bennygesserit
Well-known member
I think a lot are confused about my opinion.
Benyon Rejects Canoeists’ ‘Right to Paddle’ Campaign
- Thread starter FishingMagic
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I think a lot are confused about my opinion.
jasonbean1
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benny, it's quite clear there are two sides in this...seeing as you are an angler why are you not on it's side?
Mate if you have some personal tragedy that has caused this post then my commiserations.
But this is a forum I will say whatever I want.
To get to the truth you have to peel away a lot of b******t , be objective , have an open mind and do a lot of reading, so we both know your opinion will not change mine but if you put forth some facts it might
---------- Post added at 22:27 ---------- Previous post was at 22:25 ----------
Ha ha I'm getting caned on the fishing forum and the paddlers forum I'm just off to find a Villa fan page and remind them where they are in the league.
Thats should tell you something , think about it my friend you cannot have a foot in both camps thats a fact.
bennygesserit
Well-known member
I don't things are ever black and white.
I have seen this kind of thing before , It happened on gofishing quite a lot , because My political views are not the same as some then suddenly any angling questions I ask ( expect a lot in the spring ) go unanswered.
I understand why some get upset on a contentious thread , I have done it myself , but like people keep telling me I don't fish rivers so I am not emotionally attached to the subject , similarly hydro.
But I do think that the canoeists have a point in that the rivers are a natural resource and should be available to all but that is the romantic view.
In practical terms it doesn't appear to work that well despite that canoeists will tell you it works in other countries - do some googling.
For every claim there is a counter claim for every point made the is a counter point , things are never as simple as they appear , you need to get to the facts and that takes an open mind an a lor of effort.
As to which side I am on I am a member of the Angling Trust so my money goes towards whatever they are campaigning for have you made the same decision ?
nicepix
Well-known member
Apologies to my learned friend. But these people seem to think that if they want something so much then they should have it irrespective of the rights and wrongs or consequences.
Now we have some back street lawyer action on rights of easement based on continuous use.
mg:Question for the paddlers; Do you agree that the riders of unlicenced off road motorbikes should have the same access to roads, footpaths, parks and woodland that you seem to think is your right to rivers? :wh
sotto voce
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It's the wrong question nicepix. As canoes are un-powered the analogy should be with cyclists, horse riders and pedestrians (including those with angling equipment). If the government in it's wisdom felt that all these un-powered activities required licences then we would all have to have them. I don't thinks this is in any way likely.
As to the question of whether I think un-licenced (or licenced) cycles should have the same access to roads, footpaths, parks and woodland that I think is the public's right on rivers? yes I do - in line with whatever the common law, statute law and local by-laws established.
Any disagreement is not about whether the law should be obeyed - it's about what the law is.
It's the wrong question nicepix. As canoes are un-powered the analogy should be with cyclists, horse riders and pedestrians (including those with angling equipment). If the government in it's wisdom felt that all these un-powered activities required licences then we would all have to have them. I don't thinks this is in any way likely.
As to the question of whether I think un-licenced (or licenced) cycles should have the same access to roads, footpaths, parks and woodland that I think is the public's right on rivers? yes I do - in line with whatever the common law, statute law and local by-laws established.
Any disagreement is not about whether the law should be obeyed - it's about what the law is.
Another lot of smoke and mirrors are you one of Bennys friends.
Jeff Woodhouse
Moaning Marlow Meldrew
Isn't it just.
Lord Paul of Sheffield
Well-known member
let's club together an get one of these 4
BBC News - Four Royal Navy frigates in Portsmouth Harbour for sale
then next tiem a canoe comes on a water where it shouldn't
BBC News - Four Royal Navy frigates in Portsmouth Harbour for sale
then next tiem a canoe comes on a water where it shouldn't
nicepix
Well-known member
It's the wrong question nicepix. As canoes are un-powered the analogy should be with cyclists, horse riders and pedestrians (including those with angling equipment). If the government in it's wisdom felt that all these un-powered activities required licences then we would all have to have them. I don't thinks this is in any way likely.
As to the question of whether I think un-licenced (or licenced) cycles should have the same access to roads, footpaths, parks and woodland that I think is the public's right on rivers? yes I do - in line with whatever the common law, statute law and local by-laws established.
Any disagreement is not about whether the law should be obeyed - it's about what the law is.
Absolute rubbish! Your comrade's argument are nothing to do with whether a craft is powered or not. The analogy stands because the canoeists like the off road motorcyclists are causing a nuisance and have no legal right to be there. Think this through for once. If you proved a right of navigation based on historic trade routes then there would be nothing to stop powered craft also using them. Jet skis here we come!
I am glad however that you agree that the law should be obeyed. We have already established that canoeists have no legal right other than the prescribed rivers with a right of navigation. If all canoeists were equally as law abiding then there would be no problem.
