gold_medal wrote on Aug 15
th, 2012 at 4:12pm:
... wrote on Aug 15
th, 2012 at 12:24pm:
The nanny state is the problem - again.
You know what I'd love to do? Build my own home. Not the pussy version people refer to when they say they're "building their own home" these days - which is just paying some fat oaf to slap some bricks together, and charge $200,000 for the privilege. No, I want to actually build my home, with my own two hands. It wouldn't be as flash as the one I'm in now, but it would protect my family and I from the elements. You know, what a home is supposed to do?
But I am denied that right, and all because of the useless parasite class known as the bureaucracy, whos sole purpose in life is to make things harder for everyone. Seriously. Zoning, council approval, building codes, mandatory additions...the list goes on. So, I either slave away day in, day out, paying 10 years income just to put a roof over our heads, or I'm out on the street. There is no middle ground, you're either a slave, or you'll be destroyed. If I am happy living in a shitbrick hut, what business is it of the fat bitch behind the desk at the council offices? Well, it shouldn't be anything to do with her, except that it contradicts her very reason for existing - to make things more difficult for everyone.
do you have any building skills? and those building codes you so hate are there to protect your family and anyone who visits.
yeh, thats what they say. But I'm quite capable of gauging acceptable risk, thank you very much.
Heres a real case of what I'm talking about:
Quote:As tree houses go, it's pretty basic: a few pine planks bolted to the sprawling branches of a box tree, a rope ladder, a hoist with a plastic container on the end and a swing.
But the builder, Stuart Pether, is pretty happy with his handiwork on the verge outside his home in Barrett Street, Wembley - and his three children are rapt.
"The kids had been hassling me for two years: 'Dad, can we have a tree house'," Mr Pether said. "So one Sunday in February, I said OK and we grabbed some scraps of wood and built quite a robust structure.
"The kids love it. In the afternoon, there'll often be six or eight kids playing out on the tree. It's just good, clean adventure."
Three weeks after it was finished, he said, council rangers told him it had to be taken down.
City of Cambridge mayor Simon Withers has a dilemma. He is sympathetic to the idea of kids enjoying themselves but the problem is the public liability risk to the council.
"As soon as you raise 'public liability' everyone runs for the hills, and that's what's happened here," Mr Withers said. "We have no means of insuring against the liability."
Mr Withers has previously railed against "the unstoppable steamroller of the nanny State" and said he was in favour of such natural playgrounds.
And though he hasn't visited Mr Pether's construction, he described it from photographs he had seen as "fairly innocuous".
Mr Withers believes the trend to swings and tree houses on verges stems from bigger houses on smaller blocks.
Trees on blocks have to be cleared, so parents turn to the street trees to create play areas. But because verges are council property, such structures are a council's responsibility.
Mr Withers said his council had decided to allow swings on street trees because the public liability risk was deemed so small. "We said 'we can live with that risk'," he said.
"In my view, councils need a policy - they need to get an insurance broker to get a policy for tree houses on verges."
Then, they could pass on the cost of premiums to residents like Mr Pether who want to build tree houses for their children. He said he would like local government to explore such solutions to the impasse.
The future of the Pether tree house will come before the full council on Tuesday.
And of course, the tree house was taken down. Who has the resources to fight the pettiness of the bureaucracy?
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