Pissed Off Big Time ?

U have my sympathy Stu,   been there etc..

You could ask the council if they have guidelines for noise levels (dB) & in what circumstances & time of day. (dB is a number & cannot be argued against,  its normally measured at your or the complainants boundary)

If yes,  then ask them to come around & measure your normal output & check if it exceeds the level.

- say that you are very concerned & keen to understand how to address the issue.  

If they don't have guidelines you are in an argument over what constitutes a noise nuisance, but I would still ask them to come round & measure & advise & also discuss together with the complainants; then if they don't I would say its OK to carry on as normal.

Hi Stu I agree with Mike-B regarding council noise level guidelines .You do need to establish from the council when this complaint was made and at what time of the day it relates to, Is it the first such complaint? Have your neighbours spoke to you regarding this issue at any point recently if not maybe its worth talking to them to try and solve there perceived problem anacably before inviting the council round for a listening session. Other wise you need to establish what the council consider loud music? However this could be difficult without it being measured and they give you a maximum permitted level. Not sure what else you can do at this stage. Anyway good luck and I hope it does not spoil your listening pleasure to much.

Regards Graham.

I agree it must be annoying and suggest you talk to the council. Get some numbers behind it and perhaps talk to your new neighbours?

Tom,

Talking would be good.

But they think all the slugs pop over from my garden to eat there potted plants.

They are chucking blue slug pellets over the fence.

They are going to get every slug in Kent now,

I have bought 15 cans of Fosters to tip on there garden in the middle of the night,Two cans a night.

They want slugs they will get them

I have to be a bit PC here.

I am well pissed off as are a few others where i live..

They are going to love it when i have a live band playing on the 23rd as i have done for years .

And everyone round here comes except them.

Stu.

Invite them? And can I come?

Tom,

You will be most welcome.

Bit of a travel from Scotland though.

I am 10 mins drive from the chan tunnel.

Stu.

Stu,

Official rules are good to know, but don't dig trenches. Where possible, work on the relationship

No reason to become best friends, but a good relationship increases tolarance beyond rules.

Good luck with this, Fred

Perhaps they are Linn owners, and used to a better sound........

Seriously though Stu - if the friendly approach fails, counterattack.

Write to the Council and say that you cannot cope with the sound of their incessant love-making.

Don, overcast downtown York.

Stu sounds (sorry not a pun) similar .........

I live in a smallish village that attracts a few people seeking a "country life" between the daily commute. Our parish (council) mag published a tongue-in-cheek piece about the real (justified) noise & other issues plus some amusing others mostly all related to newbee's ..........  

- Bell practice noise from a house that overlooks the bone yard

- House near the pub about Aunt Sally (Oxfurdshy'r outdoor summer pub game)

- Road closure & diversions (2 hrs on Bank Hol morning) for the May Day parade

- Ditto for August BH for the annual street ceilidh, pram race & Morris pissup sorry competition 

We have yet to get complaints about noisy sheep & crowing cockerels or horse pooh on the road,  but I am sure it will come some day. 

The message was the council take all noise complaints seriously as they are keen to have a peaceful village etc..  But the bottom line was the above listed tend to die away as people get used to our ways.

Lurve the slugs,  if you need some more, send me a large SAE. Mine are all pedigree high end diners that will only eat top quality plants. 

I used to leave my old (noisy) diesel Land-Rover on the street. One morning I found a note asking if I could park it somewhere else. Went and approached likely suspects and asked if it was a problem. All denied it was and never had trouble after that. Why not do the same with your immediate neighbours, then if the council follow it up you can tell them it has been sorted? It's always better to try and resolve things first rather than resort to officialdom, maybe they work nights and just want to sleep in? 

I use to have neighbours I didn't get on, but fortunately they moved some years ago and everything is much better now ..... it is a shame you can't invite them around for some of Ogden's Nut Gone Flake and have a bit of party.  Didn't work with my neighbours either as every time thought I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, it turned out to be the light of an oncoming train. 

See what the council man has to say if they come around and don't forget to offer him a drink (barley wine for instance) or two, it usually works with most council people and ask him if he is going to call on his uncle next door before going back to the office ... yes it's often their mate/relative in the council behind these letters, seldom the poor honest council tax payer like what we are 

Still, hopefully to add some cheer, I made a list of people that annoy me while whiling the time away at the Cammell Laird Social Club. 

Bus drivers who don’t wait for people to sit down before pulling away from the bus stop;

Taxi drivers who use their horns instead of knocking on the door;

People who moan at the council about the streets being full of litter, not stopping to think that it is people who drop litter, not the council;

A room full of drama teachers listening to Coldplay;

Grown men with replica shirts worn over their jumpers, who stand up and stretch out their arms when the opposing team fail to hit the target;

An assortment of scriptwriters, novelists and playwrights who own Agas but don’t know how to use them;

A musical equipment reviewer responsible for an article titled “Microphone of the Month”;

A woman who described herself as “A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex And The City” and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it’s a good name. Don’t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill’s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot.

A whole wall full of teenagers spitting needlessly;

An amateur thug in camouflage trousers whose Japanese fighting dog had run amok on a Swindon council estate;

A man from the record company who said that George Michael continues to challenge social taboos through his music;

Phil Collins;

Continuity announcers introducing comedy shows;

A pub band who get uppity when everyone goes to the bar during a song they’ve written themselves;

A group of football fans referred to as Commodores, as in once, twice, three times a season, who feed sugar lumps to police horses at Cup Finals;

An artist who said his next album would be more “song-based”;

A man who informs people that he gets up at six am every morning and seemed to want a medal;

People who say they speak as they find and are somehow proud of it;

Journalists who try to spell an interviewee’s laugh;

An organisation who declared an awareness week for awareness weeks;

And a council worker who dropped litter.

