We have less than a month to make the most important choice that has faced the inland waterways in 60 years: the election of those Private and Business Boaters who will represent us for the next 4 years on the Members Council of the Canal & River Trust.
It is disappointing that so few candidates are making themselves available to expand upon their mandatory 150 word manifestos.
Having spent the past 5-6 years campaigning for this moment with many others, I am privileged to know 12 of the candidates personally but – apart from well-aired central issues such as funding, dredging, maintenance policy, the primacy of navigation, etc. where we largely speak from one sheet, I don’t know most of their positions on what I consider to be the 5 most important issues that I personally feel need to be addressed by the Members Council.
Of course, I could send them all emails and ask but that wouldn’t help relieve the feeling of disenfranchisement that has been expressed by a number of voters whom I presume reflect at least partially similar views of many of the 30,000+ voters to whom most of the 39 candidates are complete strangers.
Accordingly, I propose a partial solution. I have given each candidate a separate page on this website and its sister Forum. These entries have the following features:
- Anyone can locate a candidates page by entering the candidate’s name of in the Search box in the right hand column
- Once a candidates page has been opened, anyone can ask a question simply by using the Comments section at the bottom of each candidates page.
- Similarly, each candidate can respond by following up with another comment.
- The comments on the website and Forum (which you can access by clicking the ‘Forums’ option on the top menu), are linked so what is entered in either will appear in both.
- You may find that the Forum is the best place to do this as it will be easier to see all of the comments and replies but either way is acceptable and you will be able to ‘like’ individual comments. In both cases, you will find that the Business and Private candidates are separated into different sections.
- If any candidate would like to edit or add to their ‘manifesto pages’ then they should send me a message via the Menu Option ‘Contact Us’ and I will assign them editing rights. You may have noticed that several candidates have already taken advantage of this feature. If you want to embed pages from other web pages, I will assist on request.
To get the action started, I respectfully ask all candidates to give their position on the following 5 key issues that affect users:
- Continuous cruising
- Residential boating
- Mooring auctions & local mooring strategies
- Managing multiple use of tow paths
- Encouraging local community engagement
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