being prosecuted themselves for using ‘inappropriate force’ if they do. It is this, more than anything else, that has handed the streets of many poor neighbourhoods over to the bullies and the vandals.

Previous initiatives from the Prime Minister aimed at trying to force the parents of misbehaving children to take responsibility for them, such as parenting orders, have not been effective instruments for improving the quality of parenting, and for basically the same reason: officials have been extremely reluctant to issue them. Fewer than 30 parenting orders have been handed out since they were introduced. The fate of the latest set of draconian-sounding initiatives is likely to be the same. The reason is simple: most of the people who will be in a position to issue them — and they are primarily social workers — simply do not accept the Prime Minister’s diagnosis of what is wrong, or his view about how to put it right. They do not believe that ‘problem parents’ need to be taught the values of discipline and respect. A new National Parenting Academy is to be set up to train social workers and others who work with families in the best ways of helping them. The intrusive meddling by state officials in family life rarely leads to its improvement. As the disgraceful record of state-run children’s homes demonstrates, a natural mother or father is rarely as bad, as cruel or as ineffective a parent as the state.

The new initiatives are tied to measures which will cut the length of prison sentences imposed for offences such as theft, burglary and vandalism. Fewer young offenders will be sent to prison, and those who are will spend a shorter time there: an individual given a 12-month sentence, for instance, will now be out within 12 weeks. Our prisons are overcrowded, dirty and fail to offer even the most elementary level of education; but what is the alternative to custodial sentences? The Home Office’s own statistics show that criminals who are given ‘community’ rather than prison sentences commit very many crimes while serving those sentences ‘in the community’. A staggering 91 per cent of the young offenders on the government’s Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Scheme, for instance, were convicted of reoffending while they were actually on that scheme. The result of the government’s latest attempt to generate ‘respect’ will not be fewer crimes but longer and more frequent conversations between criminals and their social workers and probation officers.

The Prime Minister is right to identify the loss of respect — for authority, for the law and for other people — as a critical cause of the increasing level of violence and disruptive and antisocial behaviour on the streets. The trouble is, neither he nor anyone else knows how to restore the values which have crumbled. There are many people who should not be in prison, but the only action by central government which is known reliably to reduce the level of crime is to jail criminals. Yet that is precisely the measure the government is reluctant to take. There may of course be sound reasons for not wanting to take that step. But it is misleading of Mr Blair to claim to be tackling crime and antisocial behaviour while avoiding the only measure known to diminish it.
 
Re: aargh!

well, thanks for that. I don't disagree.

But doesn't it have too much to do with this, other than "uk falling apart"? Or erm are you actually NOT a maths teacher but leadr writer for the Spectator? hm?
 
Re: aargh!

I think we may have it all wrong about this chap from the north west...
maybe he is really a cunning forumite who-reeling incredulously at the seemingly unlimited freebies available to our newer 'sylum visitors just wants a little bit back for himself to restore a fine bit of marine heritage..before the coffers of CoolBritaniaPC run dry.

I must thank him for allowing such a frank discussion to be aired on the relative merits of mentors,thinkers,educators,manipulators,scammers and producers.

What about a forum whip round for this guy and a free tow out to the Irish Sea?

And now the serious reality about the grant application process....Sorry matey, by the time you get the pennies through you will be too old to set saiil anywhere. My advice is slap down some good exterior ply and epoxy and sail off to central America where in return for your favours and expertise you can cover it all with as much teak and cheap rum as you so desire, before nipping through the old canal and off along to Oz.
 
Let me guess, you vote conservative and wear a swastika at weekends. Is it really you HRH Harry? You sound like a very bitter man. As someone who has served his country and community for many years, I feel proud to live in a country where certain individual desires are facilitated with state funding. I think funding for boat improvements should be means tested, but I see no harm in trying to get funding to improve ones life style. Perhaps you should learn to relax a bit more and learn some manners. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I fancy improving my lifestyle with a new BMW. How much state funding do you think I should get for that?
 
