From the United Kingdom: “Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1 million house… as its British owner has to represent himself in court” [Daily Mail, back in February]
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A little self help may be the best alternative in this case.
Britain is a source of regular profound civil rights violations.
Th U.K. desperately needs the equivalent of the Bill of Rights.
A few years ago, someone was selling skunk scent in a can, specially marketed to building-owners with squatter problems, or prudently acting to head off squatter problems. A quick search of the Internet didn’t find it for me now, however. And American law is more favorable to property owners than British law.
Clearly Shakespeare was a man ahead of his time…
Are the British politicians and judges so feeble minded, so out of touch with reality that they cannot see the problem and fix it.
The squatting laws in the UK have long been draconian against landowners. It is truly awful. Ironically, it made it easy for expatriates (as opposed to illegal aliens) to rent. The landlord had confidence that we’d not only pay our rent, but that we’d go home eventually.
In copyright debates I always like to use “well, tresspass on physical property is still illegal, even if the owner isn’t using it at the time!”
Except…maybe that’s not so true, anymore.
This case may have been “the last straw” for squatters, last week I heard the UK is going to at least review and probably revise the laws.
Not that it will be all that easy, some (yes, even in the square-mile City) are tied to hunting, forestry, and many other things.
One of our RF engineers at work had a squatter problem when they moved into his fathers house after his father died. He designed a low power jammer and got it into the house. After a few days of terrrible telly reception and no mobile phones they moved out (not before trashing the place).
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