Kathy O’Donoghue stands outside the Methodist chapel that is something of a focal point for the quiet Cheshire village of Lostock Green. With snow covering its roof and icicles dangling from its gables, it’s quite the picturesque, wintry scene. But it’s also at the literal centre of a furious HS2 debate that shows no signs of ending – despite Phase 2 of the route being scrapped 14 months ago.
“This is the compensation line,” points out O’Donoghue, the parish council’s HS2 Liaison Officer. “Look that way, and there are 21 houses in this little village now owned by HS2. Some are in a state of disrepair, some are empty and a few are rented out. HS2 has changed the whole character of the village – we were quite a close-knit community.
“We want the houses in our community back – and that’s just the start.”
No, really. Go and squat in those houses. If they don’t throw you out in the next 7 years then you will own them.
Lot of rich hippies in Bath. Council made a compulsory purchase of most of Walcot St in the 60s. To build a tunnel under the whole town (to come out at Norfolk Cresent). Plans got delayed, then cancelled etc – but not before most of Walcot St had been squatted and left alone for the necessary 7 years.
Squat those empty houses.
The problem with HS2 is that everyone wants to string the hippies, rail unions and the trainspotters along with promises of doing more rail but they know it’s bollocks.
Phase 1 London to Birmingham is bollocks, but at least then, you have the thing of London being highly congested, of the commercial activity being concentrated in one area, of that area being bloody terrible to drive in. Manchester and Birmingham aren’t like that. The businesses are more spread out. You want to go to Jaguar Land Rover from Manchester, you’ll do it faster by car, even with HS2 because of having to change to go to Solihull.
In 100 years time, people will still be trying to stop HS2 from being built.
I had in the back of my mind that the law on squatting had been changed. According to Brave AI and ChatGPT that happened in 2012 and squatting is now illegal which means the police can throw you out and that period was extended to 10 years and the legal owner can still object. Brave provi
When I asked ChatGPT for its sources:
BiND,
Your comment makes it clear that AI’s big use-case will be in making law accessible and comprehensible to the layman. Three years ago you would’ve had to Google the answer, and you wouldn’t have obtained that level of detail without wading through endless pages of turgid legislation.
I knew of a handful of properties in London where squatters got possession. One in particular was in Haverstock Hill NW3. The guy who had it used to regularly use the Steele’s pub. (He subsequently sold it for a packet). All of those got possession seemed to fit into that rich hippy category. Haverstock guy definitely. Public school accent don’tchaknow. Was running some sort of design business, last I heard.
So coincidence? Rich hippies are better at getting lawyered up? Or maybe something on the supply side? I’ve certainly never heard of any proles having such luck. If you were a lawyer administering a deceased estate trust had the odd vacant property & a pal. Wouldn’t be too hard to overlook it for a few years in their benefit. Unlikely to be any comeback. Any number of people could have not known the file had been misfiled in archive.
Andrew M,
I use it mainly for language learning and its great.
When I started learning German 4 years ago if I had a problem I would have to do searches to see if anyone had that specific question answered, surprising Stack Exchange was a good source, ask Reddit or wait up to 2 weeks for my lesson. Very frustrating.
I started learning French 6 months ago and find AI great, its like having a teacher sat on your shoulder. Set your profile to tell it you want long form detail answers and that’s what you get. That means I can move straight on with whatever I’m learning or doing.
It can make you lazy though, I could probably have worked this out eventually:
So how do French trannies deal with being “misgendered”? It must do their little heads in.
Norman: It’s been obvious from the get-go that the narrow-minded Yanks who came up with that guff hadn’t thought it through.
There are (proposed) ‘gender neutral’ pronouns to substitute for il/elle etc. The French ignore them.
I’d love to know what happens in German (or Dutch, Grikath?) which has a neuter gender, appropriate to post-op types.
“I relied on general knowledge about UK property law”
Why does ChatNBG suppose that there’s any such thing as “UK property law”?
I suppose there might be a little bit but it’s bound to be puny compared to mountains of property law for Scotland, for England & Wales, and, I dare say, for Norn Iron.
Would ChatNBG happily apply the property law of Maine to Louisiana?
So that’s what happened to Walcot St – I was a student in Bath from ’77-81 and often wondered what happened to Walcot St – usually whilst winding my way back to my rented room up Lansdown from a jar or two in the Saracen’s Head on Walcot St……
Ah, so at that time you’d have been wending past the Beehive to get home. Sensible lad not to have used that pub.
There has been attempts to get gender neutral language adopted in German but it doesn’t seem to be getting any traction. If you do come across it it’s really clunky to read.
“German Language Gender Star
The gender star, also known as “Genderstern” or “Gendersternchen” in German, is a nonstandard typographic style used in gender-neutral language. It involves placing an asterisk after the stem of a word and appending the feminine plural suffix “-innen.” For example, the word “Fahrer” (driver) becomes “Fahrer*innen” to include all genders, including non-binary individuals.”
“ Would ChatNBG happily apply the property law of Maine to Louisiana?”
No, because this the question I asked:
“ in uk law if you squat in a property form 7 years to you become the legal owner?”
Ah well your question is meaningless, isn’t it? There is no UK law on squatting (or if there is I’d be astonished).
You might as well have asked “in US law if you squat in a property form 7 years do you become the legal owner?”
@Chris Miller, In dutch? It…. depends… on how rude you want to be..
Whether you use the masculine or feminine pronoun on a person depends on the evidence of your own eyes regarding the front rack.
So a decent tranny or travo can be “she” . Everything else falls back to masculine form.
“Het” ( it) used on a person is basically a declaration of war, and almost exclusively used to describe a person with utter scorn. It basically declares the subject a non-person, and is not limited to mere gender confusion.
The diminutive, and slightly archaïc “Hetje” is slightly less offensive, and describes super-effeminate gays and super-butch lesbians, in a “neither fish nor fowl” context.
Its actual use is generally “reserved” for neutered male dogs or cats, so it can be applied to post-op gender-confused M-F trans, but ymmv regarding dental state post-remark if you do.
“ Ah well your question is meaningless, isn’t it? There is no UK law on squatting (or if there is I’d be astonished).”
https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law
“ Squatting is when someone deliberately enters property without permission and lives there, or intends to live there. This is sometimes known as ‘adverse possession’.
Squatting in residential buildings (like a house or flat) is illegal. It can lead to 6 months in prison, a £5,000 fine or both.”
Thanks Grikath – it’s always interesting to hear about languages with more complex grammars, though English makes up for its simple grammar in other ways! À propos of nothing, I’ll give a free plug to the remarkable Dutch polyglot Gaston Dorren and his two excellent (and very readable) books on language: Lingo and Babel.
Oh, BiND, read the fucking thing. It chatters about HM Land Registry so it’s got nowt to do with Scotland. In other words it’s not about uk squatting law, their being no such thing. It’s the Law of England and Wales that it’s discussing. The fact that some dim bozo in London doesn’t understand the UK’s constitutional habits, history, and geography is par for the course for dim bozos in London.
Yeah that was my bad, I should have asked for E&W law.