Multiple moorings or 'free' moorings?

On the back of Andrew Denny's latest post on Granny Buttons regarding multiple moorings, I felt this post was appropriate! Well said Andrew - I witnessed first hand and blogged on it from the scene when I visited during the summer. Well, new to me but a very reliable source has reported to me that apparently the local council, (unsure which one,) actually purchased a whole load of narrowboats and worked their way down their housing waiting list asking if anyone wanted to live on a boat. The local police had a splurge on new age travellers resulting on an increase in the length of the council housing list. I guess throwing them onto the waterways was an easy option to meet targets and certainly much cheaper and simpler than finding bricks and mortar for them. Another indication of the extremely sad deterioration of the K & A. I wonder, under the freedom of information act, if BW could tell us exactly how many boats out there are having their licences paid for by local authority housing departments!?