UK Petition worth signing

Subject: UK Petition worth signing
From: Simon G
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 12:07 PM

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/livewithit/

This is the actual text of the petition

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to introduce a green paper proposing ways, that, where complaints have been instigated by resident(s) against a long standing activity (for example, church bells, sports facility, local airfield and similar), and where residence has been taken up since the start of that activity (providing there has been no significant increase in activity), a presumption should be made to protect the continuation of that activity and reject such complaint"

Ok so you might like the examples given, but it isn't irritating when the same person complains everytime you pluck a guitar string at the folk club and everytime the presumption is that you are creating a noise nuisance.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 05:01 PM

I absolutely disagree.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 12:51 PM

I should have thought you would be in favour Richard, as one who, like myself, can no longer enjoy the annual get together at Badlesmere, because some a***hole bought a house 400 yards away from the venue (damn near out of earshot of a fireworks display), and promptly kicked up about a once a year (for f**k's sake) acoustic music weekend spoiling the peace of the neighbourhood.

If these types are allowed to get away with it, even by default, there will be nowhere left to sing in this country.

Don T.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,Peter W. Darkin
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 01:36 PM

Too many people move into an area and then apply the NIMBY principal.This denying of complaint should be included in the European Bill of Rights.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,stu
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 01:41 PM

At Fylde one of the majorpubs converted some upstairs rooms intoflats. So you buy/rent a flat over a pub?? Then complain about acoustic music. So far the courts have supported normal folk use.

Stu

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 05:17 PM

Badlesmere used to get pretty noisy with the PA rig. I don't think I'd ahve bothered personally about a once a year event, but when a quiet village pub gets a new manager (squire) and he starts bringing in the discos and "musicians" with backing tracks and karaoke to get the drug dealers and the up the nose brigade in to buy alcopops it gets pretty objectionable. The Nags Head in Lower Stoke could be heard for half a mile on a bad night while one particular set of people (curiously their heads were always under the counter bottling up while packages changed hands in the middle of the pub) ran it, so how anyone with children in the shole of the high street got their kids to sleep baffles me.

Unamplified music is unlikely to be a "nuisance".

The law as it stands, correctly applied, is correct. No-one has the right to cause an unreasonable disturbance to his neighbours, new or old (to oversimplify).

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 06:00 PM

I think that is probably too much simplification.

Wouldham, just across the river has a church with a rather fine peal of bells, and has had a troop (or whatever they are called) of bell ringers since the nineteenth century, at least.

Traditionally, they practised for three hours from 6pm till 9pm on Tuesday evenings.

From December 1970 to August 1985, I lived within 200 yards of the church, and had no problems at all with what I regarded as a natural sound to be hearing in a village in the Kent countryside.

Then the house opposite the church was bought by a Londoner, who is only home evenings and weekends, as he commutes daily into London to work.

He got himself elected to the local council (must have cost quite a few drinks), and Hey Presto! the council decides that the bells are a noise nuisance, and they have been silent these twenty years past.

They don't even ring on Sundays or for funerals, as, with no opportunity to practise, the ringers packed it in.

I think that is carrying things much too far.

If you don't like noise, DON'T buy a house next door to an existing Airfield, motor racing circuit, or church. If you DO buy it, then learn to live with what was already there before you made the decision, and don't expect everyone else to get out of YOUR way.

Simple innit

Don T.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Snuffy
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 07:20 PM

If you move to "a house next door to an existing Airfield, motor racing circuit, or church", you should be deemed to have accepted that the nuisance is acceptable.

The price you pay for that house will be less than that of a similar house away from the nuisance: this price differential is your monetary compensation for putting up with the nuisance. Having thus agreed to accept the nuisance - and been paid for it - you can not then claim the nuisance is unacceptable and demand its removal.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 02:08 AM

Nuisance is nuisance, whenever it is discovered.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Ernest
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 02:20 AM

Hard to overlook an airfield, a church or even a pub, don`t you think so, Richard?

And if you know that there is a pub close by you have to take into account that it might change it`s owner or policy.

Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 02:35 AM

Most likely nuisances can be and are habitually concealed by vendors. As Don points out, some church towers are silent. So the vendor never accepts purchaser appointemnts during ringing hours, and if asked orally says "oh, no, I've never heard them ring for years" - and if he gets sued, denies he ever said it.

The idea that it is an acceptable risk that a pub might change owner or policy so it's ok is just silly. THe house next door might change owner or policy, or the teenage son might start practising in the garage with a metal band. Same principle.

THe existing law is right on this one.

However, there is quite some chance that church bells might not be actionable nuisance. One of the factors taken into account is the benefit to the community of the activity - see some of Lord Denning's judgments about cricket (which he quite approved of).

