NN Editor John Sadler speaks

The ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ has rapidly given way to winter, hopefully not of discontent.

Meetings have recently taken place at which the Canal and River Trust seem to have taken note of boater’s opinions and produced an action plan based on improving navigation.

This is very promising news for NABO as we have been trying for years to progress a more interactive approach. Of course it will not have an immediate effect on the state of the infrastructure and we will have to see the physical improvements, but even talk of improvements and recognition of failure is encouraging. Meetings will be taking place to discuss the functionality and development of a ‘Boater’s App, the first of which will be in December and will be reported in February’s issue.

Please send ideas on what functions you would like the app to provide to the Editor. We anticipate, at least, a means of communicating navigation problems, pending infrastructure collapse and maybe areas in which dredging is required. One of the driving principles should be that there is feedback, so anyone with a smartphone can access the status of a particular stretch of canal, in real time. The database of information would need to be accessed and updated by an administration team, perhaps volunteers could be trained for this? All to be discussed soon.

There has been a lot of activity in Parliament with repercussions on rivers, canals and those that use them. I apologise for the very lengthy Mentions In The House but it is important that we all know what is being suggested. We could see the network crumbling back into the state it was in, during the dark days of the ‘60s. It seems that there are some MPs that understand our concerns but there are many others that toe the party line of “it was all the fault of the previous government and there’s no money.” The importance of war in the Middle East and Russian aggression cannot be ignored but wars come and go. Since the 1800s when canals were opened there has been British involvement in (a very incomplete list of) wars: Temne War: 1801-1807, Anglo-Russian War: 1807—1812, Napoleonic Wars: 1802–1813, War of 1812: 1812–1815—US invasion of British North America, First Anglo-Afghan War: 1839–1842, First Opium War: 1839–1842, First Anglo-Sikh War: 1845–1846, Crimean War: 1853–1856, Second Anglo-Afghan War: 1878–1880, Anglo-Zulu War: 1879, First Boer War: 1880–1881, Second Boer War: 1899–1902, Boxer Rebellion: 1899–1901,The First World War: 1914 -1918, The Second World War: 1939—1945, The Korean War: 1950—1953, The Falklands War: 1982, War in Afghanistan: 2001– 2021

Apologies to those who fought in the wars I’ve missed out. I haven’t even listed the financial crises we’ve survived so let’s not see the current problems trotted out as a reason to abandon the network.

Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year.

A winter of not-so much discontent

Editor John Sadler