When I launched this blog, I promised something to do with News and Politics. But every time I felt inspired to write about something, I just felt hopeless. I’m no expert, and while I have opinions on things such as MPs expenses (time for complete political overhaul) and Obama (give him a chance, America, instead of nitpicking and infighting), other, more knowledgeable people are writing much better blogs on these same issues all around the blogosphere. So I decided, when stumbling across an amusing yet somewhat tragic article in The Times, to bring to you some of the smaller pieces of news that generally get forgotten yet should not be ignored. And so in this new style, I bring to you: the man who built his castle in secret.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7013978.ece
For those of you that can’t be bothered to read the full article, I’ll give you a short summary. A farmer decided he wanted to do some building work, and create a castle. Only, the United Kingdom hates innovation* and has a system in place for destroying interesting architectural ideas. It’s called planning permission. You can’t make a sand castle without someone from the local council coming round to tell you it breaks several different conventions and laws. It’s a whole load of bureaucracy that no one likes to fill out, particularly for fear of rejection. So this farmer, Mr Fidler, decided to… avoid it. He built a huge pile of hay bales, and from within these hay bales he constructed a castle. No seriously. Check out the link for pictures. He made a castle, underneath a stack of bales. Genius. And he was aware of a loop hole in the law that states that planning permission can’t pull down building if it has been up for over four years. Or something like that. So he lived in this castle, under the hay, for four years and recently removed the bales, thinking he would now be immune.
Only he wasn’t. Planning permission obviously got ticked off by this, and so in a court case have fought to have this castle knocked down. They have found a loophole within the loophole, and are claiming that the removal of the bales was part of the construction, therefore construction had not been finished for four years, therefore they could pull it down. Fidler lost the case. The castle is going to come down.
Now whilst I do not advocate breaking the law, I am entirely on Fidler’s side here. He has fought a crippling, oppressive system of bureaucracy and has come out on top with a rather pretty little castle. It isn’t ostentatious or ugly. It’s in the middle of a field. No one objected to it. By my reckoning, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Not only that, but he has shown a certain amount of ingenuity in building this, and maybe that should be rewarded. But what is really irritating about this whole story is how anally retentive the planning regs people are being. Surely they should just give him an angry glare, send him a warning, and then leave him to live in his castle. But no. They fight him in court, insisting that the building be brought down. How joyless and uptight does someone have to be to do that? I mean, how soul-destroyingly boring must this jobsworth be, to be so determined to bring this castle down, that you take the farmer to court, launch a case against him and then find a ridiculous, minor thing such as removing the bales in order to make sure that the glorious council have their way? It’s depressing, isn’t it?
Sadly, there is nothing we can do about it. We cannot fight the system. The building must come down, the black-hearted people at the council must win. Yet I will ask you all to take a moment’s silence to remember not only this farmer’s courage, but also to remember what was once a great nation, Britain, that has been brought low by paper, forms and red tape. Britannia, RIP.
*This article may feature certain exaggerations…
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