CHERTSEY

BOATS, BRIDGES, BOILERS ... IF IT'S GOT RIVETS, I'M RIVETTED
... feminist, atheist, autistic academic and historic narrowboater ...
Likes snooker, beer, tea, rivets and solitude, and is strangely fascinated by the cinema organ.
And there might be something about railways.
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Wednesday 2 February 2011

Scaremongering?

Or genuinely frightening?

Now, I haven't looked into this too closely so far, but I was under the impression that BW turning into some sort of national waterways charity (details and name to be settled on in due course) was a foregone conclusion.

Tristram Hunt, Labour MP for Stoke on Trent Central, writing in the Guardian this morning, suggests that this might not be the case:

Go inland and a similar battle is raging. The future of British Waterways – the quango in charge of 2,200 miles of canals and waterways – is under review at the department for the environment. More progressive-minded ministers want it made into a National Trust-style co-operative for the good of boat owners, ramblers and anglers. This would protect its endowment and public service ethos from the £400m fire sale that Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander is considering. An ominous departmental silence seems to suggest the privatisers are pushing ahead.

If Hunt is right, then that is genuinely frightening news.

2 comments:

  1. I would expect them to asset strip it before it goes the way of a charity or National Trust part 2 All that property is what they want first. No way are they at all interested in protecting it.

    It won't be good !!

    ReplyDelete
  2. scared here too,the robber barons never really go away they just change their methods

    ReplyDelete