JennyMorgan

It does pay to know absolutely nothing about the Broads, even if you do, and to be able to look people straight in the eye as you tell them the Broads is a national park!

Bill, thank you for posting this news. I personally hope that an alternative event is run, but not on a public, navigable river. The required marshaling and policing of the event must have made it prohibitively expensive.

Got to say that as I read it the BA has made the best of a bad job and it might well turn out to be a wise move. Perhaps having a muscle boat is no bad thing. Provided her use is related to weather and tide rather than office hours then she could prove to be a useful work boat, provided that she's able to tow other boats. Let's hope that a corner is being turned.

Peter, you may not like the answers, or the style in which they are delivered, but those answers are generally supported by fact and very often those facts are supported by documentation, much of which comes from DEFRA. Let's just look at the history. Firstly refer to the Broads National Park Bill, it soon becomes clear that it, in part, was an anti-navigation Bill. There was a clear intention by the Authority for it to be able to abandon its duties as a Harbour Authority. We quickly became aware that the Authority wished to be able to close waterways, thankfully that didn't happen, thanks to petitioners going to Parliament. Further evidence is the fact that the Authority attempted to close Horsey Mere by threatening huge fines. Thankfully common sense prevailed and voluntary controls were put in place. Beyond that it is on record that senior conservation officers wished to see Hickling closed to navigation. There was also a desire to disband the Navigation Committee, indeed it was effectively disbanded for one meeting, a fact that I can verify, I was on the Navigation Committee at the time. Agreed that JP is a clever man, he certainly understands the system and how to manipulate it, but he doesn't always get things his own way, witness the Broads Bill and the fact that the Navigation Committee is still in business. Personally I should like to thank you for your contribution to the debate, you have elicited answers that might not otherwise have surfaced, you have added to the debate and I am grateful for that. As we say in Norfolk, 'keep yew a troshin, bor!'

Ominous, oh well, there's more than one way to skin a cat

Marshman, please do me a favour, stand in front of a mirror and take a close look at what you see.

No, that had not even entered my mind. If this is on the back of anything then it is on the rightness of the points being raised with the various, relevant authorities.

In the meantime the contractors installing the signs have been told to desist for the time being. I wonder why, perhaps it is because an individual, or maybe several, have taken it upon themselves to actually do something. Clearly JP has overstepped the mark this time. I wonder what else is going on behind drawn curtains ?

We don't hear from you enough as it is without you not posting again. Please keep posting!

Who is in a hole? In the meantime the digging goes on. Quite surprising what we are finding between us!!

Tempest, let me put it another way, I doubt that the perpetrators actually realised that their protest would end in irreparable criminal damage. We can only guess at the actual intention but I doubt that destruction was the intended end result. I bow to your thirty years experience as a police officer but I really do doubt that the intention was to do anymore than to protest.

Criminal damage must not be encouraged but my gut feeling is that the perpetrators assumed that their spray would be wiped off with solvents or cleaned off with a pressure cleaner, as generally are road signs. Don't suppose that they had considered the inexperience of the BA in regard to vandalism. As for being pointless, I don't agree, obviously. In practical terms the 'vandals' have bypassed JP and made their feelings clear to Authority members, the puppets in particular. JP would be a fool to think that the objectors will go away but equally I don't see JP backing down. It was JP that ramped up HIS BNP campaign, surely to goodness he doesn't see himself as being above public opinion?

Fair comment but the fact is that these contentious, misleading signs have been erected.

I wish that I could share your confidence on that one! Anyway, since when has public opinion mattered?

I am not convinced that it is part of any great plan. Perhaps right and proper is too slow for some folk but nevertheless it has a lot to commend it. Two wrongs don't make a right, as my wise and revered old granny used to say!

I note on FaceBook that now several more signs have been similarly vandalised and subsequently further damaged by unsuitable cleaning techniques. Both Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils seem capable of cleaning defaced road signs without needing to replace them. I can't & won't condone wilful damage like this but then I also won't support the telling of porkies by governing Authorities.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=strict&sxsrf=ACYBGNTgYu1htsfi-phOImBKriuOvFPK-A%3A1580237981212&ei=nYQwXsXNDOWX1fAP8eWTuAw&q=removing+graffiti+from+road+signs&oq=removing+graffiti+from+r&gs_l=psy-ab.1.3.0l3j0i22i30j0i333.35578.45002..49748...0.2..0.103.525.6j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j0i67.yx6IWccXI7E#kpvalbx=_0IQwXtKDHJeD8gLN9oSgAw30

Oh dear, must have been the wrong aerosol paint!

Back in the early 1960's I was working in Germany. I was there as a civilian whilst most of the Britons that the Germans met, as it was made abundantly clear to me, were members of the occupying force and subsequently resented. On the other hand I was made to feel welcome, both by Germans and the numerous refugees and camp survivors that constantly wanted to relate their stories to me. I sometimes felt that I was being sought out by people who clearly felt that I needed to know what they had endured. Until that time I had no idea of the atrocities that were the war. The survivors would show me their tattoos and, often in tears, passionately relate their experiences in languages that I did not understand, it was an unreal experience. Back then Germany was being rebuilt, German society was regrouping, all in all a time that I won't forget. Hatred is abhorrent. I only saw the aftermath but that has stayed with me. On the bright side it was an exciting time to be in Germany as the youth came of age, clearly not wanting to be judged by the atrocities committed by their parents.

Such a shame that Uncle John, like my friend Jack are no longer here to tell us what they went though. Jack, like John was a sergeant and in Jack's case I wonder if it was Belsen with which he was involved in. Regretfully he is long gone. Like many he kept his thoughts to himself but we were on a boat at Burgh St Peter when two other boats swung together, one lady had her hand hung over the side which was regretfully severed by the impact. Jack calmly retrieved her fingers before binding her hand up. I was amazed at his manner, I felt nothing but revulsion and I said so to Jack. Jack simply replied that after what he'd been through during the war it was nothing, Incidentally the lady's fingers were saved. Curious, I asked Jack's son what that experience had been but what the son knew was pretty vague, Jack had largely kept it from his family.

EI, say no more!

A good friend of mine was an engineer in the army, he was a bulldozer driver. I think that it was Auschwitz where his unit dug trenches and then my friend bulldozed decomposing bodies into the trenches. He became largely desensitised but he told me that he could only sob when he saw broken children being pushed towards the trenches. In truth I can't believe that it ever left him.

You'll need a great deal more weight to balance this topic!

Renting is the way to go. My daughter has just sold her boat and promptly booked a Wherry Yacht, White Moth, for a week.

Mike, Marshman, it is obviously old hat to you both, but it might enlighten some of those who are new to either the topic or even the forum. It also highlights just how long this discontent has festered and just how long the executive has had in which to win back the lost trust, or not as is surely the case.