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Is Birmingham going downhill as a destination?....


Wanderer Vagabond

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2 minutes ago, Athy said:

BUT YOU CAN FIND IT MORE EASILY IF YOU KNOW WHAT NUMBER IT IS!!!!!!!

Have you something against numbered posts? If so, why?

Does your house have a number? Do you not find that this makes it easier for people to find where you live?

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6 minutes ago, Athy said:

BUT YOU CAN FIND IT MORE EASILY IF YOU KNOW WHAT NUMBER IT IS!!!!!!!

Have you something against numbered posts? If so, why?

The numbers weren't valid if a previous post had been deleted at a later date by a mod for some reason.   A quotation has a direct link to the post as well so a lot easy to find.

Edited by Robbo
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32 minutes ago, Athy said:

BUT YOU CAN FIND IT MORE EASILY IF YOU KNOW WHAT NUMBER IT IS!!!!!!!

Have you something against numbered posts? If so, why?

I don't understand this. If you quote it as above then I don't have to go and find it. 

Edited by WotEver
Glitch in the matrix
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25 minutes ago, Athy said:

Does your house have a number? Do you not find that this makes it easier for people to find where you live?

If I've taken them to my house then I don't need to tell them the number. They're already there. 

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58 minutes ago, Athy said:

Derrr! To find the post so that you can quote it!

This makes no sense!  If I say, look at post 593 in a long thread you will have to try a lot of pages to find it!  With the new system I just include a link which also has a bit of the post included.  Much quicker!

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9 minutes ago, mross said:

This makes no sense!  If I say, look at post 593 in a long thread you will have to try a lot of pages to find it!  With the new system I just include a link which also has a bit of the post included.  Much quicker!

Absolutely. 

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30 minutes ago, mross said:

This makes no sense!  If I say, look at post 593 in a long thread you will have to try a lot of pages to find it!  With the new system I just include a link which also has a bit of the post included.  Much quicker!

I concur.

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Is this topic going downhill as a discussion of the crime suffered by boaters in Birmingham?

I do miss post numbers a bit, but life goes on without them.

I fully agree that crime statistics are often unreliable, like any statistics where those compiling them have a vested interest in making them paint a picture. Many years ago Keith Waterhouse made this point in his column in the Mirror, I think he wrote that we should ask ourselves "Does this statistic have an agenda?". But in the hands of an impartial statistician they can be a very useful tool for research.

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3 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

Birmingham is fine. Brummies are an easy going lot. It's the miserable visitors that cause it to go downhill.

JP

If that is the case then perhaps I should steer clear of it in future, and encourage others to do the same, will that help?:unsure:

 

I actually felt quite happy here until some oiks thought that gobbing on my boat and stoning it was a valid pastime and a thieving little sh*t walked off with my boat pole (twice). And that is ignoring the comparatively trivial incidents at Windmill End. Yes, the city centre is brilliant (or will be once they've finished knocking it down) but the outlying areas are starting to become less than ideal. This isn't just my view, this is a view also received from the  old guy at Kingswood Junction, another continuous cruiser currently moored in the basin at Merry Hill who said she will be leaving on Tuesday now that the Stourbridge Locks are open again and will be glad to be gone and also the non boating dog walker who woke me up at Windmill End after re-tying my boat (with me asleep in it) who told me that it wasn't a very nice place to moor up.

 

My original point was that I've had more minor irritations here in less than 3 weeks than I've previously had in 4 years of wandering around the system. Previously all that I'd had was a stoning near Salford Junction (during school holidays so almost to be expected), a group who jumped on the roof of the boat at 1am on a Saturday night in Leamington Spa and the boat was cast off in Birmingham city centre and near Mexborough top lock. So 4 incidents in 4 years is a pretty good run, even if I'd had double the number of incidents it would still seem reasonable but 5 irritating incidents in 25 days averages one every 5 days which isn't acceptable. If you don't want me to come back I'm willing to oblige.

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

If thfdthe case then perhaps I should steer cle ar of it in future, and encourage others to do the same, will that help?:unsure:

 

I actually felt quite happy here until some oiks thought that gobbing on my boat and stoning it was a valid pastime and a thieviIg little sh*t walked off with my boat po ele (twice). And that is ignoring the comparatively trivial incidents at Windmill End. Yes, the city centre is brilliant (or will be once they've finished knocking it down) but the outlying areas are starting to become less than ideal. This isn't just my view, this is a view also received from the  old guy at Kingswood Junction, another continuous cruiser currently moored in the basin at Merry Hill who said she will be leaving on Tuesday now that the Stourbridge Locks are open again and will be glad to be gone and also the non boating dog walker who woke me up at Windmill End after re-tying my boat (with me asleep in it) who told me that it wasn't a very nice place to moor up.

