Defeating the Right Of First Refusal

 General  No Responses »
Apr 042015
 

As an introduction to this, I'm writing this from the point of view of a freeholder wishing to evade the right of first refusal but for the record this is more or less what happened to me as a flat leaseholder. Obviously certain details have been changed and the relevant names left out.

One of the things they don't say when someone buys a leasehold flat is that when the freehold changes hands, the leaseholder should normally have the right of first refusal. The existing (and prospective) freeholder should formally notify the relevant leaseholders that the freehold is due to change hands, and offer the freehold on exactly the same terms.

There are certain exceptions to this right of first refusal which can be basically summed up as various forms of inheritance, so probably won't be of much use in helping out.

The first decision to make – long before the freehold changes hands – is whether it is worth defending. If the freehold is purely residential it is probably not worthwhile trying to defend it, and some of the options below are not available. If however there is commercial element to the freehold such as the shops in a mixed use block, then it is may well be worth defending. 

You can of course split off the valuable part of the freehold into a leasehold so that the freehold becomes a lot less valuable; even if you do lose it, you still retain the commercial and profitable part of the property. It also allows you to 'fiddle" the price of the freehold so that when you sell the freehold and the leasehold together, you charge far more for the freehold than it is actually worth.

And don't tell the leaseholders about their right of first refusal. Sure that's illegal, but it turns out nobody really cares about that. Most leaseholders won't be aware of their right of first refusal, and even if they are aware, they will be too concerned with the expense to take it any further. Unless you have managed to annoy them in some way.

And whilst you are ignoring the right of the leaseholders to be informed of their right of first refusal, you can keep yourself busy by merging the previous leasehold of shops with the freehold. Making a fundamental change to the value of the freehold will complicate the right of first refusal if it ever comes up.

If the leaseholders do make an attempt at enforcing their right of first refusal, delay at every opportunity. Unless you give up at the first hurdle, the issue is going to court and any court action is a game of chicken where the loser is the first to blink at the escalating legal costs.

As usual, justice in this country favours the rich.

USA: The Last Bastion Of Pre-Metric Metrics?

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Mar 142015
 

If you ask someone from the US what measurement system they use, they will probably come up with a phrase something like the US Customary Units  which was "standardised" at a time just before the British Imperial system was overhauled. Which for most of the 20th century lead to the ridiculous situation where a gallon wasn't necessarily a gallon in international trade (the old pre-Imperial system had three different gallons depending on what liquid you were measuring!). And a pound wasn't necessarily a pound, and a foot wasn't necessarily a foot.

The numbers have disappeared into the background, but there were six different weights for a pound at various times.

Aaah! And this is just two systems evolved from the same origin. If every country in the world resorted to it's traditional measurement system, the world would be in chaos.

With the exception of the USA, Mynamar, and Liberia, the world has reluctantly agreed on using the metric system to avoid the cost and confusion of dealing with multiple different systems of measurement. 

Except that is not quite true. If you look at the formal definition of the US system, you will see that it is defined in terms of the metric system, and has been since 1893. Which is rather amusing – assuming that you aren't an American. If you are, it must be galling to realise that when you stubborning stick to your traditional measurement system, the rest of the world sees you rather pathetically clinging on to something that is little more than a thin veneer over what the rest of the world uses. 

Firing Jeremy Clarkson?

 General, Media  No Responses »
Mar 102015
 

Today we learned that next Sunday's episode of Top Gear is not to be shown, and Jeremy Clarkson has been suspended pending an investigation. Apparently because of a "fracas" with a producer.

Which is all a bit mysterious, but it is interesting to see people assuming that Clarkson is in trouble because of his mouth. It would be hardly be a big surprise if his mouth has gotten him into trouble again; his public persona is a bit of a loud-mouthed idiot so it is hardly surprising if he says something dumb, obnoxious, or even offensive at times.

When he goes too far, he usually apologises (here, here, here, and I dare say you can find plenty more).

