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Post by Jim on Oct 20, 2019 9:11:10 GMT
Surely if incorrect advice has been given in this case, then it has been given by the local lock keeper rather than by CRT as an organisation? CRt should be employing competent staff, training, monitoring and evaluating the results of their work. Would you advocate sending someone out untrained in a 40t artic? It's only a sitting down job tho, so easy.
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Post by TonyDunkley on Oct 20, 2019 9:31:56 GMT
Surely if incorrect advice has been given in this case, then it has been given by the local lock keeper rather than by CRT as an organisation? CRt should be employing competent staff, training, monitoring and evaluating the results of their work. Would you advocate sending someone out untrained in a 40t artic? It's only a sitting down job tho, so easy. Yes, of course they should, but there's about as much chance of that happening as of me being elected as the next Pope ! The 'official' line taken by C&RT with regards to Keadby, Brentford, and Limehouse - all C&RT locks giving on to another navigation authority's waters - is that the Trust cannot be held responsible for the safety of vessels entering or on another navigation authority's waters !
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Post by Jim on Oct 20, 2019 9:53:49 GMT
CRt should be employing competent staff, training, monitoring and evaluating the results of their work. Would you advocate sending someone out untrained in a 40t artic? It's only a sitting down job tho, so easy. Yes, of course they should, but there's about as much chance of that happening as of me being elected as the next Pope ! The 'official' line taken by C&RT with regards to Keadby, Brentford, and Limehouse - all C&RT locks giving on to another navigation authority's waters - is that the Trust cannot be held responsible for the safety of vessels entering or on another navigation authority's waters ! is it possible to go out of the tide locks at a time of the boaters, can the locks be self operated, or do CRT control the locks, including times of operation. If the latter then they are responsible. I wonder if they should do a simple competence test for boaters before they let them out. Show them a picture, "what's this?" "a bridge" "ok you can go".
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Post by TonyDunkley on Oct 20, 2019 17:45:54 GMT
Yes, of course they should, but there's about as much chance of that happening as of me being elected as the next Pope ! The 'official' line taken by C&RT with regards to Keadby, Brentford, and Limehouse - all C&RT locks giving on to another navigation authority's waters - is that the Trust cannot be held responsible for the safety of vessels entering or on another navigation authority's waters ! is it possible to go out of the tide locks at a time of the boaters, can the locks be self operated, or do CRT control the locks, including times of operation. If the latter then they are responsible. I wonder if they should do a simple competence test for boaters before they let them out. Show them a picture, "what's this?" "a bridge" "ok you can go". The tide locks are operated by C&RT staff, and always have been operated by canal company or navigation company staff. The main differences these days are that the so-called lock keepers they have at the tidal locks for dishing out worthless advice to pleasure craft are, with just the odd exception, about as much use as Lord Lucan's passport. The other big change is that tide locks opening/operating hours are no longer determined by the tides. Instead of being available at any time that there's enough water/tide depth to operate them, they are, illegally, manned and operated to a timetable which more or less reflects office hours, and therefore not available for passage or haven 'on demand' every 'tide time' as they should be, and always were !
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Post by NigelMoore on Oct 20, 2019 18:49:02 GMT
The other big change is that tide locks opening/operating hours are no longer determined by the tides. Instead of being available at any time that there's enough water/tide depth to operate them, they are, illegally, manned and operated to a timetable which more or less reflects office hours, and therefore not available for passage or haven 'on demand' every 'tide time' as they should be, and always were ! The unlawful restriction on tidal locks availability was – certainly in Brentford – designedly fatal to modern proposals for new freight traffic routes. That it is a criminal offence does not faze them at all, because they have never been held to account for it. Even when licensing a permanent obstruction to half the channel of the Brent/Grand Union below the Thames Locks, the challenge to government by Lord Berkeley did but elicit the extraordinary response from Lord Adonis (Transport Secretary at the time) that the (absent) Transport & Works Order “only” provided a defence against the criminal nature of the obstruction! The fact that there was no such defence and somebody ought to have done something about it, was ignored. www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2002/2785.html Rowlands v Environment Agency 2002“ Turning to section 5 of the 1885 Act and its successor statutory provisions, they are not to be construed as conferring upon the Claimant a licence to replace any obstruction to PRN removed by the Defendant. Section 5 and (even more clearly its successor statutory provision which are the currently applicable) merely afford a defence to the criminal offence created by the same section.” swarb.co.uk/rowland-v-the-environment-agency-chd-19-dec-2002/ Cited – Rex v Lord Grosvenor ((1819) 176 ER 720) An obstruction interfering with navigation on the Thames with a public right of navigation was unlawful even if erected with the Conservators’ consent unless the Conservators were granted statutory power to give such consent. Cited – Rex v Betts ((1850) 16 QB 1022) A navigation authority’s powers to build obstructions to navigation were confined to situations where they were aids to navigation. Cited – Conservators of the River Thames v Smeed Dean and Co CA ([1897] 2 QB 334) The erection of a lock or pound lock otherwise than for the maintenance or improvement of navigation would be ultra vires by a Navigation Authority and in all likelihood a nuisance.
