Hopefully you don't travel through Oakland... A knife 3 inches or longer is classified as "a dangerous weapon." It's quite ridiculous considering people with the right permits can bring guns on BART, but it is the law and probably not good to go around bragging about breaking it.
You are welcome to your perspective, of course, and many other Americans have other perspectives. It would be interesting to see the distribution of opinions and analysis of where the variations are (by country? by region? urban and rural?). But I wouldn't call the POV 'American'.
> on BART
Interestingly, the places in the U.S. with more per capita crime, cities, have stronger support for gun control. However, crime is historically low nationwide, which may affect the relative distribution of gun control support/opposition in ways I can't predict.
How is that pearl-clutching? They aren't saying that's bad in any way, so to me it feels like you are projecting an attitude you'd expect them to have on a single sentence of the text.
Because it's not even remotely notable and much of the article was about literal bombs. Would they write "within ten minutes they retrieved an old wrench"? Because, barring additional details, that's exactly the same in my American mind.
Maybe because they found a knive and not a wrench as the first somewhat interesting thing? It's not clear to me they intentionally highlighted the knife because it was a knife, or just because that's what they found.
But it's not interesting, that's the point. Obviously it is* interesting to the author, because it's a dangerous weapon, just like the explosives are dangerous weapons. That, again, is the point.
Aside: what is the legal precedent for by-laws, such as the £25 fine for taking something you find? Is it a contract you enter into on the basis the trust owns the land either side of the canal?
Probably just a leftover law from the days when taking something from the land without permission was considered stealing from the lord who's land it was. If the law is not a direct leftover the precedent certainly is.
The BWB has subsequently been abolished with its powers (including the power to make and enforce byelaws) transferred to the Canal and Waterways Trust.
These waterways are accessible upon payment of a licence fee, ranging from a few pounds to over £1200, for use by boats, canoeists, paddleboarders and other craft. Walkers and cyclists can use the extensive network of 'Public Rights of Way' that run alongside the canals and rivers without payment of a fee, which were previously permissive towpaths.
Do you need a license to just float down the river on an inflatable? Also, if I drop something into the water, is it now property of the trust? What a ridiculous governing body. The UK really loves licensing the shit out of everything.
> Do you need a license to just float down the river on an inflatable?
Can't speak to the UK but in the USA, maybe. In my state, if it's a "managed" lake or reservoir, or in a state park or forest, there is a watercraft license requirement. Natural lakes, streams and rivers are exempt.
>Do you need a license to just float down the river on an inflatable? Also, if I drop something into the water, is it now property of the trust? What a ridiculous governing body. The UK really loves licensing the shit out of everything.
It's a leftover sentiment from the days when taking anything of any usefulness or value from the land without permission was considered stealing from whatever lord or nobleman owned that land. Licensing for everything and everything is not considered abnormal when it's the status quo going back a thousand years. Society takes a long time to change things that are deeply ingrained like that.
edit: If there's an alternate explanation I'm all ears...
You absolutely need some kind of licensing setup for canals, to avoid standard tragedy-of-the-commons outcomes with too many boats (particularly houseboats) on a limited amount of water. There are also safety issues -- the canal byelaws define various rules which are the waterborne equivalent of traffic regulations, to prevent collisions and other accidents. Licensing fees also fund keeping the canals maintained.
I suspect that some of the regulatory environment here is the shape it is for historical reasons -- canals were originally commercial waterways with heavy traffic, not a more lightly-used pleasure/leisure environment.
Actually, in Scotland (part of the UK) we have right to roam - so we can pretty much go anywhere we want on land, rivers or lochs - no license needed just a degree of common sense.
Many of those streams are not natural and those which are need to be maintained there is a complex network dams as well as constant dredging to maintain them passable to boats year round.
The main beneficiaries of the license fees in England and Wales are the British Canal Trust and the Environmental Agency both of which use the money to maintain the waterways and the environment around them.
The fees are next to nothing for smaller vessels, for unpowered boats the fee is incorporated into the membership fees for the clubs.
Rentals are exempt as they fall under the business fee of the rental provider and visitor licenses are available for short term that cost next to nothing.
Jesus. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, needing a paid license to float down a canal on an inflatable is ridiculous.
The comments responding to you don't make any sense either. Needing some sort of permit to permanently moor a houseboat is totally different from having to pay to use a canoe or inflatable in the water.
In case there anyone wants to defend the UK's absolutely idiotic licenses, here's a concrete example from your neighbors about 100 miles east.
Here in the Netherlands we have a ridiculous amount of public water - canals, rivers, lakes, etc - and it's all entirely free to use. It's even free to moor your boat temporarily (up to 3 days) at thousands of spots around the country. Our population density is double, we have more people with boats, and we have a massive amount of commercial shipping traffic everywhere. We've got several of the busiest ports in Europe. One of them is as big as ten of the port of London! And somehow it works out splendidly.
A yearly license for an unpowered boat is £48, daily, weekly and monthly visitor licenses are also available and cost near to nothing.
This only covers privately owned “boats” if you rent a kayak or a canoe or a boat the operator must have a business waterways license which will enable you to use the waterways for the duration of your rental.
Here in the Netherlands, I enjoy using a little inflatable boat I bought for €13 on the various waterways around the country. It's a simple, free, enjoyable thing to do.
Paying 48 pounds (63 USD) per year for the ability to use my cheap inflatable on the inland waterways is preposterous. That's more than four thousand US dollars added up over a lifetime.
The cheapest/shortest license I could find was a princely £9.10. Fairly frequently I've gone out for a brief little trip - an hour or so with the boat, drift down a canal, get some lunch - with my girlfriend. Now in order to do that I need to fill out a multi-page form and pay someone £9.10? Ridiculous.