\"Let me guess...\"

Good guesses, sir!

Perhaps i can joing the guessing game? Let me see ...you're a "human factors specialist" according to your bio, which means not quite clever enough to do medicine or engineering. Your silly post confirms that you are indeed dim, and also that you have either a shite boat or probaly no boat at all. Which is why you quite fancy the idea of free boats and boatfixing, innit?

Your twitish wide-ranging proposal means that if someone spends all their worldly wealth on a knackered boat, then we should all give them some money to fix it up. Whereas if someone else carefully gets a survey, and buys an appropriate boat which is well within their means - no grant for them.

But that's actually REWARDING someone who perhaps fails to have a survey, fails to sort the boat themselves, fails to budget properly or otherwise acts hastily or stupidly, and who risk merely "not having a nice boat" by their silliness. Where would that stop eh? Next thing the state would be rewarding dim people who are so daft that they actually boast about their silly job title in their bio. Very fortunately, this doesn't seem to have happened yet.

Actually, one thing the state *already* does is help people with their manners, at school. That's why most people - although evidently not all - already know that the MOST ill-mannered thing you can do is to openly correct other people's manners.

They'd also teach what "manners" actually are, too. They're a way of acting or behaving. Which isn't actually something that one can evaluate through the written word. One simply cannot possibly be bad mannered in making a post. I'd have though you know this sort of thing. Are you *sure* you're a Human Factors Specialist? Really? Oh well, fair enough.


Anyway, back to the subject matter.

Anything and everything that is state funded means that it is law for everyone to contribute as determined by Government, and to put people (even little old ladies) in priz if they don't pay up. Which is fair enuf for hospitals, police and defence and schools and even for universities that teach tosspot courses like media studies or human factors. But not for boatfixing, in my humble opinion.

And certainly not stae fuding "individual desires" in general as you suggest, which might easily mean government funded swastikas, or government-funded sharp sticks to poke daft people in the eye. Wait a minute - sharp sticks actually ARE free, and there's a Forestry Commision specifically to grow thousands and even millions of sharp sticks - all just perfect for poking daft people in the eye! Interesting, eh?
 
Re: \"Let me guess...\"

Very restrained, I thought. You're obviously going soft. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
As I understand it, any UK residential dwelling is entitled to apply for an improvement grant. Best of luck to you, but luck is probably what you will need as some local authorities will duck high and low to avoid an 'unusual request',... not on the form, so to speak. They will say the budget is used up, not yet allocated, overspent on last years fiscal shinmahidy, anything to put you orf!

I can not see why you should be treated any differently than an ordinary land based residence, but my gut feeling is that you undoubtedly will, and in the process, you will also come up against a whole bunch of ignorant, narrow minded prats. Do your best and go for it.

P.S. It might be a good idea to make sure you are registered for Council Tax first!!!

Mike
 
..but can a boat, which is going to be sailed off to Australia as soon as the work is done, be classified as a "residence"?

If it looks like a cruising yacht, is equipped as a cruising yacht and is intended to be a cruising yacht, then is probably is a cruising yacht.

If this looks like a scam, feels like a scam and sounds like a scam..............
 
Nice one. Clarification tho - are the ignorant narrowminded prats the ones paying tax to fund the grant , the public workers refusing to readily hand out the grant pronto - or the others ahead in the queue who might use up all the home improvement budget that is essentially designed to improve housing stock in an area, rather than get spent on boats or camper vans or liveaboard aeroplanes or anything else that people might kip in?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Other threads that may be of interest

boatmike
Merry Fisher 695
Replies
3
Views
230
Bouba
Bouba
S
How much does re-upholstery cost?
Replies
15
Views
579
Mr Googler
Mr Googler
cyberkryten
We finally bought a boat - Merry Fisher 895s2
2 3
Replies
41
Views
1K
Cathy*
C
M
Galeon in the 50ft Class – Hoping to Borrow a Bit of Owner Wisdom
Replies
4
Views
384
Elessar
Elessar

Share this page

Top