'We have the power, you bastards'
A couple face having their £1 million 'dream' home demolished because they screwed up the planning application.
Council officials in Lancashire are currently high fiving each other and indulging in group masturbatory sessions. Emergency supplies of council tax funded kleenex have been rushed to the town hall.
A grinning council spokesgimp said earlier, "This is what we have been waiting for, fucking magic".
Businessman Colin Walker, who designed his dream home with his wife was overheard asking, "Yards/metres, what's the fucking difference?"
About £1million, apparently.
Council officials in Lancashire are currently high fiving each other and indulging in group masturbatory sessions. Emergency supplies of council tax funded kleenex have been rushed to the town hall.
A grinning council spokesgimp said earlier, "This is what we have been waiting for, fucking magic".
Businessman Colin Walker, who designed his dream home with his wife was overheard asking, "Yards/metres, what's the fucking difference?"
About £1million, apparently.
9 comments:
Well, you might blame the council for being petty, but it's the NIMBY's who gave councils these powers in the first place.
So I blame the NIMBYs.
I'm not blaming anyone really, Mark, but I can imagine the grins on the 'officials' faces.
Firstly it is a very horrid house but that is not the point.
Locally a builder sympathetically rebuilt a house in a Victorian street but had to replace the entire third story because the roof was 4 inches 'too high'.
Someone who knows about these things told me that planning graduates spend a couple of years in local authority planning departments before the able ones go into 'opposition' in the private sector helping architects and wotnot get through the morass of regulations.
This is why planning departments are largely staffed by incompetants and everything takes forever.
It is also why large developers always get their way ( unless they piss off Prince Charles ).
I knew I was in the wrong trade. Should have joined the cuntcil planning dept.
I would sit about all day fucking shit up, then piss around the very people who pay me wages, act like a total cunt 24/7 and then rip their houses down.
Bastard councils.
You built a million quid* home without using a professional to do the plans? You're fucking nuts. It's a grand or so on your cost and absolutely necessary IMO.
Here's some guidelines on dealing with the state.
1) Whenever possible, bypass the state. They're fucking unreliable, unhelpful and if you can find the one person who will put themselves out for you, you're extremely lucky.
2) You don't know them. Sometimes you have to deal with them, unfortunately. So, find experts. People who know the subject or know the people in the state that you'll be dealing with. A good local architect will know how the planning office ticks and will know how to draw up plans in a way that will pass, and how not to.
3) Shut the fuck up. Anyone asks you a question, refer it to your lawyer, accountant, architect, whatever. If they get irritated or annoyed that you won't answer and are being referred to your knowledgeable representative then stay with it - sometimes they just want you to dig your own grave.
* It's not a million quid home. It's more like a 1/4 million quid home on a 3/4 million quid plot of land.
Don't get me started on this....it makes me so angry.
Every council department, not just the planning department, regards the general public as the enemy. Every victory, no matter how trivial, spiteful, wasteful, or vindictive is a cause for joy. And that goes for both 'sides', I suspect. It's a tragedy, really, that this fucked-up system causes people to behave like this to each other.
Another thing these little Hitlers like to do is take an age to deal with everything. They know time is money and seem to derive a perverse pleasure in costing Mr & Mrs Public as much as possible.
I've had a recent example with the building control department of my local council, Islington. In order to get final certification under the Building Regulations they required three things to be done. Once they were completed I sent the relevant proof to Islington and received an acknowledgment saying I will receive a reply within 20 working days.
20 working days, 4 weeks, a month. A month to consider very simple documents and cross-refer to the file to show that what was done was what they asked to be done.
It has now been 11 weeks. The chap dealing with the matter is never available to answer the phone and chasing correspondence goes unanswered. A neighbour used a connection in the department to elicit the news that I should have an answer by the end of next week. There is a hint that he will require something else to be done - something his colleague specifically said would not be necessary as the building work was progressing (with the result that provisional funds set aside for that matter were used to increase the spec on something else).
8 weeks of wholly unnecessary delay costs me about £4,000 in funding costs because I can't sell the property until I have a certificate satisfactory to my purchaser's solicitor. The additional work I might have to do will cost another £5,000.
Ombudsman time, methinks.
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