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Post by naughtyfox on Oct 20, 2019 19:36:05 GMT
Is it this chap? If so, I see he has 'form' on A N other site I like to read.
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Post by Mr Stabby on Oct 20, 2019 19:42:22 GMT
Surely if incorrect advice has been given in this case, then it has been given by the local lock keeper rather than by CRT as an organisation? CRt should be employing competent staff, training, monitoring and evaluating the results of their work. Would you advocate sending someone out untrained in a 40t artic? It's only a sitting down job tho, so easy. Where I'm puzzled is that in my experience professional full-time lock keepers tend to be very knowledgeable about local tidal conditions, more so than I would expect someone in an office in Leeds to be.
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Post by TonyDunkley on Oct 20, 2019 19:53:56 GMT
CRt should be employing competent staff, training, monitoring and evaluating the results of their work. Would you advocate sending someone out untrained in a 40t artic? It's only a sitting down job tho, so easy. Where I'm puzzled is that in my experience professional full-time lock keepers tend to be very knowledgeable about local tidal conditions, more so than I would expect someone in an office in Leeds to be. Your 'experience' is sufficiently limited as to be utterly worthless ! As I've mentioned earlier, . . pleasure craft being advised on tide and weather conditions by way of passage planning or making is a fine example of the blind leading the blind.
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Post by Telemachus on Oct 20, 2019 19:56:54 GMT
Where I'm puzzled is that in my experience professional full-time lock keepers tend to be very knowledgeable about local tidal conditions, more so than I would expect someone in an office in Leeds to be. Your 'experience' is sufficiently limited as to be utterly worthless ! As I've mentioned earlier, . . pleasure craft being advised on tide and weather conditions by way of passage planning or making is a fine example of the blind leading the blind. I have to agree - as a generalisation, of course. The lock keepers have a bit of paper which tells them what to do, and if you ask how conditions (eg wind, amount of fresh) might affect things, you don’t get an answer (because they don’t know).
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Post by Mr Stabby on Oct 20, 2019 20:00:07 GMT
Where I'm puzzled is that in my experience professional full-time lock keepers tend to be very knowledgeable about local tidal conditions, more so than I would expect someone in an office in Leeds to be. Your 'experience' is sufficiently limited as to be utterly worthless ! Well, you know, at least I have a boat which is so boat-like that it needs a BSS. Being mechanically clueless, a liar and a thief and stinking of sour urine isn't exactly "experience" Tony.
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Post by naughtyfox on Oct 20, 2019 20:20:07 GMT
That's a bit rude.
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Post by TonyDunkley on Oct 20, 2019 21:43:51 GMT
Yes, it is rather rude, . . but it's exactly what one would expect from a vacuous moron whose opportunities to evaluate the advice that can be had from C&RT staff at their tidal locks have been limited to nipping across the Ribble from Tarleton to go up a glorified ditch that takes boats onto the Lancaster Canal, and wrapping his awful boat round bridges on the Thames tideway because he was scared out of what few wits he has by a tug and tow coming in the opposite direction.
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Post by patty on Oct 20, 2019 23:02:52 GMT
Oh dear...
