Thursday, April 16, 2015

Love Thy Neighbour

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The following report is from online news source news.com, today:


HOME owners who were denied permission to knock down their townhouse in an exclusive London suburb have given a very British middle finger to their critics.  
The two-storey Kensington townhouse was painted in “garish” red-and-white candy stripes after an application to demolish and rebuild was turned down by the local council, Sky News reported. 
Neighbours were infuriated by the move — which does not require permission from the council — describing the paint job as “garish”, “horrendous” and a “tacky monstrosity”. 
Refusing to accept the stripy stain on the local landscape, a group of homeowners are now appealing to the High Court to have the property repainted. 
18-year-old Saskia Moyle, who lives opposite the house with her father, told Sky News she interrupted the painters in the middle of the act, who left with one stripe unfinished. 
“I don’t think it belongs here. It kind of glows in the evening. It’s fluorescent. And the half-finished stripe is driving me mad. It drives me insane,” she said. 
“It’s very fluorescent and very garish. Without sounding very pretentious it isn’t very Kensington. It’s more Camden or something like that.” 
Another neighbour described it as “horrendous”. “It’s between unbelievably hideous and very funny. I think it’s horrendous,” she said. 
“It’s funny but it’s probably not the nicest gesture. It’s kind of a ‘piss off’ I think. Architecturally it doesn’t belong here. It is pretty hideous. Clearly we don’t have enough billionaires in the area — we need more.”

Some more pics:

The house prior to painting, centre.

The unfinished stripe is behind the lampost on the right.

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Some more of giving the neighbours the finger:

Mark Easton protested to the Council in Utah that the new house next door was 30 cm higher than permitted and was interfering with his views of the desert. Owner builder Darren Wood, annoyed at what he felt was part of continual complaints and harassment installed what he called a cactus scene on the vent in the roof:

Mark Easton looks at the cactii


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Alan Markovitz moved in to a home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, next door to his ex-wife. She was living in the house with the man with whom she had had an affair whilst married to Markovitz. After Markovitz bought the next door house he erected a bronze statue in her -- and her new boyfriend's -- honour:


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Warwickshire Police told creator Richard Jackson his cheeky garden humour must be altered as it is considered a public offence.


In response, neighbours in Tamworth, Staffordshire, have started a Save the Bush campaign.

According to Jackson:

‘I carved the bush into a middle finger eight years ago and there has only ever been one complaint about it, made recently. I was contacted by the police and they said the council had been in touch because somebody had complained to them about it. Apparently, one person was offended by it and the police said it was a public order offence. I don’t intend to change it though – I’m not a trouble maker and I don’t want to offend anyone but at the same time, it’s been here for eight years and I don’t see why I should have anybody telling me what to change in my garden. If everybody else likes it and there’s only one complaint in eight years then I don’t think it is a public offence, as the majority aren’t offended. I don’t think the policeman wanted to be here as much as I wanted him here, but he did ask me if I could make alterations to it – but I won’t.’

Warwickshire Police said if they receive a direct complaint about the hedge they would deal with it proportionately.

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After a decade of being friendly neighbours, Anne Downing, 47, and John Corcoran, 81, fell out. Tit for tat descended into signs and other expressions of iopinion. Downing says she was feeling fed up and “hopeless” about the ongoing feud when she decided to erect a sign with three arrows in her yard. “The Fockers” one said, the ‘O’ not entirely closed. “Nosy Twats” said another. Both arrows pointed to Corcoran’s property. A third arrow, pointing to Downing’s place, read “5 Star Neighbours.” “This is total harassment,” Corcoran said of the sign. Police referred them to mediators.

John Corcoran next to Downing's signs



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