A man's home is his castle, except in England

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The whole case reminds of that quote by famous New York Lawyer Elihu Root

So true.

 

How true is this! Life would be much happier if more people took the Wiccan Rede - or whatever specific religious variant thereof they hold dear - to heart, and acted upon it.

In the specific application at hand, though... who gets to determine what "hurt" means, and to whom it applies?

 

I say bloody well done! You all comparing this to what I call "serious" offences is ridiculous, the guy built a house with his own two hands on his own damn land and some arrogant b*stards who have the power to throw their weight around don't like the fact that he's made them look stupid. If I was that guy I'd fight tooth and nail, then when the bulldozers arrive stand right in front of them 'till the end!

Good on him!

Incidentally, his neighbours should just get over it. It's in the middle of a farm ffs, neighbours the world over are exactly the same, they complain purely for the sake of not being overlooked.

 

Yeah! Safety regulations, environmental regulations, fire codes, zoning regulations...none of these things serve any purpose at all! They don't exist to protect the populace from the ramifications of bad wiring or improper materials causing a fire or using excessive energy to heat/cool their homes driving up costs for everyone else! Regulations only exist so that the powerful can feel all high and mighty!

 

Well, he does have a castle and some cannons, provided they don't blowup in his face.

 

I didn't get the impression from the article that this guy was rich or powerful. He actually seemed like a little guy trying to beat the big guy at his own game.

 

You appear to have misread me.

I thought it was quite clear that "the powerful" in this context would be the regulators...not the little guy selfishly ignoring them.

 

Yeah, because this guy is the only person to ever have a large house of course. Or have a building that *shock horror* is physically capable of catching fire? And yes, a large number of regulations are pointless excersises of power where the government has stepped beyond the bounds it was designed for originally and become a dictatorship in itself wherein the "little man" as you call him has no power despite civil war to acheive just that. The claims you all make are extremely blinkered by society and regulation. We're spoiled, having our houses built for us so all we have to do is move in and stick some coloured paper to the walls.

For hundreds, nay thousands of years man has sought three things: Food, shelter and sex. It is a sad and unhappy event when one of the simplest requirements and desires of our basic instinct are buried under baskets of legislative paper, and it's even sadder that everyone agrees with it. We as a society have been brainwashed to believe all the pointless pontificating in stupid cases such as this is necessary and beneficial. Well I don't agree, and I think that a society where the work of a man's two hands can be destoyed by the legislative pontificators is a very sad society indeed. How would you like it if you wrote a whole 5,000 word essay and your friend says "You never asked to borrow my pen dammit!" And burns the whole thing? How is this any different?

The government was made by the people to avoid power such as this ever being lauded over us, and lo and behold, what have we ended up with? The age of the lawyer is upon us, and imho, it is a very sad age indeed.

 

Uri,
I really don't get why this fool gets you riled up so much. He built a house without a permit in the knowledge he needed one and tried to cheat his way through in a fools manner. Had he some smarts or be in the business to listen to advice he wouldn't even started his Qichtotian quest.

I remember where unregulated building left Istanbul after the last earthquake. In ruins, much more ruins than proper enforcement of building standards would have left them. German building regulations incorporate lessons learned from large area fires - Californian building regulations take into account the risk of earthquakes. Guess why?

There is easily too much regulation, and there is easily too little.

Accept that times have changed. Or not so much changed, it's just a consequence of civilisation: Forget about glorifying a largely fictious happy past when man was oh-so-free. The Chinese had their building regulation authorities and bureaucracy, and so had the Babylonians millennia ago. What are you surprised about? When you were able to build your house wherever you wanted, you also didn't have a PC, and you also didn't have cities of one, two or 20 million people. These regulations have come with and ensured the high living standard and prosperity you're used to now. If you don't like it, you can always go native and build yourself a hut and squat in the forrest

 

I think you fail to understand the purpose of the law. The law fundamentally exists to protect people. Building codes exist to protect not only the builder, but the next schmuck who isn't a carpenter, electrician or plumber who goes in and buys the place having no idea he's just moved into a death trap.

To use fire codes as an example, here's a hypothetical.