Jeff Woodhouse
Moaning Marlow Meldrew
As I have told before, the tale of having a large shoal of chub almost feeding from my hand only to have it disperse when 10 or so canoes came over the weir. It was a good hour before those fish started to reappear ... only to have same canoes come through again (they'd been around the island and through the lock).
As for catapulting hemp deliberately, I do agree, naughty boy! But I have before now hit a canoeist with hemp only because the seeds were well on their delivery route at the same time as the canoeist shot the weir and into the direct pattern of fall. As for kids being hit in the eye, kids or grown ups, they should all wear fully protective clothing including goggles. There's things in our smaller rivers that get unwary canoeists - in Africa there's a particular worm that gets into the body through the eye and with all the alien species we have in our rivers these days who's to say these aren't abundant, we have killer shrimp now after all. (wish they were canoe eaters...
)(that's another nasty post, I shall wear the hair shirt now all day.)
Windy, I've looked carefully but I can't find any response from you to this one... fair enough, you don't have to answer a question just because I ask it. I won't ask again.
david perry
Active member
Geoff, Windy & a couple of subsequent posters:-
My reply may suprise you but this has been settled already.
Land; right of navigation -- A-G ex rel Yorkshire Derwent Trust v Brotherton | The Law Gazette
In summary There was a Public Navigation Act for the Yorkshire R.Derwent
1856 -After a fall in commercial river traffic, the railway which was taking over most of the river trade bought the navigation rights and river trade ceased.
1935 - River Derwent Navigation Act Revoked
1970 - Yorkshire Derwent Trust wanted to reopen the navigation to create a marina amongst other things. They were basing this on over 20 years of continuous river usage.
The landowners & Yorkshire Wildlife Trust disputed the fact - they wanted it kept closed because of the extensive unique wildlife - SSSI's, watermeadows and so on.
1988 - Mr Justice Vinelott said there was no public right of way - you simply couldn't establish one by usage in the same way you can on land.
1990 - This decision was reversed by the Court of Appeal (yes you could!)
and finally in 1991, this was reversed by the Law Lords. (no you can't create a right of way)
The position now is the Riparian landowners own the navigation and YWT own the locks.
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Windy
Well-known member
Thanks for that.
Just goes to show that you shouldn't try to answer any legal question without a proper law library to hand. t'interweb is all very well but no sufficient substitute.
I'd like to read the full report, but the House of Lords Judgments on line only go as far back as 1996. Anyone got a copy of or a link to the full judgment ?
Just goes to show that you shouldn't try to answer any legal question without a proper law library to hand. t'interweb is all very well but no sufficient substitute.
I'd like to read the full report, but the House of Lords Judgments on line only go as far back as 1996. Anyone got a copy of or a link to the full judgment ?
Windy
Well-known member
In passing, while I haven't as yet been able to read the judgment and for present purposes take your post at face value, you couldn't have a better demonstration of the fact that law is anything but a fixed and certain discipline.
Vinelott J was no fool. Neither are the judges of the Court of Appeal. Then again neither are the Judges sitting in the House of Lords / now Supreme Court. But they each reach different and varying conclusions. Differences in legal opinion and interpretation are valid and honest, even when diametrically opposed.
Doesn't mean that the persons, lawyers and judges expressing those opinions are dishonest, partisan, stupid or wilfully deceitful. Far from it, in this jurisdiction I am proud to say that I think most lawyers do their best. It's just that the law is so complex, factual elements so varied and disputable that the "certain" and definitive answer is a will 'o the wisp that cannot be held, caged and tamed.
And even then, when it is, society changes and the law changes to reflect it ! 'tain't over til the fat lady sings. And even then the tune may change...
I think I have finished with this particular thread. To take it any further I need access to a proper law library and months if not years required to research in the sort of depth that would be required to become an expert in the field. Simply not possible for me these days, and the province of the experts in the field, which is what they do, day in day out.
Over to the Angling Trust, the BCU and other representative bodies to take up the cudgels and brief such experts with the resources that they have to hand.
And remember, Don't feed the trolls..... :wh
1. You stated that there was a historic right of navigation based on a mixture of Roman laws, the Magna Carta and some ex-student who was smart enough to write his thesis on a subject so obtuse that his examiner would not be able to comment on the legalities, etc. Not only is that rubbish, but your beloved representatives knew that there was no right of navigation, hence them entering into private agreements. That rather undermines your position and you knew that.
2. Windy has given details of the legislation. The award for damages made against the absent canoeist could not have been made if there was no underpinning legislation. Why cannot you understand this?
3. The amount spent up to 2008 is nearly £400,000. Richard Benyon is still engaged within his ministerial post in trying to resolve this situation. Why? Because people like you keep on pretending that you have what you haven't. I think that money could be better spent on more pressing matters.
