C&RT license checkers

[rowland al]

17 hours ago, Machpoint005 said:

I'm glad that CRT's limited resources are being so well spent. Don't you know where you've been?

Boaters who have been incorrectly logged in the same place for longer than 14 days might have good reason to want to see C&RT's version of their movements.

Some might also argue that it is C&RT management who are wasting limited resources.

 

[Jerra]

3 hours ago, rowland al said:

Boaters who have been incorrectly logged in the same place for longer than 14 days might have good reason to want to see C&RT's version of their movements.

Very true to be able to challenge CRTs statement, not surely as a habit every 12 months.

Would you prefer more money spent on logging or more on maintenance?

 

[rowland al]

7 minutes ago, Jerra said:

Very true to be able to challenge CRTs statement, not surely as a habit every 12 months.

Would you prefer more money spent on logging or more on maintenance?

 

Please refer to my second paragraph which you conveniently removed from my quote. 

Enforcement is not the only wastage either. 

[Jerra]

2 minutes ago, rowland al said:

Please refer to my second paragraph which you conveniently removed from my quote. 

Enforcement is not the only wastage either. 

I removed it because I started posting on usenet where it was normal to remove all except the bit you were replying to and I still find posts like that easier to understand.

I took it imply that CRT wasted money in general, now you point out it applies in your opinion to enforcement, don't you think there would be more license evasion if there were no checks and enforcement.

[rowland al]

8 minutes ago, Jerra said:

I removed it because I started posting on usenet where it was normal to remove all except the bit you were replying to and I still find posts like that easier to understand.

I took it imply that CRT wasted money in general, now you point out it applies in your opinion to enforcement, don't you think there would be more license evasion if there were no checks and enforcement.

Checks for licence evasion, yes. The obsession with boat movement no, unless the law is broken (then again is it CRT's job to enforce the law?). 

Wasn't the 14 day law bIt derived from the vagrancy act? Someone here might know.

[Machpoint005]

If you know you are obliged to move a certain distance in a certain time, why would you not keep records? Provided that those records are compatible with CRT's it would simply be your word against theirs, which is inconclusive either way.

[ditchcrawler]

If people didn't take the Pee we wouldnt need any of it

[rowland al]

8 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

If people didn't take the Pee we wouldnt need any of it

Agreed. It would be good if we all shared the playground nicely. 

It's not just about those who don't move though is it?. It's also about those who make judgements based on dubious reasoning and false assumptions.

I really do believe that most of us are Ok. It seems to be the minorities at BOTH extreme ends of the scale who keep tipping the balance!

 

[Rebotco]

The current checking regime CRT has adopted is completely unfit for its purpose, as far as leisure boaters with a home mooring are concerned.

I am one such, and it is inevitable that I will mostly be trawling over the same stretch every time I go boating - especially as I usually have only 3 or 4 days available at a time.

As a result I frequently moor at the same spots, but never for more than 24 hours at a time.  Yet I received a warning from CRT that I was not moving far enough to comply with their licence conditions!  

The fatal flaw in their system is the false assumption that if you are logged in the same area, say 15 days apart, then you have been there during that whole period.

That is patent nonsense of course and a waste of the charity's resources, as well as my licence money.

I emailed them with this response and demanded an apology - but never got a reply.

They do themselves no favours mis-using their own data in this way. It is turning a pleasure pursuit into a battle - that is not a valid "Charitable Purpose".

 

[cuthound]

6 minutes ago, Rebotco said:

That is patent nonsense of course and a waste of the charity's resources, as well as my licence money.

I emailed them with this response and demanded an apology - but never got a reply.

They do themselves no favours mis-using their own data in this way. It is turning a pleasure pursuit into a battle - that is not a valid "Charitable Purpose".

 

So would you prefer them to waste even more of their finite resources by paying for an updated system, perhaps a GPS based tracking system whigh would overcome the flaws you have identified? 

[Naughty Cal]

56 minutes ago, Rebotco said:

The current checking regime CRT has adopted is completely unfit for its purpose, as far as leisure boaters with a home mooring are concerned.

