Category: United Kingdom

Negative equity: Part 2, the laches defense

8 April, 2009 (09:55) | Legal, Local issues, Real estate taxes, Tenure, United Kingdom | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
When we left our plucky, ‘attractively disheveled’ English couple, as profiled in a Daily Mail article, they were beset by a maintenance bill for the chancel of St. John the Baptist in Aston Cantlow, assessed by the local PCC, based upon a glebe claim that came as a complete surprise to [...]

Negative equity: Part 1, glebe land

7 April, 2009 (10:18) | Legal, Local issues, Real estate taxes, Tenure, United Kingdom | No comments

“Congratulations, you’ve inherited property.  That will cost you …”
 

 
Say what?
 
As I was flying from Boston to Stockholm via Heathrow, I chanced upon a Daily Mail article that opened up vistas of entertainment fodder:
 
Pay £500,000? God help us, say couple forced by a medieval law to foot the bill for church repairs
 
Be warned, however – the [...]

The ecology of a slum: Part 4, family flows

6 March, 2009 (11:14) | Ecosystems, History, London, Slums, Theory, United Kingdom | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 3 and the previous Part 1 and Part 2.]

[Editorial justification for the tour: If we want to improve slums, we have to see them as ecosystems – spontaneous self-generated communities, self-organized, economically rational, economically efficient, adaptive and robust.  We may not like the slums (like Dharavi in Mumbai, Kibera in Nairobi, or Sao [...]

The ecology of a slum: Part 3, work flows

5 March, 2009 (10:43) | Ecosystems, History, London, Slums, Theory, United Kingdom | No comments

[Continued from last week’s Part 2 and Part 1.]
 
[Editorial justification for the tour: If we want to improve slums, we have to see them as ecosystems – spontaneous self-generated communities, self-organized, economically rational, economically efficient, adaptive and robust.  We may not like the slums (like Dharavi in Mumbai, Kibera in Nairobi, or Sao Paulo's favelas) we may [...]

The ecology of a slum: Part 2, outflows

25 February, 2009 (11:04) | Ecosystems, History, London, Slums, Theory, United Kingdom | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
[Editorial justification for the tour: If we want to improve slums, we have to see them as ecosystems – spontaneous self-generated communities, self-organized, economically rational, economically efficient, adaptive and robust.  We may not like the slums (like Dharavi in Mumbai, Kibera in Nairobi, or Sao Paulo's favelas) we may wish them [...]