On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 14:56:30 +0100, Dave Plowman
wrote:
In article ,
Orange wrote:
No Dave, my rage has got absolutely nothing to do with the way I conduct
myself towards my family, along with millions of others it's directed
against this government, who on an almost daily basis appear to have an
agenda of introducing rules and regulations affecting ordinary decent
law-abiding people, most of whom are pefectly content to be left alone to
get on with their lives.
Suppose a neighbour decides on some DIY gas work,
That's already controlled under the CORGI scheme. Which at the moment
is sensible (ish). With regulations like this wisdom lies in knowing
where to stop.
and hasn't a clue about how to do it correctly. And blows up your house.
That's just one of the reasons why I will only live in a detached
house. I like a layer of insulation (free space) between myself and my
neighbours and then I don't have to overly concern myself in what they
are doing. AAMOF I don't know what they're doing ATM, any of them :-)
Or doesn't follow plumbing regs and poisons your water.
It's almost inconceivable that he would unintentionally contaminate
the public water supply. Lead piping issues aside (but I don't know
of any of those either), I have no recollection of any instances of
anyone being poisoned by a neighbours work on his domestic water
installation. Installations in decrepit council owned properties, un
modernised Victorian Schools and crumbling council houses, are far
more likely to be insanitary, near certainly, in fact.
Or takes a load bearing wall down which effects the integrity of your structure?
Can't happen, see above.
Or perhaps likes noisy parties every night?
Some of them do have quite big parties, they don't bother me, see
above, but if they did there are provisions to cater for that once the
issue has arisen. What you don't have to do is go down the council and
get a licence every time you have a party (However AIUI parties of
carol singers now need a licence from the council BTW). They are,
however proposing you notify the council every time you repair a
broken window, or move a light switch, or replace a central heating
boiler, insisting that only approved boilers are used as replacements
presumably in the face of all other constraints, size, pipery uppery
complications etc. Can't just get another one the same to fit the gap
in the kitchen units pipes etc. We can't have that now can we?
As it is, when we built an extension I had to go through a Kafka
-esque performance of trogging down the council offices with "A Brick"
and "A Roof Tile" to demonstrate the materials were "suitable", (Hey
what would be the future of a company making "unsuitable" bricks or
roof tiles?) despite the fact that the "Building Controls Officer" I
saw had not the slightest idea what materials were used in the
original house. The point being that as property owner, it was in my
own interest more than anybody else to use "suitable" materials.
Or wants to run a brothel?
As if the council protected the environment and amenity of people
already living in driech tower blocks and council estates when they
populated them with prostitutes and junkies decanted from problem
estates. Remember also it was a *Council* that *built* the piggeries:
See:
http://snurl.com/2kf1
Anyway, commercial use would need planning permission, a Brothel run
by an owner-occupier as a "sideline" in an ordinary house (which is
all there are round here) would be unlikely to generate enough traffic
to bother me (she'd get sore!). It is interesting to reflect that
there's talk about of having continental style red light districts in
British towns, and if that were to happen and the council decided you
were going to get a Brothel next door, you'd get a Brothel next door.
Happy?
The possibility of corruption in public officialdom concerns me most.
They will chose where, when, if and how the regulations are enforced.
This is an issue that I *have* encountered (costing my company nearly
£1m profit since 1989 because they insisted we provide proof of
compliance with European standards {type testing} thereby increasing
our costs by 19%. they did not impose this on our competitors for some
reason, and then when they had a big requirement, selected against our
products because the untested products from our competitors were
cheaper), rather than one of the neighbours supplementing her income
on the side, or replacing a broken window with unapproved glass,
putting a light in the cupboard under the stairs, or FTM singing
Christmas Carols in public without a licence, which I have not. :-(
YMMV.
All these with in the confines of his own house, and perfectly ok in your
ideal world where the state leaves everyone to do their own thing
regardless.
I get to work with a lot of visiting service engineers. One from
America couldn't understand why our mixer taps didn't mix but had two
seperate nozzles, scalding himself under the 100% hot outflow with the
mixer tap set to warm (half way). I explained it was important that
hot water potentially from a contaminated roof tank shouldn't get into
the cold rising main but he said how could it, the cold feed must be
under higher pressure to reach the tank (I had no answer) and anyway
what the hell are you doing having contaminated hot water piped to the
kitchen sink? One from Holland complained that the drinking water in
his Birmingham hotel room must be of very low quality because it was
*very* heavily Chlorinated and irritated his eyes, One from Belgium
couldn't believe the performance we made of getting planning
permission & building consent to build a house, It's your land, it's
your money, it's your house, if it fell down it's your problem. What's
it to do with anyone else? I told him it's to protect the environment,
and the house would remain after he had been and gone affecting the
local environment, he was unimpressed. I must admit the quality of
housing and visual amenity in Belgium would at the very least seem not
to be any worse than even the better parts of Birmingham, :-) and nor
for that matter does the incidence of water borne diseases in Boston
MA or Utrecht NL seem to be significantly worse than Birmingham UK.
So there must be another reason, it must be summat else mustn't it?
DG