Licence for waterways? any thoughts?

[vienna]

I noticed walking along the canal that some narrowboats (lthough not all that I saw) display a registration number in the window as a plate with the british waterways logo- further investigtion shows that when you buy a narrowboat to use on th e canals in the UK you 'must' buy a licence for £400 per year to use the canals

as we know what ever you register you give up legal title to and ownership of

but could it be argued that for boats becaus they eixst on an artificially created waterway nework they have to pay for the privalege of using it? it didn't exist naturally before the corportions involved in the building of them created them to transport cotton coal etcduring the industrial revolution?

this would be different from cars on roads as the land they travel on was always there - hence the right to ravel - but in this case the right to travel on the waterways ony exists because they were built privately making travel possible


any thoughts

[yozhik]

Any thoughts?

Yes ... my mind is taken immediately to the latest proposal by the Rothschilds.

Has everyone seen it?

NM Rothschild - private bank - has lobbied the 3 main parties and sent a proposal for the privatisation of the highway and road network.
link to STORY (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6814923.ece)
link to FORUM THREAD (http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79609)

Can you imagine the implications?? :eek:

Private roads, with private fee schedule, with private rules ad private enforcement.
It could be argued that we already have all of that; but this would remove all ambiguity.

As for the waterways ... they may be "man made"; but the aren't the roads too?
Guess it comes down to who owns them.
Were they built with "public funds" or "private"?

[vienna]

Any thoughts?

Yes ... my mind is taken immediately to the latest proposal by the Rothschilds.

Has everyone seen it?

NM Rothschild - private bank - has lobbied the 3 main parties and sent a proposal for the privatisation of the highway and road network.
link to STORY (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6814923.ece)
link to FORUM THREAD (http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79609)

Can you imagine the implications?? :eek:

Private roads, with private fee schedule, with private rules ad private enforcement.
It could be argued that we already have all of that; but this would remove all ambiguity.

As for the waterways ... they may be "man made"; but the aren't the roads too?
Guess it comes down to who owns them.
Were they built with "public funds" or "private"?

not heard that, cheers for the link

it also worries me that I hear these fondations like the Rockefeller group holds the patents on the human genome project - I dread to imagine the world they are working towards - total pivate ownership of even life itself

on the canals issue...but could it be argued that they were created from scratch, roads and paths which existed as routes around natural obstacles and private lands were just 'upgraded' from dirt tracks which we have common law right to travel on

the waterways have locks containing alot of heavy expensive machiney which need to be maintined for boats to travel uphill

or is this realy just a case of using a blanket rule of rejecting all licences?

[yozhik]

not heard that, cheers for the link

it also worries me that I hear these fondations like the Rockefeller group holds the patents on the human genome project - I dread to imagine the world they are working towards - total pivate ownership of even life itself

on the canals issue...but could it be argued that they were created from scratch, roads and paths which existed as routes around natural obstacles and private lands were just 'upgraded' from dirt tracks which we have common law right to travel on

the waterways have locks containing alot of heavy expensive machiney which need to be maintined for boats to travel uphill

or is this realy just a case of using a blanket rule of rejecting all licences?

Who funded the canals being built?
Private venture capital?
Funds from the public purse?
Were Council coffers opened up, overflowing with stolen "council tax"?

As with most of this deception bullshit; follow the money to find the motive and the possible remedy.

[jimmi]

Yippee something I'm an expert on at last, my partner's dad lives on a narrow boat and we stayed with him for a couple of days in June, I even drove it myself so there you go I know everything about canals :D

Seriously though, I have been looking into buying a boat to live on and there is loads to find out, we had a long talk with my 'dad in law' about the licence fee and he told us quite a bit about there being a few people with boats that are challenging British Waterways about the size of the fees and also some who are directly refusing to pay, and some that have had their boats lifted out of the water and taken off somewhere.
My advice at the moment would be pay it, it's a better deal than council tax isn't it?
The whole canal story is interesting and there's loads of conspiracy type stuff concerning the demise of the canal system in this country (UK) and inspiring stuff about how people are coming together to rebuild and restore a valuable resource that has gone neglected and ignored.

[merlincove]

Not all waterways are man made. rivers are a natural progression of water from the highlands.

I'd like to see the documentation that the OP speaks of as per the narrowboats being registered, we are all aware of the legal speak as per 'must' being synoiniomous with may.

But then, if you are mooring the boat in a quay or marina they may get arsey about it not being registered.