 

My original point was that I've had more minor irritations here in less than 3 weeks than I've previously had in 4 years of wandering around the system. Previously all that I'd had was a stoning near Salford Junction (during school holidays so almost to be expected), a group who jumped on the roof of the boat at 1am on a Saturday night in Leamington Spa and the boat was cast off in Birmingham city centre and near Mexborough top lock. So 4 incidents in 4 years is a pretty good run, even if I'd had double the number of incidents it would still seem reasonable but 5 irritating incidents in 25 days averages one every 5 days which isn't acceptable. If you don't want me to come back I'm willing to oblige.

 

 

I find your post a little disturbing. Having boated For 7 years for long weekends and 2 week periods, with little hassle. Had a side hatch slammed shut in Birmingham centre and boat side thumped in Braunston. Nothing else. We are about to go boating for a year or 2 full time having recently retired. Is it that bad out there? To be honest if i Get hassled on a weekly basis il sell and go elsewhere. I hope it improves for you.

Ian.

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2 minutes ago, ianali said:

I find your post a little disturbing. Having boated For 7 years for long weekends and 2 week periods, with little hassle. Had a side hatch slammed shut in Birmingham centre and boat side thumped in Braunston. Nothing else. We are about to go boating for a year or 2 full time having recently retired. Is it that bad out there? To be honest if i Get hassled on a weekly basis il sell and go elsewhere. I hope it improves for you.

Ian.

As you can see from my last post we haven't been hassled on anything like a weekly basis (4 incidents in 4 years) but I'm just getting a bit hacked off with Birmingham and its environs. Problems are rare if you moor sensibly (if there is no one else moored at what looks like a good mooring there may be a reason). Having actually just analysed the 'incidents' we've had over the years I now realise that of the 9 occurrences, 7 have been around Brum, which doesn't look good since we've been through a number of other areas where you might possibly expect the chance of a problem, including London and Liverpool, both without incident.

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2 minutes ago, ianali said:

I find your post a little disturbing. Having boated For 7 years for long weekends and 2 week periods, with little hassle. Had a side hatch slammed shut in Birmingham centre and boat side thumped in Braunston. Nothing else. We are about to go boating for a year or 2 full time having recently retired. Is it that bad out there? To be honest if i Get hassled on a weekly basis il sell and go elsewhere. I hope it improves for you.

Ian.

As we said earlier, it is mostly down to luck - or the lack of it. In terms of significant events, in the 6 years we've had our boat with frequent visits to the BCN, we've only had one significant event which was a top hopper broken outside the NIA in the centre. It was November and we were the only boat in the vicinity. Other than that, some pretty minor incidents like an empty plastic dropped from a bridge, a can chucked from the towpath (missed us)  a small bit of debris dropped from a high bridge which just about missed us, young kids threatening to spit on us from a footbridge (but scarpered when I picked up the camera). I suppose I could mention the yoofs who climbed onto the bow deck late at night to sit and drink - when we confronted them they scarpered pronto but with profuse apologies (sorry mate, we didn't realise there was someone on the boat).

The nature of random events being what they are, I think one can go for years with zero happening, or have a series of events in a month - which is perhaps (dare I say hopefully!) what happened to the OP.

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2 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

As we said earlier, it is mostly down to luck - or the lack of it. In terms of significant events, in the 6 years we've had our boat with frequent visits to the BCN, we've only had one significant event which was a top hopper broken outside the NIA in the centre. It was November and we were the only boat in the vicinity. Other than that, some pretty minor incidents like an empty plastic dropped from a bridge, a can chucked from the towpath (missed us)  a small bit of debris dropped from a high bridge which just about missed us, young kids threatening to spit on us from a footbridge (but scarpered when I picked up the camera). I suppose I could mention the yoofs who climbed onto the bow deck late at night to sit and drink - when we confronted them they scarpered pronto but with profuse apologies (sorry mate, we didn't realise there was someone on the boat).

The nature of random events being what they are, I think one can go for years with zero happening, or have a series of events in a month - which is perhaps (dare I say hopefully!) what happened to the OP.

Just to clarify a bit, I'm assuming that the incidents you refer to were throughout the system, not just on the BCN (other than the broken top hopper), is that correct?

On the one hand I don't want to frighten people away since it then abandons the canals to the yobs, but on the other hand they also need to be aware of some of the stuff that is happening. Probably one of the best events is the BCN Challenge which put a lot of boats onto the system (hopefully), and if there are a lot of us the yobs are less likely to want to engage.

