The trouble with neighbours

Smackheads can be a pain in the arse but we can't go all Duterte on them, they still have civil rights. It probably doesn't help when services for addiction/homelessness have been almost wiped out in recent years. I mean there but for the grace of God go I etc..

I'm planning on doing that Tim, but her next surgery isn't for 3 weeks. Presumably that's the disadvantage of having the Home Secretary as my MP.

Our neighbour built a music space in his garden, which he claimed would be soundproofed, but wasn't, even in the slightest. He endlessly plays some kind of rock music practice programme where he gets to play the riffs alongside the original recording of Sultans of Swing, or some other rock-blues wankfest. Sometimes it's more funny than annoying. But if I want to garden or read outside, it's pretty annoying to hear someone riffcheese to Under the Bridge or whatever.

Anyway it's winter now so we don't go outside, and he's nearer to the other neighbours than us, so I'm sure one of them will murder him first, hopefully before next summer.

Probably more annoying are his kids who are always shouting MUMMY CAN YOU HELP ME at loud volumes and kicking footballs against the face. (Shouting is fine if you're like a six year old, but I think he's a young teen. I am also irrationally prejudiced against children who say "mummy" or "daddy" instead of mum/mom/dad.)

(Against the fence, I mean.)

Tonight's policeman had 2 incidents to attend in our building. As well as us calling because of junkies, someone got assaulted on the ground floor tonight. What fun. This policeman is a bit more conscientious than others, he's actually cleaning up the needles instead of leaving them there.

This is going into neighbourhood watch FB groups territory again and again when you post, you aren't even talking about your neighbours here tbf. I much preferred it when Chuck_Tatum or Mark S had the gavel tbh.

Go fuck yourself you fucking prick

Are people who live in the same building as you not your neighbours? You fucking snide cunt. Sorry this shit isn't entertaining enough for you.

take it to the law and order thread, mr shit.

sorry I understand your concerns and everything, but where I live you talk to people before you phone the police and there are lots of similar problems. But it sounds like you don't consider these people humans as a starting point and expect the police magically make them disappear. It is that shrill neighbourhood watch voice you have that grinds my gears a bit, you don't need to be so hypersensitive though.

where I live you talk to people before you phone the police

Fuck this attitude. There are vulnerable people living in this building who are having their shit stolen and are too afraid to complain about it. We aren't, at least not enough not to. But you expect us/them to ask a dealer who has had people assaulted nicely to please stop doing it? What fucking planet are you on.

I know first fucking hand how bad services are for mental health, addiction, etc. I am not devoid of compassion, some of the people I see in and out of here I do feel very sorry for, and I know if they get moved on from here they will have to go somewhere else, and that's no solution. That doesn't change the fact that it's directly impacting on me on my wife, who has cancer btw and is having to deal with this right outside her door, 7 days a week, and is afraid to go out on her own. But maybe we aren't humans.

There are vulnerable and dangerous people where I live. Last year a guy across the road from me wondered into the local Asda and slashed someone's throat and I'd had an argument with him a few months previously, so I could have ended up vulnerable myself. I am more moaning about your tone than your situation tbh (which I am not totally privy to all the facts of). It's just a thing that grinds my gears at the moment - where people who are pushed to the margins by austerity become sub-humans and lose all nuance. I probably shouldn't have made the comments without knowing more about your situation though, sorry for that.

Someone actively disrupting a thread to moan about the tone of entirely relevant posts is perhaps not in a position to call someone else 'hypersensitive' and is perhaps in a position to shove it up his arse

thank you for your very "kind" advice, but now you are disrupting the thread tbf.

No, YOU'RE the puppet

CP that sounds crap. I don't have any advice, did the last policeman give any indication about what you could do?

people who are pushed to the margins by austerity become sub-humans and lose all nuance.

You know I accept this and I know what you mean and I (perhaps mistakenly) thought I'd kept away from using words that could have that connotation (unless the word junkie itself means that, substitute it for heroin addict if you wish). I honestly don't know what you've picked up on in my tone in that sense, I don't want these people strung up, I wish they could get help, I wish we could all get help.

I guess I did call them cunts, but I called you a cunt too.

kinder, all the police say is they have to build intelligence to get a warrant to bust the dealer, and we just have to keep phoning them because it builds a case. So that's what we will have to do. Maybe now other people in the building are calling them as well it will get bumped up in priority.

I probably am a cunt! Where I live it's extremely crime ridden and as a consequence there is an almost continual police presence. When my kid went missing they found him in 20 mins because they were already all in the area! Anyway I wouldn't have posted what I did last night if I had known a bit More about CP's situation and I have apologised. Let's just leave it there eh?