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Snuffy
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 06:25 AM

Most likely nuisances can be and are habitually concealed by vendors. You have statistical evidence of this? Does "most" mean 50.001% or 99.999% or "I've heard of many cases".

And purchasers could also feign ignorance, even though fully informed, if it is in their interest to do so. But of course a purchaser would never stoop so low, it's only nasty vendors who play those dirty tricks.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Ella who is Sooze
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 07:20 AM

I'm a bell ringer, and constantly astounded by people who live next to a church who complain about the bells... erm, it's next to a church, we ring for services, weddings, funerals, in celebration of something and in remembrance of something.

It's a custom, and also part of the tradition in the church, calling people to church and for all the above reasons.

If you live next to a church, then expect there to be many cars on a occasions, or bells ringing etc. DOH! If you don't want that, then buy somewhere where there's not those noises.

EWIS

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 07:46 AM

From December 1970 to August 1985, I lived within 200 yards of the church, and had no problems at all with what I regarded as a natural sound to be hearing in a village in the Kent countryside.
so said[Don wyzywig].
Don, I am puzzled Inever saw you at the singarounds in wouldham.in the early seventies,
Were you not playing at that time,they were great nights upstairs in a pub.I think the pub has shut since.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Joseph P
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 08:10 AM

The idiot moving in next to a church seems to be a common occurence. We came to the compromise of practising once a week within certain hours, one individual would be stood outside the church with a watch, and would go barmy if the slightest noise was made a second after 9pm.

Local councils? The chairperson of ours is the wife of someone quite prominent in the local building trade. Many of their friends have got away with closing pubs illegally to become dwellings, building houses on questionable plots of land etc etc. Coincidence?

On the other side of the coin there is the builder who, in a mjaor revamp of a house wanted to use cotswold stone (in keeping with the area), was made to use concrete t blocks, as this was in keeping with the original structure. Grrr. Where is the common sense?

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Kampervan
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 08:20 AM

I've got to say that I'm with Simon G on this.

If someone moves to the country and then complains about the noise from cockerels in the farmyard that have there for longer than anyone can remember then they should receive short shrift.

If someone starts to keep chickens on a new housing development then that's another matter altogether.
K/van

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 08:43 AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, Richard (somewhat rusty on Law of Torts, and my Winfield & Jolowicz is probably OOD) but if the alleged nuisance obtained before the prat - sorry - incomed 'un moves in, isn't it

the case that the incomed 'un has come to the nuisance, and hence has no cause of complaint ?

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 09:15 AM

I am informed there is a gentleman who moved some time ago to a house in close proximity to the active but event and time restricted Brands Hatch motor racing circuit here. He spends a great deal of his time assiduously measuring, on specialised meters, the noise emitted by the racers and then raises objections with the local council. I expect, under today`s political attitudes, he will succeed in getting it shut down.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,JR
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 10:48 AM

Is that the same Brands Hatch neighbour who, on the night prior to the Historic Super Prix a few years ago, moved tyres from the tyre wall between Dingle Dell and Stirlings, set them up across the track and set fire to them?   

I was one of a group of drivers who found this burning edifice while we were walking the circuit to remind ourselves where the black bits went. Luckily damage to the tarmac was limited and quickly repaired by circuit staff. We had a fantastic weekend (I won my class - Whooo Hooo!) but we were told that this kind of circuit damage was not unknown.

I now live near an agricultual showground, host to steam rally, an annual show and a rock festival. It was there when I moved here and it will no doubt be there when they carry me out of this place in a box.

Off to sign the petition ...

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 10:55 AM

No, Bryn, exactly the opposite.

But "what is a nuisance in Belgrave Square would not necessarily be one in Bermondsey" - it is a matter of the interference with the reasonable use and enjoyment of the plaintiff's land. On the basis of this there is some speculation that the well known "cockerel" case where a townie moved in next to a farm and won his case in nuisance might well have been decided the other way on another day before another judge.

As I said above, Denning was fond of English country pastimes (like cricket) and as reluctant to think of the occasional cricket ball on the bonce as a nuisance. Might explain some of his judgments, what?

I ahve not researched cases but I am by no means clear that church bells for services and a reasonable amount of practice at reasonable times would necessarily be a private nuisance.

Hooligans bellowing inside and outside a pub (and when inside with amplifiers) are clearly on the other side of the line.

I also think there was case in which an opera company whose soprano could, when performing outside, be heard for 3 miles was a nuisance. So have peacocks been held to be but of course they are not an indigenous English animal.

We all have to live somewhere, and just because the locals used to piss in the well before civilisation arrived does not mean it should continue - not even in Upper Dogsbottom.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 11:11 AM

""Don, I am puzzled Inever saw you at the singarounds in wouldham.in the early seventies,
Were you not playing at that time,they were great nights upstairs in a pub.I think the pub has shut since.""