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4 hours ago, WotEver said:

If I've taken them to my house then I don't need to tell them the number. They're already there. 

You have completely missed the point. I was referring to people trying to find your house, not you trying to find it.

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34 minutes ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

If that is the case then perhaps I should steer clear of it in future, and encourage others to do the same, will that help?:unsure:

 

I actually felt quite happy here until some oiks thought that gobbing on my boat and stoning it was a valid pastime and a thieving little sh*t walked off with my boat pole (twice). And that is ignoring the comparatively trivial incidents at Windmill End. Yes, the city centre is brilliant (or will be once they've finished knocking it down) but the outlying areas are starting to become less than ideal. This isn't just my view, this is a view also received from the  old guy at Kingswood Junction, another continuous cruiser currently moored in the basin at Merry Hill who said she will be leaving on Tuesday now that the Stourbridge Locks are open again and will be glad to be gone and also the non boating dog walker who woke me up at Windmill End after re-tying my boat (with me asleep in it) who told me that it wasn't a very nice place to moor up.

 

My original point was that I've had more minor irritations here in less than 3 weeks than I've previously had in 4 years of wandering around the system. Previously all that I'd had was a stoning near Salford Junction (during school holidays so almost to be expected), a group who jumped on the roof of the boat at 1am on a Saturday night in Leamington Spa and the boat was cast off in Birmingham city centre and near Mexborough top lock. So 4 incidents in 4 years is a pretty good run, even if I'd had double the number of incidents it would still seem reasonable but 5 irritating incidents in 25 days averages one every 5 days which isn't acceptable. If you don't want me to come back I'm willing to oblige.

 

 

I would say you may have been quite lucky over the years. I have been stoned once and been set adrift once by having my ropes actually cut within probably the last 20 or so days I have cruised on the BCN.

What you have to remember is that you are talking about the BCN rather than Birmingham and that's 100 miles of canal with over 2 million people in pretty close proximity and much of the system is in areas of real social deprivation. There isn't anything else comparable on that scale. In truth it may be getting a little worse as I dare say many of those folk possibly feel they aren't getting much help at the moment. Some may possibly see boating as a rich person's hobby as well.

That doesn't make it right but it's part of what the BCN is and a reason why it's such a great amenity for the 1.99999999 million decent folk that live in close proximity to it. That's why I support it with a very modest amount of my time and money and would be delighted if you did come back but do try and understand it for what it is, and join the BCNS if you aren't already a member.

JP

Edit - note to self that I haven't paid this years BCNS subscription yet!

 

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7 hours ago, Athy said:

You have completely missed the point. I was referring to people trying to find your house, not you trying to find it.

Nope. You're completely missing the functionality of linking to posts. 

As in my example of telling someone my house number or taking them there I could say "Lola talked about stats in post number 63" which leaves you to go look for post 63 or I could say "Lola talked about stats in an earlier post" and link to it, which takes you straight there:

 

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Just now, Athy said:

Looking for post 63 is hardly a chore. I am confident that I shall find it between posts 62 and 64.

No need, here it is:

Now isn't that a friendly and helpful way to point folk to posts?

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8 minutes ago, WotEver said:

No need, here it is:

Now isn't that a friendly and helpful way to point folk to posts?

I'm with you on this one, I've never seen the point of trekking back to a numbered post, losing your place in the thread as you do so. Linking to it as we can now is much better. You can open the link in a new tab, just as I opened this thread in a new tab. When I've finished with it, close the tab and there's the VNC window just where I left it.

OTOH, if folk want post numbers, it's a shame if they can't have them.

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8 hours ago, Athy said:

You have completely missed the point. I was referring to people trying to find your house, not you trying to find it.

But the quoting system is the equivalent of providing a wormhole directly to your front door.  No need for numbers.

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1 minute ago, BruceinSanity said:

OTOH, if folk want post numbers, it's a shame if they can't have them.

I have nothing against post numbers but if they return and folk use them instead of the superior link functionality then I certainly shan't be trawling back through the thread looking for their number. 

Just now, Dave_P said:

But the quoting system is the equivalent of providing a wormhole directly to your front door.  No need for numbers.

Absolutely :rolleyes:

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11 minutes ago, Dave_P said:

I must confess to being a little confused though.  It's always been possible to  quote specific posts.  What's different now?

The fact that now you HAVE to, I guess. In the past it was easier to be lazy and say "post 63" even though that meant nothing to 50% of the users (anyone on a mobile). Now that you have to use link (which is quicker to access on this skin) lazy posters are complaining. 

I guess. 

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