How not to D-I-Y it

[Davey]

An elderly friend in Michigan recently moved into an apartment block. He reports of his neighbours:

"... a Russian couple who feign understanding of English when they're charged with violations. The other opposite them, is a dense hag of a woman who sneers at anyone not to her liking. Which is everyone, but flip-flops on 'cordiality' with the Russians when it suits her agenda. And the two Ruskies fall for it.

The hag, by the way, is up for major Code violations, fire hazards in the basement personal storage closet, and flooding hazard by leaving her rug over the floor drain, because it's comfortable to stand on fronting her washer / dryer. Abject stupidity. The Ruskies are up for an electrical hazard, and fire, for triple cording three washer/ dryer/ other heavy appliances into a triple non-grounded extension plug, coming from a one line code-violated ceiling box cord coming out of the side of the box. And worse, the dumb Rusky wound the three electric cords around the dryer exhaust hose. Quite stupid. And it's not a language barrier issue to see what's been done."

The Housing Association, which owns the building and is the landlord, would do nothing about the violations, so he reported them all to the local Fire Department, and they are getting results.

A combination of bad tenants and a useless landlord.

[Tim Streater]

[...]

Fire Depts in the US do seem to have some legal clout and can get places shut down and enforce action. What's the situation here?

[Davey]

I don't know. I sometimes feel like calling them to try and get their Fire Engines down the roads in our village, there are often vehicles parked that narrow them down to the point where lorries have a hard time getting through, or even refusing to. But saying that, I have never known the bin lorry get stopped, so maybe some drivers are over-cautious. If they are, I'm not complaining.

[NY]

My road is a fairly normal width C (yellow) road - easily wide enough for two artics to pass (with care!) in opposite directions - in normal situation.

However the houses opposite mine have no drives or garages; instead they have a communal garage block a hundred yards away, but people inevitably park outside on the road. It only takes badly-parked cars (eg two cars almost opposite each other) to create a slalom which ordinary vehicles can negotiate but which are impassible to large vehicles like artics, bin lorries or fire engines.

When the main road was blocked by an accident the other year, the police directed all the traffic to/from the coast via our road. And that included artics. And three residents had parked so as to create a slalom. This led to horrendous queues as people tried to pass through in opposite directions simultaneously. When I walked up the road to post a letter, I had a word with the police on traffic-direction duty and suggested that they try to trace the car owners and ask them whether they'd mind moving so as to allow free flow of traffic, or else send someone to direct the traffic, but they were most unhelpful. Eventually a few of my neighbours went out to direct the traffic, to create single-alternate-line working so two cars from opposite directions were not trying to pass at the same time - but this is something the police should have been doing and should not be left to an unofficial (and maybe unenforceable) arrangement by residents.

When the first artic came along, he was too long to get through the slalom and so he was stuck. I saw the owner of one of the cars look out of his window, shrug and turn away - if it had been my car I'd have thought "I need to move - I'm causing an obstruction", but I know some of the residents on that side of the road are bloody-minded about parking because they resent the fact that they only have communal parking whereas on our side we have drives where we can park off the road. One guy always parks directly opposite our drive (instead of a few yards either side of it) and then watches as I have to do an n-point turn to line up so I can reverse into my drive, with no offer to move his car. Interesting that the Housing Association tenants are the awkward ones whereas the house owners (some of whom are former tenants who bought their houses during Maggie's right-to-buy scheme) are the ones who cooperate and move if they need to...

[Davey]

When I still lived in Michigan, there was one household in the street whose members just seemed to want to be awkward. The son had a huge pickup truck, double cab and long bed, and high. He never, ever parked it outside his family's house, it was always outside one or other of the neighbours', so that it didn't spoil his family's view. When the family finally moved out, the house was temporarily condemned for damp and rot. The illegal swimming pool was thankfully drained of it swampwater and filled in, etc etc; nobody was sorry to see them go.

[sintv]

Ive had 2 jobs this year where a person who lived there parked right opposite my van so the road was then blocked. Both times I had to move my van when I heard other cars tooting

[pamela]

Reminds me of Prince Philip's non-PC remark many years ago when looking at some crude electrical wiring.

He said "it looks as though it had been put in by an Indian".

[Dave Liquorice]

If your bin lorries are anything like ours they'll push their way through. I reckon they are either on piece rate or the sooner they finish the round sooner they get home, they don't hang about and are pretty organised in collecting the bags into heaps at a jog...

Fire engines will also get through they wait with blues and twos running for a short while (tens of seconds) then the crew get out, pickup/bounce the "obstruction" to move it. It'll be left where it lands.

[F]

If you've been to India you'll know why...