I was interested to read David Barnicoat’s article on the financial challenges facing Falmouth Harbour Commissioners in the latest edition of the Falmouth Packet and, in particular, the harbour master's comments regarding mooring charges for local small boat owners for the coming season.

Bearing in mind that my new licence agreement, dated February 2, arrived a couple of weeks ago, accompanied by a list of charges for the 2015 season, it is hard to believe that he was actually unaware of these increases, already decided upon, and, yes, you guessed it, my bill has gone up by ten per cent.

Unless, due to advancing age, I am missing some subtle nuance in modern accounting, that would seem to be a hike in price of quite a bit more than inflation – something the Harbour Authorities are supposedly not in favour of – and one might be forgiven for thinking that it was, indeed, a simple attempt to plug the black hole in their finances by extracting hard-earned coin from those least able to argue with it.

And we’ve all believed for nigh on 300 years that Dick Turpin died in the hangman's noose. It just goes to show how wrong you can be.

A grumpy old mariner
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