Gas safety and Coulrophobia* – by Ron Gooding

It seems so simple working with gas. A little bit of pipe, some orange hose with numbers on it and a few clips. Also my mate’s dad is a plumber and said he can help. I mean it isn’t rocket science is it?

The National Bargee Traveller Association held a rally in London on Saturday to protest against the Canal and River Trust ‘new’ enforcement policy and to hand in a petition to the Prime Minister at Downing Street.

The march, through central London to Downing Street, was “organised in defence of the boat dweller community in face of C&RT threatening or actually evicting boat dwellers for their distance or pattern movement”, say the NBTA.

The Canal and River Trust has revealed its plans for London boating at a meeting with an invited focus group of boaters and other canal ‘stakeholders’ groups at the Pirate Castle in Camden earlier this month.

The “draft proposals” include “reviewing” 14 day stays on all visitor moorings, creating a “limited number” of new short stay moorings in central London, alongside increasing facilities and increasing towpath mooring rings and permanent moorings outside of central London.

The promised London Mooring Strategy consultation with London boaters and other canal ‘stake-holders’ appears to be spreading its tentacles with a ‘sounding board’ for invited boaters being launched by the Canal and River Trust on the 14th March at an evening session at The Pirate Castle in Camden.

In an invite email - seen by London Boater News - CRT say that the ‘London Mooring Strategy Sounding Board’ will be asked to “discuss the direction of the strategy and the strategic, headline proposals being considered.”