Last year in this column, I wrote that I thought the authorities should introduce a mandatory test and a licence of competence before anyone was allowed to take a boat out on the water – and several people jumped down my throat, berating me for proposing to introduce more bureaucracy into our leisure time.
At the tail end of 2009, Surrey Police announced the launch of Project Kraken – an initiative designed to alert people on our stretch of the river to the dangers of terrorist and criminal activity on the non-tidal Thames.
