Return to the Water

[Renegadenemo]

I had a read back through the correspondence between myself and the LDNPA legal eagles tonight. The byelaw wording went back and forth until it worked. An example of an issue worked through was that they wanted to give us six runs north to south and six south to north - why?
I pointed our that north to south would aim us at a huge expanse of empty lake with a reed bed at the other end whereas south to north stood a good chance of aiming us at spectators. So, what if we completed six N/S runs and hadn't learned enough to safely travel the other way? or what if the weather was against us running one way but the other way was tolerable? Why not just let us use our discretion?

This became,

There would then follow a total of up to twelve ‘proving runs’ conducted either from north to south or from south to north – direction to be decided at the time on the basis of crowd safety, data acquired during ‘development runs’ pertaining to Bluebird K7’s performance envelope, and prevailing meteorological conditions.

My words - I wrote that.

With each revision I made - the final one being dated 21/12/2009 - I appended a list of notes. They include the following.

4. We are developing a full backup plan and alternate venue for use in the event of Coniston water becoming unusable for any reason but will include in this a provision to complete a number of additional ‘display runs’ on Coniston water were this considered appropriate.

So there's the get-out for Coniston / Cumbria should the organising of a proper homecoming be too rich for their blood. We can offer the massive opportunity of Bluebird's Proving Trial to a more proactive, deserving and willing partner then perform a few display runs for Coniston just so we can say we did.

Plenty of time, though. Having seen what we're up against getting ready to run in Bute and the compromises already made we have at least a year's work when we get home to be ready to run again with a finished boat and that's if we choose to forgo the luxury of all the extra tweaks we'd like to include such as bringing the on board air-start system back to full fitness. (We'll be using offboard air in Bute because the onboard system simply isn't safe to use as yet)
So let's hope the LDNPA and Coniston get their collective backsides into gear and get an event organised that's equal to the opportunity - it's not too late.

[Renegadenemo]

Have to wonder how the mountain rescue works too. Is there a Facebollocks page somewhere listing when someone will next fall of a rock or get stuck up one?

[Renegadenemo]

A member of the Stoneybridge PC just published this on their Facebolleaux malarkey. Thanks to Malcolm for sending it over.

*

This is a comment from me personally, NOT as a member of or from Coniston Parish Council or Bluebird Heritage Festival Group.

Having this debate in the full public glare is counter-productive.

At the Coniston Parish Council (CPC) meeting on Monday 19th, one of the suggestions was to ask for Bill, as head of the BBP to come to a future meeting of CPC, and I understand that invitation will be communicated in a short while.

One thing I would appreciate from a personal level to cease the criticism of the Parish Council in all this. All the Councillors are, as with the BBP, volunteers; many of us still have full time jobs, families and other calls on our time. We aren’t professional meeting goers or petty bureaucrats and are as committed to pragmatic, on the ground “getting things done” as I believe the majority of the BBP group are. Much of the time we are hidebound in what we can achieve by other outside agencies and their rules and regulations.

The Parish Council’s aim in all this is to facilitate a celebration of Donald Campbell, his vessel and his achievements and to welcome Bluebird K7 back to her spiritual home whilst still enabling local people to carry on their daily lives. It’s not like the Parish Council has a pot of money for organising and paying for such things. The only funding they receive is the precept or specific grants and this has to fund things that will benefit everyone in the Parish.

Coniston Water is effectively a public highway with a full right of navigation, hence it’s more akin to trying to organise a race on a public road, with the added complication of different byelaws and it being in a National Park. It’s not deliberate awkwardness, it’s just that there’s no modern day precedent except for Records Week which takes place (deliberately I understand) when the use of the lake is limited and the other infrastructure - roads, accommodation etc., would otherwise be relatively quiet.

It also needs to be put into context that those byelaws didn’t exist in 1967 when Bluebird K7 was last on Coniston Water, the 10mph limit on Coniston being the result of the Three Lakes enquiry in the mid 1970’s. The same speed limit coming in on Derwent Water and Ullswater in 1978, the latter of course was the venue for Donald and Bluebird K7’s first successful world water speed record attempt. Much has changed since 1967, not all of it for the better I’ll grant you, but there’s not much we can do about that. Coniston is the only of the lakes within the Lake District with a public right of navigation whose byelaws included the facility for record attempts, with Windermere’s restrictions coming into force in 2005.

I believe that there may be some sense to be talked around dates for when a glorious homecoming event could be staged, but rather than people having half a story, can we have the conversation with a little more maturity and collaboration? A joint statement can then be issued by both the BBP and Coniston on when the proving trials would take place.

Ultimately, the byelaw is available on Coniston to run the proving trials for Bluebird K7, however, there are conditions to be met. In these conditions it does not state that the proving trials should or should not be held during school holidays and that is a decision for when an application is submitted for the proving trials which is a requirement of the Lake District National Park Authority before it can take place. Because of the area that Coniston is in there are other conditions to be met, including Cumbria County Council’s requirements. Coniston Parish Council itself does not have any say in these rules and regulations and is acting as a facilitator to enable Bluebird K7 to return to its spiritual home and enable people to see Bluebird K7 on Coniston as Donald would have wished.