At the time, I had a year old daughter, and a newborn son (he was born in February '71), and I was working as a steel erector/plate cutter on Kingsnorth power station. That was the day job.

I was also working four nights a week as a coach driver, to manage a mortgage on the house. There wasn't much time left for anything else, and I was already a regular at the "Wish it was a Brewery", as well as visiting Faversham.

I did look in at the Wouldham one once or twice, but couldn't raise the energy to get more involved.

Then of course, I went to work for the old "Mud 'n Dirt" (Maidstone & District Bus Co), and opened the Dog & Gun Folk Club in Maidstone which ran with a guest every Saturday for seven years.

I booked you a couple of times, if memory serves, along with guys like Adrian May, Dave Totterdell, and Eddie Walker, as well as one Martin Carthy.

Don T.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,M.Goodwin
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 11:25 AM

If you dont like bells dont buy a house next to a church, same applies to a motor racing circuit!!!!
What has happened to our once [could be proud of] country?

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: sapper82
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 11:57 AM

Back in the '80s the railway line from Romsey to Eastleigh had seen very little traffic for years. The only movements being an occasional empty stock working or Sunday diversions.

Then came the stone terminals at Farnham and Eastleigh and 1000tonne plus trains being routed via that line.
You should have hear those living by the line complain!!!
But as people said, you by a house next to a railway, you've got to expect trains.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,ray merritt
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 01:18 PM

this petition is absolutley right. Too many people move next to a venue/airport/motor racing circuit and think they have the right to stop years of entertainment because they don't like if after just 15 minutes of living there.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 03:08 PM

If you choose to move next door to a haulage contractor, you must expect to hear lorries starting up at 5am. If you choose to live next to a farm, you must expect farmyard smells.

To put it basically, if you want to live in the auditorium , then you have to listen to the concert.

Having said this, reason has to prevail.

I have never been able to understand why good music has to be amplified to a level at which it drowns out any other sound. If the music is good enough, them people will listen to it.

Certain instruments (bells, bagpipes, and possibly others) are best heard from a distance, and if you listen to them at close range, then they can be raucous.

People have been complaining about the noise of church bells ever since they have been rung. Between 1817 and 1821 the ringers at St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, used to practice on 10 bells at 6am in the summer, inspiring John Twiddy, the parish clerk, who liveed near the church, to write the following lines in the Norwich Mercury :-

Ye rascally ringers, inveterate foes,
Disturbers of those who are fond of repose.
I wish for the rest and the peace of these lands,
That ye had round your necks what ye pull with your hands.

Ella - good to hear about another ringing 'catter - where's your tower?

Don - a group of ringers is usually called a band (boring answer, isn't it).

All the best

Peter

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,sandy
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 03:32 AM

100% behind this petition as the minority that apear to have only selfish reasons behind there protests against long established events that benifit the majority should get shunned and outcast from the majorty why help them in anything .
as long as the any new or unreasnable repetitive noise is kept within the agreed existing laws no problem . haveing lived near airport most of my life you only hear a plane that is strange or in trouble even after the airfield went on to opening 24 hours a day no problem

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 04:44 AM

This is absolute nonsense. Hundreds of thousands have their lives made a misery by Heathrow. Probably as many more across the country have their lives blighted by unsocial behviour from pubs. There is absolutely no reason why people should not have a civilised night out at the pub - but about 90 percent of pubs (observing in the south east) have electric music blasting so that no-one within hundreds of yards in a residential area can have a conversation in their own gardens or put childrn to sleep a sensible hours, oafs gather outside the pub to smoke and at all hours of the day or night discuss at levels comprehensible for a hundred yards and in group audible for two hundred who they fucked where and when (in such terms), what drugs they prefer, who sells them at the best deals, who smacked a copper and legged it, who drunkenly drove whose stolen car into a ditch, who shanked who and who torched whose gaff.

The selfish bastards are the people who want to go to someone else's back yard and do there what they don't or can't do in their own.

Not long ago one oaf was outside a nearby pub hooting for his mates to come out for their lift - at nearly midnight. I went out and demanded his address so that I could go round and hoot outside his house. Guess what? "Go home grandad before you get hurt"

That's the sort of people these petitioners are.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Ella who is Sooze
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 05:04 AM

Peter the squeezer, I ring in the Monmouthshire area.

We ring from 7.30 but have to stop at 9pm. Which I think is reasonable, the thing that gets me, is they soon enough request the bells for their weddings/funerals as wouldn't it be nice. We've had someone walk into a local church to ours at protest of ringing and walk in to the ringing room while everyone is mid ring, and he grabbed the ropes to try to stop them ringing. Of course - what a mistaka to maka! He was wrenched off the floor and very lucky not to have damaged himself, those around him and lastly the hundreds of years old bells he was trying to banjax.

They now have to lock the tower door before ringing.