Why can't it work the way it works here? We have more waterways, more people on the water, more commercial shipping, and a substantially more involved system of canals, lakes and rivers, and it's totally free to plop your little inflatable wherever you please (excluding a very small number of areas only available to commercial traffic, far from where anyone would want to be in an inflatable.)
By the way, I've been to the UK, and your waterways are disgusting - certainly worse maintained than here in the Netherlands. I've seen heroin needles, human feces, and piles of trash. Meanwhile over here we keep our waterways clean without making people pay four thousand bucks over their lifetime for something as simple as an inflatable boat. This is despite the planeloads of British tourists coming to the Netherlands to throw trash in our waterways.
True it's possible the son was trying to grab something off the magnet line. It's not easy to pull larger items up manually onto the shore/vessel, based on the magnet fishing videos I've seen. He was probably wearing full clothes.
Then the father jumped in? And they both drowned.
BTW, I had to vouch for your dead comment. Not sure why it was flagged.
> The crew requested permission to jettison the bomb, in order to reduce weight and prevent the bomb from exploding during an emergency landing. Permission was granted, and the bomb was jettisoned at 7,200 feet (2,200 m) while the bomber was traveling at about 200 knots (370 km/h). The crew did not see an explosion when the bomb struck the sea.
> Some sources describe the bomb as a functional nuclear weapon, but others describe it as disabled. If the bomb had a plutonium nuclear core installed, it was a fully functional weapon. If the bomb had a dummy core installed, it was incapable of producing a nuclear explosion but could still produce a conventional explosion. The 12-foot (4 m) long Mark 15 bomb weighs 7,600 pounds (3,400 kg) and bears the serial number 47782. It contains 400 pounds (180 kg) of conventional high explosives and highly enriched uranium. The Air Force maintains that the bomb's nuclear capsule, used to initiate the nuclear reaction, was removed before its flight aboard B-47.
The point of the magnet is that even if you don't find the nuke you find the hordes of AR-15s people have lost in "tragic boating accidents" over the years. If you go out fishing for bluefin it's better to come back with a cooler full of stripers than an empty cooler, metaphorically speaking.
> He defended what they were doing - including the cost to the taxpayer when bombs or other artillery are found and the authorities have to be called.
Seriously? The article's going to try to cast a negative light on ordnance being voluntarily removed from waterways? Isn't this sort of thing one of the main points of the bomb squad in WW2-impacted countries?
Their point is not to actively trigger an emergency at a given time. If a bomb is undisturbed at the bottom of a water body it is not bothering anyone and actually is providing artificial reefs for marine life. Should it be found one day and removed? Yes probably. But should it be brought to the surface by amateurs and need immediate reaction? No.
Bomb detonators aren't rendered inert just by sitting there. Delay fuses consist of a thin sheet of plastic that retains a lever and is dissolved by a quantity of acetone in an ampoule that was opened upon release of the bomb. About 20 % of the ordnance dropped over Germany by the Allied Forces was equipped with delay fuses, designed to disrupt fire and emergency services after a bombing raid. There is about one explosion/year in Germany, 72 years after the end of the war, and no end in sight. Yes, the German authorities are still actively looking for unexploded ordinance and are using Allied target photography because you don't want to hit a live bomb during excavations for a new building. Remember, the detonator is mechanical and easily triggered by vibration and movement. No, you don't want 250 kg of high explosive going off, even if covered by 1.5 m of water. In the UK they are doing similar.
a bomb at the bottom of the water in Britain (given the historic context of Germany bombing) has probably detonator in the armed state. The detonator just didn't triggered back then because for example the bomb hit the mud (naturally for the bomb falling into the river). That detonator still has high chances of going off in any moment as result of rust and/or any disturbance like from a boat passing too close. So the earlier such bomb is found [by anybody] and is removed by professionals the better. (back then, during the 4-6th grades, we found and "responsibly" disposed off [in a campfire in a forest outside the city] a range of WWII munitions. All without detonators of course. The detonator makes huge difference and we wouldn't touch the stuff with it attached - didn't even attempt to check the state of the detonator, after all we were after the fun, not suicide)
There is a YouTube channel of a guy in Germany who does this as well who just announced that he got shut down from magnet fishing by the German authorities also. They said he could face criminal charges if he kept doing it. I wonder if it's for the same reason. The guy was heartbroken as he really enjoyed doing it.
I watched one video on youtube and they found a safe with a woman's passport and various harddrives, a handgun, and a sheathed knife with a swastika insignia and that's only 15min in:
Europe and the UK have an insane amount of ordnance left over from the two world wars. France still recovers about 900 tons a year. Some areas hit by chemical attacks still won't grow anything, a century after WWI.
Seen people do this on the Thames although they are asking for trouble. We even have 1400 tonnes of explosives just waiting to explode at the entrance:
> According to a BBC news report in 1970,[12] it was determined that if the wreck of Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 1,000-foot-wide (300 m) column of water and debris nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 m) into the air and generate a wave 16 feet (5 m) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (pop. circa 20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast. However, news reports in May 2012 (including one by BBC Kent) stated that the wave could be about 4 feet (1 m) high, which although lower than previous estimates would be enough to cause flooding in some coastal settlements.
The Montgomery is ~2km from the shore and has a buoy marked exclusion zone that is monitored visually and by radar. I wouldn't worry about magnet fishers affecting it.
I wonder if they could measure trace explosive compounds/manufacturing residues at various points in the riverbed and use a hill climbing algorithm and repeated tests to locate the remaining bombs.
That's some very British pearl-clutching.
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