Wednesday 13 April 2016

So it was 'charitisation'?

Hello everyone. Still here but not had much to say recently. Not sure if it means CRT are drawing their horns in or if they are just getting better at keeping what they are up to a bit quieter?

One thing has caught my eye and it goes to the bigger picture stuff: A few years back I wrote a piece saying that the transfer of British Waterways to Canal and River Trust was akin to a privatisation as many of us remember that term being applied in the 1980's and 1990's. This article in the Guardian recently informs me that the correct word now is "charitisation".

(I'm pleased to note that the spell check here does not recognise charitisation as being a real word!)

An interesting spin and it seems that the Guardian writer takes a similar view to me...? It's about getting stuff off government books not withstanding the dowries involved?

The last set of Annual accounts I can find as of today on the CRT website are for 2013/14. (That absence of last year's accounts at this stage seems odd?) However on the last available figures, the charitable donations to CRT seem to represent  less than 0.75% of their income.

There is another ambiguous income line called "Other Incoming Resources" and if we say that this all represents some sort of third party fund raising, then the extra income raised represents just shy of 1.7% of the total.

Put it another way, on the most generous construction, it seems that 98.3% of CRT's trading activity is funded by what are in reality the same sources as before "charitisation".

But of course bear in mind that the income declared in the accounts for 2013/14 (*Note: large pdf file!) is £162.6 million. Go back to the 2010/11 accounts, (*) during the lead up to the "charitisation" and the income when it was British Waterways and in the public sector was £176.5 million. It feels like things are going backwards?

What was the point again?

(I refer you to a previous article where I suggested the new organistion could possibly be named Canals and Rivers Are Privatised... )


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