(no subject)

[lethargic_man]

This is snjstar and curious_reader's new house.

I am appalled. I mean, I can understand chopping the house in two to make room for a railway line, but I can't see any excuse for making such a shoddy job of it. There's no reason it couldn't have been given a nice neat edge such that you'd have had to have looked twice to realise it wasn't intended that way. There's no structure behind the sticky-out bit halfway up; it's just a stub of façade with roof tiles on the top. I thought: this has to be seen to be believed. So, of course, I blogged it. :o)

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Very... organic. Darwin would be proud of this house, it is *clearly* evolving into something else.

[ploni-bat-ploni.livejournal.com]

You must be f*cking sh*tting me.

The house has been sawed off!

Man, this confirms all my stereotypes about living conditions in London. Woo-hoo.

[snjstar.livejournal.com]

It's a lot better in and out then our old place.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I was actually also used to another standard but since I live in London I am not extremely picky anymore. I know Dutch houses are like German houses, very clean, insulated, warm in winter, proper double glazed windows that you can't hear anything from outside like noises from the street or the train. I am just happier in London. I don't have a great living standard but everything else I need.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find that if you have more money, London houses too are clean, insulated, warm in winter and double-glazed. I wouldn't be surprised if cheap German and Dutch accommodation shares many of the problems of cheap London accommodation. The problem is actually that the expensive accommodation in London is a lot more expensive.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

That is not true. According to the German law everybody who owns, buys a property or builds one needs to make sure it is insulated, proper double glazed and reasonable clean. My grandma lives in a relative cheap accommodation and know some other people who receive benefit and got it through the authorities. Even their accommodation has the same standard. It might have cracked tiles and some silver fishes but that is the only problem.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Well, there are regulations about building new properties here too; but there's nothing insisting existing properties have to be brought up to that standard.

My grandma lives in a relative cheap accommodation and know some other people who receive benefit and got it through the authorities.

I suspect council accommodation here too will be better than some of the places you have been living.

[liv]

I think you're wrong. I don't have data to back this up but I have the very strong impression that most domestic buildings are built to a much lower standard in the UK than is the norm elsewhere in Europe. Even quite expensive properties are often poorly insulated and made from shoddy materials. And council houses in particular was often cheap housing in the first place and is not well maintained. There's a stereotype that council houses are located on horrible estates, nobody would want to live there unless desperate, and are generally nasty and depressing, and I think there's a fair bit of truth in that stereotype.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Well as I've said before, here in the UK we can get away with heat-loss all around, because it never gets that cold. When I went to Budapest, I was expecting to see all the houses with double-glazing and decently insulated. To my surprise, however, that wasn't the case at all: Ádám (the chair of Marom) lived in a single-glazed house that leaked heat as bad as any British house.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

snjstar said it is not better. She knows people who live in council flats. When there is a problem it takes ages to get fixed.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

That means as other people said you do need a lot of money to be able to afford a proper accommodation in London.

[snjstar.livejournal.com]

Also, council estates are not safe and lots of drug dealers live there.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

Livredor just said what I heard. Snjstar already made the point. I have no idea about Hungary. They are not very rich I heard. I was more thinking about countries with a much better economy. Germany is attractive for lots of people from poorer countries (that is why we have lots of people from Russia, Ukraine or other East European countries) because they have a better living standard and get lots of help from the government as well. I hate living in Germany more for social reasons and religious reasons. I have a lot more social life and Jewish life in London. I also don't need to live with my parents anymore. It was overdue to move out. Now I have to learn how to cope with the adult world.