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Post by NigelMoore on Oct 21, 2019 0:59:08 GMT
Is it this chap? If so, I see he has 'form' on A N other site I like to read. That's him. His answer - “ It is, however, entirely a matter for the person proposing to carry out such works to decide whether they require the protection that a TWA order can give them.” !!!!!!! My comment at the time to Lord Berkeley - Dear Lord Berkeley
I have seen the latest question of yours answered by Lord Adonis.
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100304w0006.htm#10030455000619
I have a few comments to make:
It is true that a T&W Order is not compulsory in all circumstances; that was not the question. The question was whether it was compulsory in the identified location. A T&W Order is not compulsory, for example, within the tidal Thames navigation because the Port of London Authority has powers granted by Parliament to license such works. As a matter of common ground between the Port of London Authority and British Waterways Board, however, the identified location falls outside of the PLA’s area of authority.
So far as Lord Adonis’s reference to the inapplicability of a T & W Order “where its primary object could be achieved by an order under the Harbours Act” – the location falls outside waters governed by a Statutory Harbour Authority as defined under that Act: So what was the point of mentioning this?
Interference with the Public Right of Navigation is a criminal offence if not authorised by Parliament [through whatever channel is appropriate – in this instance the area is outside the PLA’s remit, who could otherwise have authorised it under the powers conferred upon them by Parliament, and the area does not fall under a Harbour Authority, leaving the T&W Act the only applicable avenue I know of]. As I understand his extraordinary answer, Lord Adonis is suggesting that it is entirely down to the person wishing to commit an act whether or not he chooses to do so as a criminal or as an authorised person. In the most immediate sense, of course, he is perfectly correct – as for example, if I wish to drive a car, I can do so; it is entirely a matter for me to decide whether I wish to obtain a licence first or not. The main benefit of that licence is that it provides a defence against any prospective charge of driving without such a licence [supposing I was caught] – which would, of course, be an offence.
If I choose to buy and keep a firearm, I must, if I am to protect myself against all sorts of criminal charges, first obtain a licence from the relevant authorities. It is, naturally, entirely up to me whether I choose to obtain that licence or not. In one instance I would be a criminal, in the other I would be an authorised person. To make such an obvious observation however, is hardly responsive to the question!
The simple fact remains that Parliamentary authorisation IS compulsory IF the works are not to constitute a criminal offence. To suggest that the main benefit of Parliamentary authorisation is protection of the perpetrator of an act from criminal action being taken against him is a quite extraordinary view of the matter! I would have thought that the main point of requiring Parliamentary authorisation was protection of the public from unauthorised encroachment upon their rights.
Is Lord Adonis truly at ease with the concept that compulsory Parliamentary authority can be dispensed with at the whim of an individual so long as that individual is prepared to gamble on the consequences? That appears to be the burden of his ‘answer’. I’m still trying to get my head around the motivation for such a wriggle-out.
NigelI left comment on the TheyWorkForYou site as well. www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2010-03-04a.388.4&c=25599#c25599 As someone else wrote to Lord Berkeley, concurring - Dear Tony, Nigel’s analysis of the response to your question HL2106 is very good. Does it show that HMGs attitude to the law is as perverse as that of BW? They set a bad example. It seems to me that it is a symptom of the general ‘de-regulation’ of almost everything. It has got out of control. It is not only the banks that have wallowed in the excesses resulting from de-regulation, but the excesses in a wide range of regimes and lifestyles are coming to the surface. It is a bit of a puzzle; on the one hand you have HMGs control-freakery and hundreds of new laws and statutes, and on the other hand you have the encouragement of a free-for-all culture.Lord Adonis will naturally and inevitably have passed the question on to Nigel Johnson of BW in order to get guidance on how to frame a suitable answer that would not result in embarrassing BW. The result bears all the hallmarks of Johnson's slippery expertise in evasion.
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Post by NigelMoore on Oct 21, 2019 11:09:08 GMT
What exacerbates the situation at Brentford, is that there was always free passage bypassing the Thames Locks via the original course of the Brent at high tides, whatever the time of day or night those could occur. However many years ago now BW replaced the free-flow self opening tidal sluice gates with "temporary" stop planks, pending repair of the gates, and the high bridge across was replaced with a ground level footbridge, so completely obstructing the PRN. As a consequence, the only passage now is through the locks - as obviously intended, so that BW could illegally control who came and went on this public navigable river.
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