I am sure you are right Gav. Just that I have been fishing the canals for over 20 years and when I was in my teens a baliff always came round for day ticket money. I am sure there must be still baliffs around now but I havn't seen one in the last 10years! I must also say that I have a club ticket for those stretches of canal I fish which are club controlled and I don't condone poaching.
The bottom line is that there are miles and miles of canals which barely see any fishing pressure apart from the most obvious easily acessible areas. Of course you also have to put up with at times heavy boat traffic, dog walkers and cyclists...
BW is totally boat oriented, areas I used to fish in the 80s are now marked as no fishing areas and I have seen stretches of canal drained down with the fish left to die. I am sure this is justified from BWs point of view, after all boats have to pay for a hefty licence and what were the canals originally built for in the first place? Also even if BW invested heavily in angling how many anglers would desert the comericials, given the extra hassles involved in fishing the canals? So BW can increase the rentage fees and quite a few clubs would relinquish their rights and unless BW increase the number of baliffs all you end up with is free fishing!