I came to it later on in life, and I'm still learning (it's taking years), but I think it's a lovely sound. I've done some quarter peals for various things, among those to honour the life of my departed father. It's a fitting tribute to many things.

People should leave alone really.

EWIS

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 05:20 AM

Thanks for that , Richard.

Tom Denning being a country man might well explain some of his judgments.

However, the likes of Bridge of Harwich, and Templeman, in HL, (both of whom hated the sight of Tom Denning, whose intellect dwarfed that of both) set to to dismantle Denning's "New Equity" once he'd

hung up his Irish.

I'd sign this petition any day. Three cheers for bell ringing which still goes on at Desborough and at Brigstock, locally. The Sunday morning joke is "Quasimodo's on double shift again !".

What I can't be doing with is the yobs from the council estate tear-arsing up the cul-de-sac where we live on minimoto bikes at 3 in the morning, and scaring the horses in the field behind our home

(not to mention our cats).

I don't know about Upper Dogsbottom, but all are welcome to the Arsolethorpe and Desborough summer fete . . . NB - Kettering carnival this Saturday, as well as Northampton hot air balloon festival.

I'll get my Barbour.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: danensis
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 07:04 AM

I live about a hundred yards from a church. Some years after we moved in the church clock started chiming the quarters and striking the hours, having been off-line due to a lightning strike. We quite liked hearing the clock as we could tell the time in the night without groping around for glasses, watches, etc. However between our house and the church is an old folks home. The management there complained about the noise through the night, and for a while the clock was silenced. However sense prevailed and the clock now sounds again.

John

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 07:39 AM

Templeman was good. Bridge (no relation I am happy to say) was a plonker. Denning was a wild card and a stubborn old cuss. Sometimes he got it very wrong (what's that case of his on Foss-v-Harbottle and "fraud on the minority") - basically two rapscallions were in a punch-up over a company and neiter would have known the truth if it bit him, but Old Tom decided one was an angel and drove a coach and hoses through the law...

I had a heated correspondence with him about rights of way after he retired. He insisted that repairability was the key to the status of a right of way and that was nonsense because of the existence of cesser of maintenance orders. I was the honorary legal officer of the AWDC at the time.

But there is a difference in nature between a peal of bells and a bunch of yobs in an undesirable taproom.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Kampervan
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 07:47 AM

Richard, I think that you're taking a bit of an extreme standpoint.

I agree with you about excessive noise, after-hours nuisance and quiet pubs that suddenly start putting on late night amplified rock concerts.

But where things have gone on for generations, then incomers shouldn't think that they can change the way things are done.

Now if they persuade a majority of locals that change is needed then that might be different.

A bit of common sense, tolerance and old fashioned compromise goes a long wat.

K/van

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Kampervan
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 08:23 AM

Sorry about the typo in my previous posting.   Wat!!!! I meant 'way' of course.

K/van

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Simon G
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 09:24 AM

Gosh doesn't Richard Bridge take extreme positions. I wouldn't have started this thread is I had know I was going to be describes in the way he us who signed the petition.

I suspect Richard sees life solely from the inside of a court room a place most us can't even afford to use.

The petition is solely about presumption. In my experience every noise complaint is presumed to be about a nuisance by the local authority and most result in some restriction on the activity which can only be rectified by recourse to the courts which for the most part those involved can't afford to do. Restrictions continue to be imposed eating away at the activity until it disappears.

This isn't a problem for noisy pubs, they are usually part of a chain and can go to court, or threaten to go to court and bring the council into line. It is a problem for club/voluntary activities.

In fact I would contend that supporting Richard's position will result in more noisy commercial activities and we will all long for the day when we just had the odd bell ringer, clay pigeon shooter, motor racer and folk singer to worry about.

Perhaps a petition for legal aid for voluntary groups is needed.

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: Kampervan
Date: 15 Aug 08 - 04:07 PM

Hi there Simon G, don't worry about the fact that you've started a thread that has generated some emotion. That's what it's all about.

For the topic to get a good airing, you really need some opposing views. This generally prompts contributions from both sides to wade in and you get a good spectrum of views.

The only downside is when the contributions get personal rather than being objective comments on the matter under discussion. That hasn't really happened here. Some of us agree with you, some don't. Thats great.

Keep sending the messages.

Regards

K/van

Subject: RE: UK Petition worth signing
From: GUEST,aswillbe
Date: 17 Aug 08 - 02:25 AM

Mr. Bridge seems to be the one this petition is aimed at. Shame to see someonewith such a warped view of things. He makes valid points in some cases and obviously is close to some rough areas which need dealing with. Not all pubs have these problems!
Not all youths are as problematic as he sugests or we as a race are doomed!
you miss the point though Mr. bridge - buy a house near a POTENTIAL nuisance then it is YOUR fault when the nuisance startsup. Its called doing your homework BEFORE you buy a property!