The Conservators of the River Cam

.....are broke, it seems.

What better way to remedy their parlous financial state than to levy a surcharge (amounting to several hundred pounds a year) on powered craft already paying the official E.A. licence fee, for the dubious privilege of mooring up in Conservancy controlled water?

For this is what is proposed in a "consultation" (HAH!!) document we have recently been given.

Hmmmm.

Our chums James and Amy, of nb Lucky Duck, have already been appraised of this, and I don't doubt are already rallying the Camboaters to fight this iniquitous and wholly unjust tax on only one of the many groups who use the river.

I have only this to say: if savings must be made and more money found to ensure the future of the River Cam as a community resource, then surely it is high time the quaint relic that is the Cam Conservancy was abolished in it's entirety and responsibility for the river passed on to the Enviroment Agency.

This will, of course, require an Act of Parliament, but I am certain that a coalition government desperate to make savings in these straitened times will have no problem with the removal of the inefficient, wasteful and wholly unnecessary tier of bureaucracy that is The Cam Conservancy.

Further, savings can be made through the redundancy of staff and cash raised through the liquidation of Conservancy assets, such as the pathetically under-used weed-cutting and dredging equipment which is moored at Clayhithe for 51 weeks of the year.

A further, larger, cash injection into the river's continuing welfare would be the eviction of the now redundant conservancy workers from their current 'Grace and Favour' apartments in the prime piece of real estate which is the Conservancy house at Clayhithe and its immediate sale on the open market.

It alone must be worth in the region of £750,000 at least.....

I think The Camboaters first action should be to meet with the local Cambridge M.P.s and have a Private Members Bill calling for the immediate abolition of the Conservancy drafted at once.

With the E.A. in control, then things might actually get done around these waters!