I am one such, and it is inevitable that I will mostly be trawling over the same stretch every time I go boating - especially as I usually have only 3 or 4 days available at a time.

As a result I frequently moor at the same spots, but never for more than 24 hours at a time.  Yet I received a warning from CRT that I was not moving far enough to comply with their licence conditions!  

The fatal flaw in their system is the false assumption that if you are logged in the same area, say 15 days apart, then you have been there during that whole period.

That is patent nonsense of course and a waste of the charity's resources, as well as my licence money.

I emailed them with this response and demanded an apology - but never got a reply.

They do themselves no favours mis-using their own data in this way. It is turning a pleasure pursuit into a battle - that is not a valid "Charitable Purpose".

 

Demanding an apology isn't going to get you very far in many places.

A simple letter or email, or even heaven forbid a phone call to an actual person is all that it takes to point out the error in the logging system and explain your situation.

[Rebotco]

47 minutes ago, cuthound said:

So would you prefer them to waste even more of their finite resources by paying for an updated system, perhaps a GPS based tracking system whigh would overcome the flaws you have identified? 

I would expect an organisation the size of CRT not to waste any of their resources, but to administer them wisely and effectively.

2 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said:

Demanding an apology isn't going to get you very far in many places.

A simple letter or email, or even heaven forbid a phone call to an actual person is all that it takes to point out the error in the logging system and explain your situation.

Read my post properly.

[Naughty Cal]

6 minutes ago, Rebotco said:

I would expect an organisation the size of CRT not to waste any of their resources, but to administer them wisely and effectively.

Read my post properly.

Yes. You demanded an apology. Hardly going to get you one is it?

[MtB]

18 hours ago, Jerra said:

You would need something such as the daily paper on view as the exif data on a digital photo is easily changed.

I never quite understand why people say this. How does holding a daily newspaper prove the date of the photo? 

All it appears to me to to is to prove the photo was taken on or after the date on the (possibly years old) newspaper selected.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Mike the Boilerman

[matty40s]

I did Audlem to Little Venice in the same day once, as I only stopped at one newsagents.

[Jerra]

29 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

I never quite understand why people say this. How does holding a daily newspaper prove the date of the photo? 

All it appears to me to to is to prove the photo was taken on or after the date on the (possibly years old) newspaper selected.

This of course is true however to prove you were at a particular place at a particular time you would need to know in advance you were going to be asked and kept the right paper and been there to get a photo of the place in the right season.

Much more difficult than having a library of places and changing the exif data, so much better proof.  Just my opinion other opinions are of course available.

[Jerra]

2 hours ago, Rebotco said:

As a result I frequently moor at the same spots, but never for more than 24 hours at a time.  Yet I received a warning from CRT that I was not moving far enough to comply with their licence conditions!  

Out of interest was this a "you have over stayed sling your hook or else" communication or was it along the lines so often mentioned of "our records suggest you are over staying can you confirm this isn't the case.   Never having had such a communications I don't know but the majority who report such communications say they are more along the lines of a query and easily sorted.

[mrsmelly]

9 minutes ago, Jerra said:

Out of interest was this a "you have over stayed sling your hook or else" communication or was it along the lines so often mentioned of "our records suggest you are over staying can you confirm this isn't the case.   Never having had such a communications I don't know but the majority who report such communications say they are more along the lines of a query and easily sorted.

The one I got was polite and when I pointed out their error I received email apology within eleven minutes. I have noticed that there are fewer pee takers with chicken runs set up etc on the towpath since CART started lightly enforcing the  very easy very few rules that we have to comply with.

[Naughty Cal]

10 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

The one I got was polite and when I pointed out their error I received email apology within eleven minutes. I have noticed that there are fewer pee takers with chicken runs set up etc on the towpath since CART started lightly enforcing the  very easy very few rules that we have to comply with.

You have not been on the Fossdyke then!

We seem to be collecting quite a gaggle of them this year

[mrsmelly]

4 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said:

You have not been on the Fossdyke then!