I often see an old friend of mine in the area and he currently is in a very bad way. He isn't a bad person, he is a pisshead and a bit of a fantasist who often amusingly tries to talk himself up as a top dj. He is currently homeless and sofa surfing, he recently got the shit kicked out of him at one of the houses he was staying at. There are 5 strict criteria to get on the housing list and being free of rent arrears is one of them. Because obv people with rent arrears have deliberately made themselves homeless. Whereas this other nice person from the neighbourhood whose own parents have a restraining order against him (he held his dad hostage at knife-point for drug money), when he was released from his 2nd custodial sentence was put into sheltered accommodation for 12 weeks until he got a flat in quite a posh area. I was just thinking about how the system here is disenfranchising a decent but vulnerable person and assisting a repeat violent offender, and possibly how some of CP's nice neighbours got there.

The trouble with thread neighbors

This got worse before it got better but we are out of here on Monday, thank fuck. I actually feel sorry for our landlady which means it must be bad. She doesn't want to rent the flat out again until it's sorted and I don't see that happening anytime soon. We're lucky she felt pity for us due to my wife being ill and let us out of the contract.

A few weeks ago the police raided the dealers' flat and arrested 2 people on drugs and weapons charges. People have been threatened with guns and knives so in some ways we've not had it as bad as others in the building, I've only had verbal. Since then I assume they are out on bail because it's not been 7 days a week, mainly just weekends and the odd day in the week that they've been up here. Has been picking up a bit in the last week so maybe they think they've lain low long enough, so glad we're getting out. My wife's just got out of hospital last night so hope it's not too bad for the few days we've got left. Feel for the people in the building who maybe don't have an option. Spoke to next door neighbour last night, he's been away for a while on work and he told me he's moving to Eastbourne to get away from it. He told me there's an entry code for the front door (I don't even know it) and the local junkies all know it and the management company refuse to change it because last time they did someone kicked the front door in. Maybe they did change it because someone did break in the front door window a couple of weeks ago. That was a weird night. Someone set off the fire alarm that night as well. We thought maybe it was rival dealers trying to flush them out or something.

Anyway a few more days and this'll be over and I can stop whinging about it (will no doubt whinge about something else, sorry in advance).

with some buildings the fire alarm will override the entry system, so if you set the alarm off it releases the electronic locks. it's a safety thing so that emergency services can gain access iirc

glad you've got things sorted and good luck w/ the move!

Really glad to hear you're getting out of this, CP, and yes, good luck with the move, it sounds like you deserve some.

Really hope the move goes well and you and your wife are able to enjoy a peaceful xmas.

ffs I knew we wouldn't be able to make it to Monday without incident. Cunts've been back stealing mail, there's torn open envelopes littered around the building and looks like somebody pissed in the lift.

To add insult to injury the fucking cunt management scum are retiling our roof with no notice have moved all our stuff on the balcony and hammering away all fucking day long. They'll do up the outside of the building which doesn't even look that bad while the inside rots. They've not asked permission to do this can I call the cops and say they're trespassing?

I know it's off-subject for this thread, but it's impossible to read through this without thinking how destructive the criminalisation of drugs really is. Addicts are not inherently evil people, but it can seem that way after a century of futilely fighting "drug-related crime" that is really drug criminalization-related crime. Read the above, and then imagine how much safer the neighbourhood would be if heroin junkies could peacefully get their fix from a legal dispensary rather than from thuggish street dealers waging turf wars. And allow the medical community to address drug dependance, rather than pretending that throwing addicts into prison will ever make addiction go away. (/-rant)

Anyway, glad you're moving out & best wishes for your wife and for yourself.

so last night about a quarter to midnight i hear this major commotion from the flat below - like a man roaring at the loudest possible level, unintelligible roaring, and stuff being smashed, doors slamming, a woman's voice answering etc, only snippets of conversation like "you paki bitch". then there's like howling and crying, from the man, more smashing stuff, more roaring, and more answers. it got so violent-sounding that i called 999. the police arrived and i could hear them knocking on the door etc, then they came up the stairs and knocked on my door, and asked me if i called the police, with the neighbour in question within earshot up the stairs, where he'd been hiding, i think. i said yes, as quietly as i could and they said they wanted to come and talk to me about what i heard, and they would shortly.

so they never did that, which was annoying as i stayed awake for a bit. i heard them questioning him more, then eventually they went. this morning i made a complaint about the fact they'd taken no care to keep me anonymous. the duty officer rang me, and though he was very helpful and apologetic, i couldn't believe how much he played down the incident. like he was basically saying i don't have to worry too much based on their report, because they hadn't arrested him or they hadn't "got to the bottom of" any major incident happening. and he kind of said "people have different lives and what's acceptable in one house isn't acceptable in another" - i had to stop him a few times to explain the amount of times i've heard domestics in london and not called anyone, and the difference on this occasion in that i literally called 999 because it sounded so violent and unhinged that somebody could be killed. i also explained i heard his officers saying "we had reports of a woman matching your wife's description running down the street crying"

he actually said, as way of explanation: "it might seem shocking but from our point of view you come to consider these things as normal"

find it pretty awful on the police side. i guess i'm not too worried about my neighbour confronting me or making trouble for me, but i still would prefer he didn't know it was me who rang the police. if he does say anything to me i think i'll just deny it. i thought of a few other approaches but i don't want to respond in any other way that involves me having to be conciliatory or understanding about the fact he's a violent fucking cunt.

