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| Volume 6, Number 5 - Autumn 2006 | |
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SCARS asks you to join it in supporting the campaign to...
What's it about?The country's waterways are run by the Government through the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Thanks to its massive failure to pay farmers the subsidies they are due this year from the European funds it has received to pay them, the EU, not unnaturally, has, in effect, fined DEFRA £200m for their incompetence. The Government has decided that DEFRA must absorb that cost itself, with no help from the Treasury's Contingency Fund. Obviously they can't save the money by cutting the farmers' subsidies... so they're making cuts elsewhere - including the waterways. What's the cost?In money terms, £60m (which is the same as one year's Grant) is to be taken off British Waterways over the next 5 years, and the Environment Agency, which runs our rivers, is to lose £25m this year. In terms of jobs, British Waterways has announced 180 job cuts. As far as the waterways themselves are concerned, this winter's maintenance programme has been slashed, and it seems inevitable that restoration projects will be delayed or curtailed - and it is even possible that existing canals may be closed, especially if a major breach occurs on one and there are no funds for repairs. Large rises in the Licence and Mooring Fees are also planned. What's to be done?Thanks to the Internet a coalition of all the organisations involved in our waterways have come together to campaign to Save Our Waterways! Their message is: Those who think it wrong that the waterways should be so badly affected by this action should let the Government know that they are too many of us to be ignored by:
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