Here’s hoping everyone can work positively together and find a compromise which enables Bluebird to return home to Coniston for the proving trials as well as her final resting place.

*

Notice, not a single word about actually getting anything done. In fact I spat out my tea when I read the part about 'getting things done'!
Ten bloody years we've been bashing away at them to organise their brand, their website, their online shop. They have no pot of money... We do, because we've been saving for a decade, marketing ourselves all that time, making DVDs and selling clothing.
Ten years we've been telling them we'd only come in good weather and when the kids are off but it's not gone in.
We don't care that it's tricky to sort out the LDNPA - they've had ages to get it done. But the best bit is this...

...enable people to see Bluebird K7 on Coniston as Donald would have wished.

I've met enough people who knew him to say with fair certainty that he'd not have put up with this wibbling rubbish for five minutes. He'd have found a different lake by now.

[no1traumanurse]

“Much has changed since 1967....but there’s not much we can do about that.”
Luckily a certain band of people have a better attitude than that. Not much we can do about a wrecked boat, oh, hang on!

[Piston Broke]

Ten bloody years we've been bashing away at them to organise their brand, their website, their online shop. They have no pot of money... We do, because we've been saving for a decade, marketing ourselves all that time, making DVDs and selling clothing.

I've lost count of the number of time I have offered to help set up a website and web shop to raise the coffers for the home coming. Usually with a positive response while they were at the bbp workshop then absolute silence once they left. If they had got their collective backsides together and had a brand designed they could have been selling local products and branded items for the last 10 years heck they even have a embroidery company on the other side of the lake that could have done the clothing and caps etc to keep everything local.

[Renegadenemo]

Just choose a sentence, it's all much the same.

The Parish Council’s aim in all this is to facilitate a celebration of Donald Campbell, his vessel and his achievements and to welcome Bluebird K7 back to her spiritual home whilst still enabling local people to carry on their daily lives.

This implies that what's required is for the proving trials to be as invisible as possible... This opportunity should be the daily life of the local people for the blink of an eye that a couple of weeks is! Everyone getting stuck in together to put the place on the map for years to come.

[Renegadenemo]

It's all a bit academic because even if the council and the whatever working group thingamabob suddenly got their act together you can bet that the tin-pot bureaucracy that is the LDNPA would scupper them anyway.

I remember sitting with a head-honcho from the LDNPA and being told that they 'wanted this'. So either they want it still and must therefore take steps to obtain it - it's on offer to them, after all. Or they no longer want it in which case it's about time they said so.

Moving the goalposts on Malcolm, wibbling about an 'application' that we're not going to make and throwing an extra 31 of their stakeholders in the way that we are supposed to deal with does not bode well...

[Malcolm Ops]

It's all a bit academic because ............. the LDNPA would scupper them anyway.
.... and throwing an extra 31 of their stakeholders in the way that we are supposed to deal with does not bode well...

The LDNPA manage Coniston Water, so they control what can take place on it, but the Byelaws guide what can take place at speeds above 10mph. The 31 stakeholders identified by the LDNPA, of which 21 are "regularly and routinely consulted with regard to management issues on Coniston Water", include Coniston Parish Council [CPC] (and there are six (6) other Councils in the list too). I have not seen any 'weighting score' to suggest one group is superior to another, so what the CPC says seems to matter.

[Renegadenemo]

Here's a question, Malcolm...

There's currently two impediments to Bluebird'd long awaited return to the lake. One is Coniston where all of our efforts to help over the past decade have fallen on deaf ears and now the job is too big for them in one lump when it ought to have been broken into bite-size pieces over many years. And the other is the Limitless Department of National Parochial Attitudes who once declared that they 'wanted' Bluebird then moved the goalposts at the last and are now bent on extreme arse-covering measures.

The hurdles re immense - almost insurmountable at this time, but...

Just suppose that Coniston woke up tomorrow suddenly realising the vast opportunity they stand to inherit if only for the application of some superhuman effort, cohesion and proactive work, not to mention their responsibility to the rest of a region that would doubtless like to benefit too, and they simply told the bureaucrats - listen, this is what's going to happen, this is when it's happening and you can like it or lump it!

Give them a fair bit of notice, I mean, the earliest we could possibly be ready is Aug 19 but the village couldn't. With the best will in the world they have a couple of years of planning ahead of them now to do this thing justice, so the BBP could get the boat about there then have a year working with the village to bash together a homecoming worthy of all our hard work whilst the Bureaucrats would have enough time to come to terms with their predicament.

My question is this - if the LDNPA decided to thwart the effort - and how catastrophic would that be for them! What exactly could they do about it?

Of course, in this scenario, we must assume that their 31 stakeholders also see the incoming, long-term benefits of thousands of kids saying, Mummy/Daddy, can we go to Coniston? (as mine do) for many years to come, and also turn the tables on the bureaucrats.

Never happen, I know... to achieve such results you need to be a tiny Scottish isle in the middle of the Clyde.

[Engine 711]

From BBC News, re LDNPA - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-43767068

Seems the LDNPA has a few problems.