So basically you are either lying or a totally thick to ignore all the evidence against the canoeist's imaginary rights. Let me spell it out so you understand:
THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY RIGHTS TO PADDLE ANYWHERE OTHER THAN RIVERS WITH A PUBLIC RIGHT OF NAVIGATION.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
I asked if you could quote the lies you said I had told. You have not quoted me, presumably because you know I didn't lie.
I posted on this thread to try and get a greater understanding of the case against the PRN because I do not know if the PRN exists or not.
I did not lie about the Magna Carta, Roman Laws, or Caffyn, I just said what I understood the case for the PRN to be.
You still don't seem to be able to differentiate between legislation and case law, and the case you quote is specific to one river, so I haven't lied about the lack of specific legislation.
Richard Benyon is not trying to resolve this question, he just answered some questions from The Angling Times. So I didn't lie when I said the Government were not spending money on this issue.
Making false allegations against people and not answering questions does not help your case.
---------- Post added at 12:48 ---------- Previous post was at 12:45 ----------
Berty,
As I said in an earlier post many "Navigation Acts" do not actually grant the right to navigate, they are just about improving the navigation. So the right to navigate the river must come from some where else.
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I was and am only concerned to rebutt the suggestion that there ever was or is such a thing as a PRN over all physically navigable waters able to float a log raft in the Stone Age.
I have not sought to research or deal with the last 700 odd years of development of river rights and wrongs. Still less have I sought to research any individual waters - as I said, I take the BCU's list of waters with an exercisable GRN at face value.
I assume that as a reputable body well advised by expert lawyers and with local documentation to hand for each river, that they have it right. That's part of your problem arguing for wider and far more extensive PRN rights, you have to overcome your own sporting bodies' own researches. Hardly surprising they are keeping their heads well down. It's the advice I would have given them if ever asked :wh.
If you re-read my post analysing the Commentator Roger de Hoovenden's writings you will note that it is obvious that substantial navigation took place not only in the original Great rives but in the lesser rivers as well, "wood and the like" other things being carried.
The difference and definition, in so far as material, is the King's protection of Great rivers. A Great river is one that has the King's protection versus the rest that don't. You don't have to have the King's protection for a minor or lesser river to be subject to an equivalent local and particular right of navigation.
The category of Great river may itself not have been closed. Others may well have come to be added over the centuries to the primary pair (Thamesis and Meadway) evidenced in Magna Carta. The simplest way to add to the category of Great river would be the King's simply saying so, exercising the prerogative to protect such and such additional river as vital to the Crown, commerce and the security of the nation.
How can such particular rights of navigation arise in the lesser waters ? Long standing custom and continuous active user is of the essence of Common Law. See the equivalent legal debate over antient rights of way on land that was part and parcel of the legal background and controversy supporting the Kinder Scout and other instances of NOT civil trespass that finally led to the right to roam acts*.
So if the local authorities or landowners adjoining a minor navigable water let people navigate up and down - to their commercial advantage - without objection or interruption, confining their financial claims to mooring fees etc. then do it long enough to become firmly established common law custom and practice in the locality and on that particular river and there you have it.
Though equally it should be remembered that common law rights of this sort do require (as with the antient rights of way on land) to be continuously exercised, even if infrequently, or they are liable to lapse.
[Edit]Silting up is the classic example...nature itself preventing navigation and then, by lapse of time and impossibility of user, the right itself lapses[/Edit]
Another way of creating such local rights is if the local authorities - or equivalent way back when - may simply have said so. "Warewivelhamptonshire welcomes commercial traffic" or equivalent, to their local advantage.
Then there is statute. The specific creation of a new right of Navigation by statute, or variation of existing common law rights. Instances might be such as where a formerly un-navigable river was dredged and portions straightened to allow commercial or vital military traffic, or to extend that commercial traffic further upstream than the historic rights went. Or more simply, the creation of a new canal running where no water ever did before, to define its purpose and existence.
There are hundreds of such Navigation Statutes that apply to each particular water, to create, vary, extinguish or otherwise affect the rights of navigation in that particular water. Each to be considered on its merits. Researching them is many lifetime's work and for a legal historian like the Reverend C, if he thinks that the BCU have missed one. Not my cup of tea
I digress.
I trust that is sufficient answer for your present purposes ?
* In which I believe the Rev. C played no small part as an activist. Now trying to repeat the trick on the rivers ? but without the same legal merits I fear.
Thank you for the answer Windy.
Is it sufficient for my present purposes? Ideally I would have liked some one to point to a single Act of Parliament that stated that the PRN either did or didn't exist, but I realise that was overly optimistic and the law doesn't work like that.
I have been told that most statutes relating to navigation do not actually grant a right to navigate, this is used as a reason why the PRN must exist. I accept that maybe the right to navigate wasn't needed in the statute because a common law right to navigate the already existed on that river.
