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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2020 20:22:40 GMT
Shocked to see this boat has disappeared. The towpath is covered in detritus (probably the deck and roof furnishings) but there is no sign of the boat at all - I even moved closer to the bank in case it had been sunk. Foxy must be delighted. Bellringing at Acton? met x I've bought some lip balm for fox, hopefully I'll bump into him and show him how it's used.
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Post by NigelMoore on Jan 8, 2020 20:37:54 GMT
It could be something as simple as the BW/CRT culture of deliberately refusing to enforce byelaws. Not a byelaw that is relevant, but s.9 of the 1983 Act. Far simpler than the s.8 process immediately preceding it. However the point of exercising such a power is maintaining the waterways (including towpaths) free of obstruction. Consequently, it does not meet the criteria applied by CaRT for taking action. There is nothing in it for them.
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Post by samsam on Jan 9, 2020 2:38:12 GMT
A Straight question.
Regarding the boaters who are arrogant, offensive or dumping their clart everywhere, should they not be nice to all the other boaters by desisting from these practices?
Why must the majority once again suffer at the hand of the minority?
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Post by samsam on Jan 9, 2020 5:07:29 GMT
Name and shame time?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2020 9:00:55 GMT
There have been several notable projects in the history of England - I hesitate to say the world - which were all about cleaning up the environment, perhaps most notably the efforts of the eminent Victorian Sir Joseph Bazelgette (I once wrote an extended essay concerning his life and works - it was a faeces thesis). Before that, there was the noble trade of the gong farmer, whose unenviable task was to empty cess pits and trawl the streets with a horse and cart scraping up dung.
Here's a amusing extract from Wiki: The penalties for not disposing of waste in the approved manner could be harsh. One London gong farmer who poured effluent down a drain was put in one of his own pipes filled up to his neck with filth, before being publicly displayed in Golden Lane with a sign detailing his crime.
Its an evocative image.
These days we have various municipal rubbish collection processes with varying degrees of efficacy. I mention them because they certainly seem to function more effectively in more affluent areas. So is it that richer people are more conscientious or poor people produce more trash? Whatever the case, there is a correlation that connects poverty with rubbish.
There is also a correlation between an abdication of responsibility and a lack of effective penalty for antisocial habits. In Hong Kong, for example, there is a very high population density and you might expect things to be less than perfect as a result of that one factor. Bur the reality is quite different, and not because Chinese people are inherently more conscious of their personal responsibilities, but because there is a massive fine levied on transgressors which is actively enforced and everyone knows it. I can't see how a fly-tipping campaign can be enforced on the canal though.
Some canal dwellers are mentally ill. Some of them are physically unwell. I can't help but feel that the owner of the boat with the rubbish so old it had its own eco-system was in some kind of slow-motion crisis. Perhaps whomever was ostensibly in charge had come to the end of their ability to live independently. Perhaps he or she was dead. Or maybe whomever it was is a whacko who takes pleasure in eliciting disgust in others in much the same way that mentally ill people sometimes lose all sense of appropriate behaviour in their toilet habits, or allow themselves to smell so offensively that most give them a wide berth. If I'm honest I don't think I would have wanted to investigate either.
As for CaRT, they are between a rock and a hard place on this one. Provide more rubbish collection points? They get fly-tipped by non-boaters. There's a segment on London Boaters just now about a barge that has been treated as a garbage scow when it is nothing of the sort, and some have complained CaRT have been slow in emptying it... It doesn't matter how many rubbish disposal points CaRT create, there will never be enough.
Is the real issue that no-one wants to take responsibility for anything anymore? The council privatises rubbish collections so when it all goes wrong they can say 'its not our fault'. The poor 'choose' to live in squalor. CaRT fails to police hundreds of miles of wilderness to the satisfaction of the pious. A loony dies on his boat and the only objection raised is the smell.
Out of sight, out of mind.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2020 9:11:42 GMT
Suspect one way to resolve it will be to arrange for it to become non feasible to legally live on a towpath unless you move very regularly like every two days or something.
My pet theory is that at some point the canals will be "taken in hand" and slum clearance will start with lots of publicity.
For that to happen you need to let it become a slum first. This has already happened in some places. The rubbish in the hedge problem has existed for decades but more recently some areas have become quite bad, with dangerous waste piled up on towpaths. It's getting a bit pikeyesque and nobody likes pikeys.
People don't want that.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2020 9:15:08 GMT
Out of sight, out of mind. That part becomes progressively more tricky the more popular canals become as linear parks.
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