Gale 401

Sorry but you are plain bloody selfish.

Anyone who plays music loud enough to annoy a neighbour is creating audio pollution and you are a social misfit.   You should have more consideration for your community and your music may not be to everyone elses taste and could be driving them mad. 

People like you should have their kit smashed up with a hammer by the local environmental officer and a bill sent to you for his time.

If you want to play your music loud, either buy a detached house or live out in the sticks.

There is no excuse, I repeat no excuse for playing music so loud that other people can hear it, no matter what time of day. Old people may be ill, young mothers may be trying to get a baby asleep, and someone who plays loud music is just inconsiderate.

Regards

Mick

Without taking sides I have to say that I am amazed by the number of replies that simply support Stu without question. In other words many people here seem to be saying "It's fine to play your music as loud as you like and if the neighbours don't like it then that's their hard luck and they should move".

I have no idea how loudly Stu plays his music and therefore no idea if his neighbours complaint is reasonable or not. But I have to say that I certainly would not be happy if my neighbours regularly played live amplified music or live drums. If a live band were playnig next door then if it were a one-off isolated event then I would tolerate it, but if it was in the context of long-standing similar noise levels then I would feel entirely justified in strongly complaining.

Keep things in perspective and be sensible. One cannot expect one's neighbours to tolerate loud music just because it suits oneself. This would be an extremely selfish and anti-social attitude and would deserve complaining against vehemently.

Peter 

I agree that a much better approach would have been for the neighbours to have popped in for a chat to try to work out an amicable solution before going down the official route. That is always the best way to start. But the fact that they didn't do that does not affect the validity of their complaint one way or the other.

Nobody here can say whether the neighbours complaint is justified or not. That is why I find it so puzzling that there is such an uprising of support for Stu and such a condemnation of the neighbours. Without meaning any offence to Stu, who's to say that the complaint is not entirely justified? Had this post appeared on some kind of local neighbourhood forum rather than a hi-fi forum I think the reaction may have been rather different.

Just an observation: Stu talks of jamming sessions and Marshall amps over the years with volume levels turned up to the max. "You could here it half a mile away". Had the law round once. Having a live band round to play. These do not sound to me like the actions of a considerate neighbour - sorry Stu but going by your own admissions you sound like the neighbour from hell! If you consider it acceptable to subject your neighbours to this, and you obviously do, then I wonder what you consider to be an acceptable level of noise pollution from your hi-fi?

It sounds to me like it could well be a case of someone making a hell of a noise over the years and having become accustomed to being able to get away with it for whatever reason. Now the situation has changed with the arrival of new neighbours who object to being subjected to that noise. An unfortunate turn of events for all concerned. But these neighbours have the same rights as everyone else, even if they have only been there for five minutes.

Peter

Yes, perhaps I am guilty of a "semi amusing response encouraging an antagonistic approach".  Irresponsible of me I know, because Stu might believe what I am saying and do something silly.

I have had noisy neighbours in the past, and so have my neighbours.  In fact I have just come back from doing an open air jazz gig for a street party in York, and must have annoyed dozens of their neighbours.

Now I notice people are trying to blame Stu, probably tongue in cheek.

Where is the fun and friendship going out of this forum?  Getting like the letters page of the Daily Mail. ( I presume they have one?  Or is it a text message page??)

Don sunny downtown York

Don,

I don't think it's a question of trying to blame Stu at all. None of us know the real truth of the situation, we only know what Stu has told us. He posted on here with his views about his situation and has received some support and some criticism. Not a question of not being friendly at all, unless all you want from your friends is blind slavish agreement with every view that you express. Personally I would much rather my friends told me the truth about what they think, even if I might find it annoying or unpalatable. 

Peter

Without knowing the circumstances it's difficult to to determine where the blame lies, but Peter's response seems reasonable.

What I do find odd is the reference that the new neighbours may be gay. What's that got to do with complaining about noise levels? Just another example of Stu's unreconstructed world view I guess.

Knowing Stu, he is not one to play music at excessive volumes so I am more than surprised that two newcomers want to be behave in such a way: instead of talk to him, no they snitch to the council (just like in that film Brazil or was it Brave New World or 1984 or Logan's Run).

They came for the palmists, but I wasn’t a palmist so I did nothing
They came for the bungee jumpers, but I wasn’t a bungee jumper so I did nothing
They came for the reflexologists, but I wasn’t a reflexologist so I did nothing
They came for the formula one drivers, but I wasn’t a formula one driver so I did nothing
They came for the martial arts enthusiasts, but I wasn’t a martial arts enthusiast so I did nothing
They came for Eamonn Holmes and I think I’m right in saying I applauded
They came for the fire-eaters, but I wasn’t a fire-eater so I did nothing
They came for the Music Lovers, and I said he’s over there, behind the wardrobe

We are not a million miles away from how fascist dictatorships start

Sometimes you got to fight for your right to party, I know Mick P would agree with me, as he is quite liberal in his views and it is great to see him posting again ... much kudos to you and your moderate left of centre views, MP, but turn your wireless down a bit please mate.  

Anyway here is song you can play to them 

Panic over.

The letter had to the occupier but not my number on it.

The postman has put it through the wrong door.

Its meant for some one quarter of a mile down the road.

The Status Quo is back.

Stu.

No wonder they complained if you're listening to the Quo