fuckthepolice.mp3

seriously, that is a shitty way for the police to handle just about everything - the last thing you should hear from authority when you bring something to their attention is 'you come to consider these things as normal'. acknowledging that the situation is abnormal but that you basically dgaf anymore should be grounds for disciplinary action

police can be such aliens in dealing with civilians. My brother-in-law, who lives down the street from me, has twice been rear ended at high speed when he slowed down to turn into his driveway. He mentioned to one of the responding officers at the second crash that since it was a residential street maybe the speed limit should be 25mph rather than 35, which might cut down on the speed demon-ing. The cop just replied, "No, you are wrong. The speed limit is too low here. It should be 45mph."

'then you'd be dead and another officer would hve to deal with this'

Getting home to some stupid note because the next door neighbour has gone out without her key and come back to find out that the street door was locked . & somehow it's my fault when I've kept the door on the lacth all the time I've been here.
Seems that this person has reached her late 20s and not come across the concept of a latch before. & is insisting that you need to lock the door from outside.
Had sod all to do with me but apparently if the door's locked when she gets home without a key I'm mad and she's out for the taxi fare to get her husband to get the key to her. Not her just being a bit dim.

two (2) sets of em squabbling: in both cases i have been invited in to support one side against the other, in both case the other has sent an extremely reasonable and sensible response which i suspect will not help

however my plan to bang everyone's heads together will possibly also not help

We've got upstairs neighbours who, while not being hideously noisy (ie. they don't listen to drum 'n' bass all night), manage to wake us up all the time (slammed doors, five in the morning chats, curious knocking* and so on). Not really sure what the answer is.

*this isn't a euphemism. They seem to knock loudly on something (as if knocking on a door but not actually knocking on a door).

My neighbors are all GOP cocks

I find most neighbours (as in the ones that aren't dangerous to approach and relatively civil) pretty sound until you talk to them. Sigh.

curious knocking*

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah
Everybody was kung-fu fighting curious knocking...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvbW7Hx38dU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvRIQMPauUU

he's just looking out, for his kids.

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, September 28, 2004 5:29 PM (thirteen years ago)

lol i'd forgotten The Story of RJG and the Commas

sad encounter just now in the square with the ex of a neighbour: recently retired, she had been struggling with life (incipient dementia) and her kids had intervened; he had become -- the way everyone but him tells it -- something of a weed-bound freeloader, and the children shut him out and whisked her away to a home

anyway -- having not spoken to me for probably 10 years? -- he took time to explain why everything was bad and wrong except the way he saw it and would have tackled it; i nodded and politely extricated myself from the conversation

i don't know who's in the right, of course, and have no way of knowing, and besides it's not my business -- what was sad was really just the receding echoes of the tangles of the lives of those you once knew, and the sense that sometimes like ghosts they never quite go away

downstairs neighbour woke me up early to say that water was coming through his bathroom ceiling (via the light fitting!), what was happening?

ans = another neigbhour, who i'm paying to do some work in *my* bathroom (laying a new floor), had yesterday driven a screw into a pipe in the heating system, inadvisedly placed too close to the boards that form the floor. the screw had caused a leak, not at all visible from above

pipes and heating all turned off, floor all pulled up (newly laid floor all unlaid again): much email diplomacy and promises it will be fixed tonight

FINGERS CROSSED

ayiyiyi

"inadvisedly placed too close to the boards that form the floor"

I used to always blame the plumbers if screwed into a water/gas pipe as well, what else can you do?

I had that once, seconds after the builders had laid perfect new flooring in my kitchen. They were screwing boxing-in material in place and zapped a pipe. We have district heating in this building so there was a geyser of the foulest oily water that flooded inch-deep in the kitchen and hallway. Contractors tried not to change the MDF boxing-in material even though it sucked up loads of moisture and got tide marks (no you can’t just paint over it, you workshy cretins) and refused to tile half of my destroyed hallway even though I could supply my own materials (they used half my tiles, and refused to believe the existing remaining tiles were blown). AAARGH

the pipe seems to be fixed now -- he said it was fine to turn the heating back on and I have -- and he's downstairs now cleaning up, he thinks there's not much harm done: just let it dry out etc, it's only water. "Don't use the light switch for a day or two." The ceiling will need a bit of work, but I'll let my neighbours talk that out between themselves when the one who lives below me is back from work this evening.

Luckily he hadn't actually fixed the vinyl in place yet and while the floorboards look a mess all pulled up they will go back down again tidily enough, as will the plywood underlay for the vinyl.

he lives round the corner if there is harm done, i can see right into his kitchen from my work-desk

ok the water and electricity and downstairs neighbour's temper all smoothed over

new floor still very extremely unlaid (and won't now be sorted till friday)