John has a nice house and some farm land in which he has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars - most of his wealth. Bill buys the plot next door, which was also zoned as farm land and allowed for a modest home to be built. He decides to ignore the city codes and builds a mansion with 27 rooms, a heated swimming pool, and glass walls despite the frigid winters and balmy summers all without approval. It turns out, though, that Bill's house uses more power than the grid is equipped to handle in that area, which causes frequent power interruptions for both Bill, John, and the three other houses currently sharing a transformer. Not only that, but the home also overwhelms his septic system, causing crap to overflow into both John and Wendy's fields. This is especially bad for John and Wendy, since farming is their sole source of income and they've both had to write off considerable portions of their fields due to the human waste contamination.

This isn't the worst part, though. Bill's wiring also wasn't up to code and he didn't use the mandated fireproof insulation and roofing materials. Due to the overtaxing of the city grid, his own faulty wiring, and his failure to stick to the city's fire code, Bill's house caught fire from a power surge, spread to John's house, and took a substantial portion of Wendy's crop before the fire department, which wasn't located nearby, finally arrived. John and Wendy were pissed. Bill wasn't, though, because he, his family, and his wait staff all died in the fire.

Yes, yes, it's a hypothetical. Nevertheless, there's a point to it. City codes don't exist solely to serve the vanity of powerful people. They exist because what happens on your land does affect other people. If there were only 3 people living in the UK, building codes -and most other laws, for that matter- would be unnecessary, but the 242,910 square kilometers of the UK are shared by 61 million people. Because of that, zoning laws and building codes are absolutely necessary. Sometimes they may go too far, sometimes they may not go far enough, but they are necessary.

 

Drew's example is pretty illustrative.

I don't quite comprehend how one can gain the impression that laws like zoning are only there to satisfy the vanity of the legislators. That's quite silly. What wonders me is what sounds like prevalent resentment against authority.

Uri, that 5000 word essay can if necessary be handled with a simple compensation for the use of the pen. Unless it is written very badly (in which case there would be no harm in burning it) it poses no risk to your life, and it doesn't pose an abstract danger if it is not in compliance with building or writing regulations. Because it is not a concrete or abstract danger inherent in that essay there is no need to destroy or remove the essay to fend off that danger. The issue of building permits first of all is about fending off danger. You chose a poor example.

I give you that Uri, I can comprehend how resentment against authority emerges when people feel treated unfairly because they don't understand the rules and underlying purposes of those rules being applied to them. They then feel being treated like an object. Even more so if the legislation in question is as technical and abstract as zoning laws.

I have friends who are with attac, quite left, and pretty activist. They always tell me about how bad the police and the state is, and I always tell them that when they approach the police the way they do, the experiences of 'oppression' they get are guaranteed (and in my impression anyway confirm their pre-existing views). Not that they cared. Where we're back at full circle:

But then, fools aren't in the business to listen to advice.

 

'm not saying the guy wasn't in the wrong, that much was obvious, and I agree the guy should face some kind of mild punishment, but I maintain what I said, it's way over the top that they're gonna make this guy tear down something he's built with 50k and a vast investment of time just cause he's put their noses out of joint. It's highly possible that the building could meet the necessary quality levels, but they'll never, under any circumstances allow the guy to keep his hard work. And why? Because they don't want other people getting similar ideas. This is not justice, this is beurocracy.

 

Uri, the city is within its rights to force him to pay a fine for re-zoning, and force him to bring his home up to code. Tearing the home down should obviously be a last resort, but if the place is a death trap that can't be fixed, it may well be necessary. If he cannot bring the home up to code after re-zoning, depending on the code violation(s), tearing it down may be the only option left. Grandfathering in a 4 year old home sets a dangerous precedent. What is the point of having laws, after all, if they are not enforced? People notice when laws don't get enforced.

 

Uri,
the looming threat of a demolition order to our castle builder isn't punishment. It's an expression of individual responsibility that one does refuse to meet. There is a danger - be it abstract or concrete, someone is responsible but doesn't act on the danger, so somebody else does - at his expense. Others are filling in for the one responsible and do what he if he acted responsibly would have to do. That isn't punishment, but the one responsible paying for the efforts he caused others to undertake. That is an important if inconvenient distinction.

In case of a demolition order our guy would lose the house, and lose the money, time and effort he invested into building it, and be forced to pay the bill for the destruction. That'd be quite a hit.

And indeed, someone held to account in such a fashion will lose money or property anyway and in all likelihood will subjectively perceive all this as a distinction without a difference, alas, there would still be complaints from that direction if it was a distinct difference.