Respect

No, it’s not about football.

Since June last year my wife and I, both pensioners in our late sixties, have been through the harrowing experience of being emotionally, physically andmentally disturbed.

Our neighbour’s two-storey house was demolished to make way for a four-storey apartment building with semi-basement garages. As such we cannot do anything about it. But please drop the word progress and instead insert ‘in the name of Mammon.’

What irritates us most is not only the lack of respect and tearing the building regulations to shreds by the building constructor, but the pomp and the sanctimonious display and the skit the Building Regulation Office published on a two page leaflet.

I have in front of me this Building Regulation leaflet. To me, being a nonentity, this leaflet is not worth the paper it is written on let alone the boastful writing in it.

Mr Regulator, do you ever send your inspectors at 5.30 in the morning on a building site when it is stipulated that work is to start at seven? Youmight possibly suggest that I should have reported it to the police. In that case we do not need your inspectors. Do you have that extra money for your inspectors to make sure that the law is not breached on a Sunday or public holiday?

We spent the whole summer with closed windows because of the emission of exhaust from the engines of the heavy machinery parked in front of our door and kept running for hours on end, not to mention the smoke and the dust. I could go on citing more wrongdoings we have been confronted with but I think I have made my point.

One suggestion to include when renewing the pamphlet is Respect. Not once throughout all that time did one of the many contractors involved on the site had the courtesy to approach us with words of sympathy or support. No: it is as if they have a divine right to trample on one’s feelings in the name of the god Mammon. Does this form part of the slogan ‘the best in Europe’?

Lately, Mepamust be commended for employing appropriate means to report any breach of building regulations by simply sending an SMS.