But if this latest fracas has anything to do with the something stupid he has said, the BBC are being a bit two-faced about suspending him. The Top Gear show was a bit of a dreary bore before Clarkson's brand of idiocy spiced it up into something even car-haters can enjoy on occasion. If you employ an obnoxious idiot because he's an obnoxious idiot, it's wrong to suspend him for being an obnoxious idiot.

Of course we're all making assumptions about what went on today. And frankly a "fracas" sounds a bit more serious than just a few badly chosen phrases, so I think we should all wait and see how this develops.

 

 

Not Everything On The Internet Is True

 General  No Responses »
Feb 152015
 

Wandering through Youtube as you do, I happened to come across :-

.. and was immediately struck by how dumb the selection of "facts" were :-

  1. Antibiotics attack bacteria not viruses. In fact the belief that they attack anything nasty smaller than the eye can see is contributing to the issue mentioned as the fact – that antibiotics are becoming less and less effective as antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria evolve. So whilst the video is right in the broadest possible terms, the explanation is full of shit.
  2. Shellac has nothing whatsoever to do with bug shit. It's produced by collecting a different bodily fluid, but obviously the narrator was confused between the two words secrete and excrete.
  3. The fact about Caesar was nearly right except that old Julius asked for his ransom to be raised from 20 silver talents to 50 silver talents (an increase of 2.5 times not double which is quite a big difference), and whilst Julius did crucify the pirates, he also had their throats cut first.
  4. The sixth exictintion (us humans causing an extinction event) is treated as a fact whereas it is currently a plausible hypothesis, but by no means a fact. Not that we shouldn't improve our behaviour to our fellow planet dwellers!
  5. We all eat 12 pubic hairs a year, The narrator even admits nobody knows of a source for this "fact". Well guess what? If you don't have a source, all you have is an entertaining story. 
  6. I couldn't be bothered to check, but I suspect the "fact" of big agriculture breeding huge workforces of children to work farms because there are US labour law loopholes is a bit far off base.

Out of a list of 15 so-called "facts" at least 50% were horse-shit and in the case of the remainder, there's a fair few I've not bothered checking. Best bet is when you look at a video claimimg to have a top 10 list of something is to take the whole thing with a pinch of salt. 

Animal Cruelty, Slaughterhouses, Halal, and Kosher

 General, Religion  No Responses »
Feb 092015
 

After a public release of a certain video of animal cruelty found within a halal slaughterhouse, there has been a certain amount of "noise" regarding animal cruelty :-

For the benefit of those too sensible to hit "play", some of the most striking things about the video :-

  1. The workers have no compunction about treating the animals with a great deal of cruelty including taunting them.
  2. Supervision seems to be non-existent. 
  3. The "quick cut with a sharp knife" seems to be a slow sawing with a blunt penknife.

I should say from the beginning that I'm a vegetarian so I'm unlikely to be sympathetic to the problems encountered by slaughterhouses (shut 'em all!). I'm also an atheist so I'm unlikely to have sympathy for religious beliefs insisting on medieval slaughterhouse techniques (if you can find a sheep that requests Halal or Kosher execution, then by all means go ahead).

But the reaction to the videos has seemed to concentrate on point 3 above, Or more specifically the need to kill by a quick cut of a knife.

Whilst I'm not keen in the quick cut method, it does seem to me that the cruelty of that method is outweighed by far, by the attitude of the slaughterhouse staff and the design of the slaughterhouse. In other words, I can easily imagine seeing a video portraying pretty much the same level of cruelty when the slaughterhouse staff are wielding a stunbolt gun. 

It seems to me that to reduce the level of cruelty, we need to have robust supervision by people who are not going to put up with any kind of abuse. People with the power to hit the big red button, and send everyone home for the day. 

Yes, there's an argument about whether the requirements for Halal and Kosher count as animal cruelty, but this video shows far more generalised animal cruelty that can be found at any badly run slaughterhouse. The question is: Just how many slaughterhouses are badly run?

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