Nothing to do with Halloween, just BW's online method of encouraging people to inform on non-licenced boats. I was reading how another boater and blogger actually posted about informing on another boater. God, some people have no solidarity and no empathy! And I believe the blogger has two homes: his boat and another place to live when not boating.
I really wonder what lies behind this sly urge to harm another person. Perhaps it's a need to feel important or powerful or is it jealousy? After all, you are harming someone unknown to you, so it can't be personal dislike. I just don't get it. And the complete lack of shame in the action!
When so many are suffering financial hardship and home repossessions are up by 70%, how could anyone take pride in increasing the chances of someone's boat home being taken away.
I pointed out to the blogger that the costs of rehousing ex-boaters is exhorbitant to tax-payers and also that the few boats I've noticed without licences on display (which doesn't mean they don't have one of course) tend to be owned by people who can't afford to drive, run their engines to keep fridges and computers going, burn coal, buy consumer goods etc. In other words, they seem to live low-carbon, quiet lives, hurting no-one.
I had the same feeling of disbelief when I went to see my parents who live near a very small town in Wales. Everyone round there is white and someone saw fit to contact immigration about the single ' dark-skinned' person working crap hours in a takeaway cafe. He's been deported, to face who knows what dangers.
5 comments:
yessss.... I try to be very 'live & let live', and I even try to apply that to Daily Mail types (the canals are full of them, I know, for whom I wish my boat was scruffier). I also try to avoid using stereotypes/group assumptions, but sometimes I have to. ;-)
I actually think this report-a-boat thing is to assuage that very group, the Narrowmind World lot, who's idea of direct action is to complain into their sherry glasses and say 'someone should do something about this'. Like the biblical poor, they'll always be with us and this may well be BW giving them something to play with to shut them up.
I'm pretty sure BW know what's what in terms of licences (and are locally, understanding of personal situations, which random passing shiny boaters won't be), certainly where it counts. If you're tucked away and no-one knows you're there, what harm is being done - good luck & enjoy it, I say.
Oh, and a depressing link for you:
http://tinyurl.com/4ebkma
Carrie
Love your blog, but the chap in Wales? Yes very wrong of the locals I agree, but don't assume he was going back to danger. If he was an asylum seeker he wouldn't have been deported.
As for snitching for snitching sake? Well they all get theirs in the end
'If he was an asylum seeker he wouldn't have been deported.'
Thanks for reading Carol and for leaving a comment.
I'm afraid the vast majority of people seeking asylum in this country ARE turned away, have their appeals rejected, any benefits stopped and are either seized in the night (including children) and deported straight away or are put into detention centres awaiting deportation. I've witnessed children being taken out of school (in Bristol), made to change clothes before being herded into a 'holding centre'.
An interesting website: http://www.noborders.org.uk/
No-one wants to leave behind their families, friends and homes, just like you wouldn't want to and the incredible dangers that many face in trying to get to a place of safety like the UK, beggars belief. There's also some pretty grim accounts of what happens to those sent back. I've heard too many awful accounts directly from asylum seekers, refugees and 'failed asylum seekers' to believe any of the racist rubbish lies the government tries to spin to justify its total lack of humanity.
Hey Simon - thanks for the depressing link! ;-)
I know that BW have turned the blind eye on several occassions and quite right too. I have one very good example but will not splash it here in public, needless to say it was the lock keeper who told me and not some warped and out of touch manager, hidden behind a desk and obviously getting ideas about being in the gestapo and creating harmful practises to fuel their imagination.
That aside, I came here on the understanding that you have created or are going to make a composting toilet. if you have Carrie would you mind replying to me on my email, as i cannot link through via your contact. i would be very pleased to know if it worked as I am wanting to make one for my boat.
Thanks for now and i love your blog
Hi Craig
Yes I made a compost loo which you'll find if you can bear to trawl through the archive section on this blog. I'll try to post the photos on the relevant section
- Carrie
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