In Hove:
Home owners could be sued by their council for not redecorating.In Bedford:
A quarter of households on Hove's Brunswick Estate face prosecution unless they splash out on expensive materials to repaint their homes.
Brighton and Hove City Council is required to enforce the repainting scheme in line with the Hove Borough Council Act 1976, designed to preserve “uniformity in the exterior of buildings in Brunswick Square, Brunswick Terrace and part of Brunswick Place”.
Desperate to find his missing cat Wookie, Mike Harding put up posters throughout the neighbourhood offering a reward for its safe return.In Rickmansworth:
And it was not long before he received a phone call.
Not from someone who had found the pet, however, but from the council saying he was breaking the law.
An official letter the following day accused him of causing ‘urban decay’ with his ‘fly-posting’ and ordered him to remove the signs immediately or face a £1,000 fine.
A council is demanding the removal of a child’s climbing frame from a Rickmansworth garden because it allegedly breaches planning rules...Council officers, who are opposing the granting of planning permission, argue the structure is too big and overlooks neighbouring gardens.When are these people going to learn that they are the servants, NOT the masters? And more to the point, when are these 'savage cuts affecting vital frontline services' that they are wailing and gnashing their teeth over going to take effect?
Because if there's one thing we really CAN afford to see less of in 2011, it's small-minded petty little bureaucrats with nothing better to do than harass homeowners over the colour of their house, their missing pet posters or their child's climbing frame...
12 comments:
They will never see themselves as servants and why should they when they are on a better rate of pay than the private sector, have a taxpayer backed guaranteed pension in place?
The only way to get rid of them is a mass of individuals stopping their Council tax direct debits.
I'm not holding my breath for any changes though. The cuts are cosmetic and not being implemented properly if at all, as the implementers are the ones being affected.
I like the idea of a council tax rebellion though, that would cause all kinds of chaos.
Brunswick terraces are all listed buildings, and if some of them remain tatty then the value of the whole lot goes down. Seeing as one of the councillors lives there, it might be in his interest to see the regulations enforced :) However, with ownership of any listed building comes responsibility.
The Bedford and Rickmansworth examples are indeed petty, but I think you're being a bit unfair about the Hove one - if you live in a Regency terrace, you have to live with the associated decoration standards - these were presumably in the deed covenants when everyone bought their houses. It's no different to the Grosvenor estate enforcing decoration standards on all their leaseholders in Belgravia.
Leaving aside the Hove story, it's pretty obvious that local councils are now almost completely out of control - certainly out of the control of elected officials.
My own local council's website is clearly written by someone to the eco-Left of Greenpeace, but it pretty much sums-up the direction of council policy overall.
Talk to our councillors and it is clear they have almost no influence over the laughably titled 'Chief Executive' nor his Indy-reading, Moonbat-wannabe staff.
I don't make a point of reading Littlejohn in the Mail but I did on ths subhect and he had one line that more or less encapsulates the current sitaution: "Local government is an organised conspiracy against the paying public. So-called ‘services’ are run entirely for the convenience of those who are employed to provide them."
He might also have added: "".. and to promote their political opinions."
The Hove story quite amuses me - there is something inherently funny about the town council in the UK's gay capital cracking down on badly decorated houses.
All part of 'Neighbourhood Services'... by providing a framework for compliance with (their view) of local regulation, they facilitate disputes, instead of letting neighbours just sort it out themselves (non violently).
Naturally, the rules must be enforced without fear or favour - so regulations brought in probably to avoid political/commercial fly-posting are used to threaten people looking for their lost pets.
Lisburn City Council have a department who give driving tests and licenses to users of electric wheelchairs, and have decided that you are breaking the law if you take your electric wheelchair into your own garden without a license.
When some lefty complains about cuts to "vital services", it's so easy to compile huge long lists of crappy services nobody wants or needs. I just wish we had the option of voting for a party led by someone with the balls to do that. What I hate about the current cuts is the apologetic way they're being done: "Sorry, we have to make cuts because of the recession." I want someone in charge with some principles, who'd make cuts if we were swimming in a sea of money.
although I am willing to bet that the Bedford and Rickmansworth cases were promptedby a complaint from one or more members of the public and/or a local councillor. i am prepared to be proved wrong....
"They will never see themselves as servants and why should they..."
Sadly true.
"The cuts are cosmetic and not being implemented properly if at all, as the implementers are the ones being affected."
As Squander Two points out, we need someone who will look at cases like these and make the determination, not simply leave it to them to do themselves. That's just asking for trouble.
" However, with ownership of any listed building comes responsibility."
Yup I do take your point, and Simon's - but I'm leery about the whole 'listing' scam.
"I don't make a point of reading Littlejohn in the Mail but I did on ths subhect and he had one line that more or less encapsulates the current sitaution: "Local government is an organised conspiracy against the paying public. So-called ‘services’ are run entirely for the convenience of those who are employed to provide them.""
When Littlejohn's right, he's right.
My own council's much-trumpeted bottle recycling scheme seems to have gone by the wayside. We've now missed three fortnightly collections!
I've complained, and if the word 'cutbacks' appears in the inevitable reply, there will be hell to pay...
"...there is something inherently funny about the town council in the UK's gay capital cracking down on badly decorated houses."
I hadn't thought of that! :)
"Naturally, the rules must be enforced without fear or favour - so regulations brought in probably to avoid political/commercial fly-posting are used to threaten people looking for their lost pets."
The line of least resistance. He made it easy for them by being a law-abiding citizen.
> I'm leery about the whole 'listing' scam.
Me too. Whilst I agree that we need some mechanism to preserve certain aspects of the nation's long-term appearance against people's short-term interests — we really don't want someone thinking they're allowed to knock down a six-hundred-year-old house because they've owned it for six months — the listing system is appalling. It's the usual "I want something so I'm going to get the state to force you to spend your money on it."
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