UKForge: Man Leaves For Vacation, Returns To Find 15 Weird Flatmates

I can't think of the legal term off the top of my head, but here's a wiki article on adverse possession.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

Since my in-laws had no idea how long the fence had been there at the time they bought it, they had no recourse.

You think it's as easy as pointing out the lines on your plat of survey and the surveyors calculations and all, but it really isn't.

And, just like UA, this article is designed to get everyone's hackles up.

But, since no one really cares and it happens so little often, the law will never get changed.

You want to change it? Write a bunch of articles like this, get everyone riled up and sign a petition and take it to your representative. You might hear back in 10 or 15 years.

Ooh. El Chup makes a good point that I was overlooking because I was applying my own perspective.

I was thinking it was a case of the word of a troupe of shiftless dagos versus the word of a responsible white male property owner. But in reality it is the word of a troupe of shiftless dagos versus the word of a swarthy, questionable Paki.

That's fairly common. I don't take my whole bottle of pills when I go out of town either. I just take what I need for the duration of my trip. It's easier to manage the loss of seven days worth of prescription meds while traveling than to lose your whole thirty day supply.

Nothing curious about it at all. Common sense, really.

[outta rep rep comment] It happened to Odysseus.

Ah, but THAT'S where it would get interesting. Because unless I misunderstand, before you can post bail you have to be taken down to the police station. If you are taken to the police station, you've been forced to vacate the premises. Once they are off the premises, you could argue--especially since the deed, the personal property, the bills and everything else support it, that the house belongs to the rightful owner.

I'll cut through the bullshit and lay down the deal:

You fuckers don't care because he's got more shit than you.

The End.

Yep. If posession is the sticking point here, then take posession of the home and go from there.

God, that just gets my damned goat. "It's OK to steal when you really need it and the owner isn't there to defend his property."

But who would you argue that before?

You guessed it, the same court you would argue the case for possession.

I though you are all in favour of having balls and ignoring the law in favour of one's own interests when the time was right?

Umm . . . yeah, it is. That's why all this stuff is recorded by the local gubbermint and you sign all those forms when you buy or sell property. Yes, the property deed can be litigated if the neighbor says "But that's wrong!", but assuming the documents are in order, the litigation will be fairly brief and straightforward (as much as anything can when lawyers are involved, anyway).

It just never even occurs to you that someone might default to sincere honesty, does it?

First, not all law-breaking is equivalent on a level that's in any way useful to this discussion, so your fallacious "If you won't break this one law, obviously you're not willing to break any laws" idiocy is out.

Second, absent a formal legal framework, we still have reason and conscience, which do not allow for seizing control of someone else's property just because they are conveniently absent.

But that legal framework must be faulty. After all, there are many illegitimate parts of it that can be discarded at will, right?

Really, I don't know why you care. These people have the spines to dismiss illegitimate laws like you have the spine to dismiss illegitimate laws. So, seems you are way more like them than this weasley fuckstain of a lawyer.

You should be proud. After all. They stood up to the illegitimate laws and have successfuly housed themselves and kept themselves warm and fed.

Shame isn't it, to be such a hypocritical cunt when it suits you.

This is why we do not have a system where each private citizen makes up his own set of laws.

You're not making any sense, Chup.

As it should. In the Americas, the squatters had to kill the natives first, then take over their land. Eventually this was codified into government-issued "land grants."

Subject to the "reason and conscience" standard, yes. You are not going to paint me into an "all or nothing" corner.

You both ignore conscience as a matter of daily routine. I'd say you have more in common with them, shyster. Your moronic attempts at equivalence aside, these cowards are not "dismissing illegitmate laws," but violating the rights of a legitimate property owner.

Back to the "all law-breaking is equal" falsehood.

If theses guys are students and don't have jobs how are they supporting themselves? And isn't that illegal in the UK? I know in America as a overseas student here you have to prove someone will provide for you so you don't burden the state.

Read the thread and you'll understand what I'm saying.

Uncle Albert says that its ok to ignore the law when the time is right, but gets upset when other people do so.

I know it comes as easily as breathing for you, but resorting to obvious lies isn't going to help your case here, counselor.

No he doesn't. He says that it isn't unjust to ignore an unjust law.

I hardly see how breaking and entering into someone's home is justified.

While I disagree with Uncle Albert's stance on drug use, I do see where his distinction comes from.

Doing something that hurts me is far different from infringing on someone else's rights.

These people are infringing no a property owner's rights, and to me property rights are incredibly important. Foundational to Western Civilization, even.

Why do we have laws Albert? We have them to maintain a sense of order. They are made by conscensus. Not everyone agrees on the process, which is why it makes many people to draw up and operate a legal system.

If everyone took the law into their own hands it would be chaos. All law breaking is not equal, but when you are going to advocate the defend the right to break a law at your choosing its a bit rich to then cry foul when someone else is doing it.

My argument to you earlier was that we don't take the law into our own hands. We do what the law allows us to do and we petiton to change it if we don't agree. We don't break it because it suits us to.

If these people had followed my way of looking at things they would not have taken the law into their own hands. They would be renting a property legitimately and earning a wage.

So, if you want to express outrage in your typical PMS style you ought to stop and think about the value of abiding by laws, even if you don't agreewith them at the time.

My point is that law breaking isn't justified in a democratic society. If you don't like the law you petition tochaneg it by lawful means.

Albert's garbage statement that "not all law breaking is equal" encourages the private citizen to chop and choose when a law is morally correct or not.

Sorry, but a functional society doesn't work like that.

Tell that to the banks.

Yeah well, one nice thing about this Western society is that thing called rule of law... In contrast to the times long past, when you had to physically deal with people who infringed on your rights, the civilized thing to do nowadays is not to take the law in your hands, except in situations of self-defence, where waiting even a bit isn't really an option. I know some of you guys are always happy to dream up hypotheticals where your three dozen guns are finally put to good use, but in real life, I'm pretty sure every WFer would call the police before going in themselves in that particular situation.

Take down the fence at night.

In the morning, when the neighbors are looking at it, tell them "Oops! I wonder who did that?"

When they want to rebuild it, then waitaminute, maybe we should recheck the property line.

Sometimes obedience is incompatible with justice. You either recognize that, or you don't.

I'm not advocating a right. I'm asserting a duty, a responsibility to apply individual reason, hold our governments accountable and disobey the unjust. And only in the most uselessly academic, dissembling bullshitter sense are demonstrable property rights "unjust" in the same way that a law protecting squatters in violation of those property rights is "unjust." There is no equivalence here. You fail.

Repelling a home invasion is just. Expecting the homeowner to patiently petition the courts to act at their leisure while the invaders are living comfortably on his property is not.

But since they did not, the homeowner is justified in defending his property.

Obedience is not an end unto itself.

Sometimes the framework for petitioning fails the individual. This is one of those times.

Only the idiotic "private citizen" would take legal trivia running in opposition of recognized property rights and run with it to the point of anarchy.

That sort of society doesn't deserve to exist.

I believe you just made an argument for barging in and letting nature take it's own course.

Laws are for people who lack the morals to know right from wrong.

If you have the ethics to do the right thing and a law is interfering with you, just ignore it.

You would think, but no.