All in all there seem to be people on both sides of the argument with similar qualifications to yours, so I am no clearer.
I don't think many of the pro PRN arguments were used in the Derwent case, and I don't know what effect they would have had.
The BCU seem to have adopted a much vaguer position on where navigation rights do or don't exist than the one you refer too.
I think the only way for a clear resolution would be a court case, but no one seems to want one, and until something is done the present situation will continue, which benefits no one.
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nicepix
Well-known member
You have continued to avoid facing the facts all through these many pages. You say that I can't differentiate between legislation and case law yet you base your rights partly on a thesis that has never been and never will be law
mg: You claim that the Magna Carta gave you rights when it has all but been rescinded and even more comically you hold up Roman Laws as a right to navigation. What next? Can we throw Christians to the lions? That's a Roman Law for you. All through this debate you personally have acted like a petulant schoolboy who wants something so bad he can't see the wrongs involved and imagines that he should have it just because he wants it.
And as for not helping my case; I don't need to help it. The case is proven. Nothing I can say or do will change that. Neither it seems will it change your opinion.
I don't see any reason to prolong this thread. The case for the defence is proved. Canoeists do not have a legal right of navigation other than where legislated for. And should a canoeist or canoeists paddle through your swim where there is no right of navigation I advise all anglers to get out their mobile phones and register a complaint of Harassment to the police making sure that they inform the operator that they feel distressed, alarmed and harassed by the canoeists behaviour. Then the police will have to take some action.
Forget trespass. Let the landowners deal with that. Harassment is the way to go.
FFS
mg:mg:mg:
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You have continued to avoid facing the facts all through these many pages. You say that I can't differentiate between legislation and case law yet you base your rights partly on a thesis that has never been and never will be law
All through this debate you personally have acted like a petulant schoolboy who wants something so bad he can't see the wrongs involved and imagines that he should have it just because he wants it.
And as for not helping my case; I don't need to help it. The case is proven. Nothing I can say or do will change that. Neither it seems will it change your opinion.
I don't see any reason to prolong this thread. The case for the defence is proved. Canoeists do not have a legal right of navigation other than where legislated for. And should a canoeist or canoeists paddle through your swim where there is no right of navigation I advise all anglers to get out their mobile phones and register a complaint of Harassment to the police making sure that they inform the operator that they feel distressed, alarmed and harassed by the canoeists behaviour. Then the police will have to take some action.
Forget trespass. Let the landowners deal with that. Harassment is the way to go.
FFS
Nicepix, What do I have to do to get you to read a thread that I write.
I do not base my rights on a thesis, I do not know what my navigation rights are, that is why I came to this thread/forum.
I do not claim the Magna Carta gives me rights, I said that the pro PRN case (not just Caffyn's thesis) uses the Magna Carta to show that the PRN did exist when it was written.
I have not held up Roman laws as a right to navigate, I said the pro PRN case uses them to show the PRN has existed for over 2 thousand years. I accept that would have little relevance in court.
I have not acted like a petulant school boy, I read posts and responded to the points made in them, and asked questions. It is a shame you don't do the same.
As to harassment, I agree if some one calls the police and says they are distressed alarmed and harassed, the police will have to take action. I doubt that action would result in a successful case against a paddler, and if anglers kept doing it there could well be a case against one of them for making a false complaint and wasting police time. You have to genuinely feel distressed, alarmed, and harassed, not just pretend to be.
Thankfully Windy has been able to respond to my questions in an intelligent way, and explained his points in a sensible and logical way. I have also seen a strong case presented for the PRN in other places, so I am not certain either way.
I don't think that this thread is going to get any further, other than discussing how best to commit criminal acts against paddlers. So I shall leave you to it.
dangermouse
Well-known member
I was just doing a bit of browsing on the aforementioned "Navigation Acts", all I could really find were those Acts that were a partial cause of The American War of Independence, but by messing about with the search parameters I did find this;
Land; public right of navigation -- Attorney-General, ex rel Yorkshire Derwent Trust Ltd and another v Brotherton and others
Wednesday 31 May 1989
Land; public right of navigation -- Attorney-General, ex rel Yorkshire Derwent Trust Ltd and another v Brotherton and others | The Law Gazette
Not being a lawyer/barrister I`m not completely sure how relevent it is, hopefully Windy may pass comment.
Land; public right of navigation -- Attorney-General, ex rel Yorkshire Derwent Trust Ltd and another v Brotherton and others
Wednesday 31 May 1989
Land; public right of navigation -- Attorney-General, ex rel Yorkshire Derwent Trust Ltd and another v Brotherton and others | The Law Gazette
Not being a lawyer/barrister I`m not completely sure how relevent it is, hopefully Windy may pass comment.