We seem to be collecting quite a gaggle of them this year

[dmr]

2 hours ago, Rebotco said:

The current checking regime CRT has adopted is completely unfit for its purpose, as far as leisure boaters with a home mooring are concerned.

 

 

Thats a bit over the top.

Its very nearly "fit for purpose" (what a horrible bit of newspeak). Its purpose is to identify the serious "continuous moorer" offenders at a reasonable cost, and to help prevent lazy boaters from accidentally slipping into similar bad ways. It does come up with too many false positives but any big improvement in accuracy would give an increase in cost. I suspect nobody, with the possible exception of a few IWA hardliners, would like to see more money spent on enforcement.

Checking is not intended to provide a detail log of the movements of every boat on the system, just to catch those that don't move.

The one improvement that could possibly be made is to work out that if a boat is NOT sighted at a given location then its almost certainly because its not there. But then again some hardline C'Mers could exploit this by moving off their favourite VM just for the day when they think the data checker will be visiting.

..............Dave

 

[cuthound]

38 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

Thats a bit over the top.

Its very nearly "fit for purpose" (what a horrible bit of newspeak). Its purpose is to identify the serious "continuous moorer" offenders at a reasonable cost, and to help prevent lazy boaters from accidentally slipping into similar bad ways. It does come up with too many false positives but any big improvement in accuracy would give an increase in cost. I suspect nobody, with the possible exception of a few IWA hardliners, would like to see more money spent on enforcement.

Checking is not intended to provide a detail log of the movements of every boat on the system, just to catch those that don't move.

The one improvement that could possibly be made is to work out that if a boat is NOT sighted at a given location then its almost certainly because its not there. But then again some hardline C'Mers could exploit this by moving off their favourite VM just for the day when they think the data checker will be visiting.

..............Dave

 

Hmm, to do this properly would mean that 30,000 boats x 3600km of canal, = 1.08 million bits of data saying a particular boat wasn't at a particular location every 2 weeks. 

Just entering the data would cost a fortune.

[dmr]

3 minutes ago, cuthound said:

Hmm, to do this properly would mean that 30,000 boats x 3600km of canal, = 1.08 million bits of data saying a particular boat wasn't at a particular location every 2 weeks. 

Just entering the data would cost a fortune.

No, not at all, no new data to enter, just a quick look at existing data..

for example, last year we got "that letter" because we were sighted twice at Stone about 6 weeks apart. All that is needed is, before sending out that letter, to check the Stone record from the intermediate sightings, and if we were not sighted then we were almost certainly not there. They don't need to know where we were, just that we were Not recorded at Stone. I could probably write the software to go through an Excel workbook and work that one out.

................Dave

[cuthound]

8 minutes ago, dmr said:

No, not at all, no new data to enter, just a quick look at existing data..

for example, last year we got "that letter" because we were sighted twice at Stone about 6 weeks apart. All that is needed is, before sending out that letter, to check the Stone record from the intermediate sightings, and if we were not sighted then we were almost certainly not there. They don't need to know where we were, just that we were Not recorded at Stone. I could probably write the software to go through an Excel workbook and work that one out.

................Dave

Ah, I see where you are coming from, my misunderstanding.

 

[Rebotco]

2 hours ago, dmr said:

 

Thats a bit over the top.

Its very nearly "fit for purpose" (what a horrible bit of newspeak). Its purpose is to identify the serious "continuous moorer" offenders at a reasonable cost, and to help prevent lazy boaters from accidentally slipping into similar bad ways. It does come up with too many false positives but any big improvement in accuracy would give an increase in cost. I suspect nobody, with the possible exception of a few IWA hardliners, would like to see more money spent on enforcement.

Checking is not intended to provide a detail log of the movements of every boat on the system, just to catch those that don't move.

The one improvement that could possibly be made is to work out that if a boat is NOT sighted at a given location then its almost certainly because its not there. But then again some hardline C'Mers could exploit this by moving off their favourite VM just for the day when they think the data checker will be visiting.

..............Dave

 

That is why I specifically wrote "as far as leisure boaters with a home mooring are concerned"