A mug's game

I'm always fascinated by neighbour disputes, especially the really crazy ones that go on for years and cost a fortune. What motivates people to push these disputes to the bitter end, whatever the financial and emotional cost?

Cilla Carden of Perth, Australia, is planning more legal action against her neighbours, citing their cooking smells, cigarette smoke, chairs scraping on concrete, reflective light, the sounds of children playing basketball, and pet birds.

Seriously? Aren't all those things just what you would expect from a family enjoying their home? Are they meant to creep around super-silently, avoiding any kind of noise or smells or signs of their existence? I would say Ms Carden is ludicrously intolerant and unable to live and let live.

Jenny and I have had a few problems with neighbours, but there's no way we would pour money into lawyers' pockets to deal with them. There are always other ways of sorting things out.

We once had a flat in a London mansion block, and the neighbours were fond of riotous all-night parties. We kept a detailed diary of the disturbances and asked the local council to take action. The neighbours were fined a large sum and moved out shortly afterwards. Result!

A few years before, in another block of flats, our downstairs neighbours were amazingly noisy, one with a constant hacking cough we could hear all too clearly. We asked them politely if they could be less noisy, but their response was to let down our car tyres.

While we were still wondering what else we could do, they moved out and were replaced by a much quieter couple we befriended. Problem solved.

Now we live in a detached house so neighbour nuisance is less likely, though we did have some neighbours who were also fond of late-night parties. Luckily they tired of such revelry, two of them moved out and the one person left is quiet as a mouse.

Legal action? It's a mug's game.

The gay cake

The global controversy continues over the so-called "gay cake" case, and whether a Belfast bakery was entitled to refuse a cake order that included the message "Support gay marriage" on the icing.

The British Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Ashers bakery was indeed entitled to refuse the order, as this wasn't discrimination against the customer's homosexuality, simply an objection to a particular message that conflicted with their religious beliefs (the owners being devout Christians).

The two lower courts had sided with the customer, Gareth Lee, but the Supreme Court sided with the bakery. Which has reignited the tangled debate over homophobia, what amounts to discrimination, whether a business can refuse an order or not, to what extent you can assert your religious beliefs and so on.

The legal action has already lasted almost 4½ years and cost over £500,000 (partly funded by the Equality Commission). It could last even longer, as Gareth is considering a further appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (through crowdfunding).

Personally I wonder if this interminable legal action is really worth it. Surely the whole dispute could have been resolved at a much earlier stage, with a bit of common sense and flexibility? Someone suggested that after his order was refused, Gareth could simply have shrugged his shoulders, recognised that some people don't agree with gay marriage, and found another bakery that was happy to make his cake.

If one particular bakery throws a wobbly over the message on a cake, is that such a big deal? There must be plenty of bakeries that are more obliging, so does it really matter?

If I ordered a cake with the message "Bollocks to Brexit" and the bakery refused the order, would it be worth  starting a £500,000 legal action to demand my culinary rights? I think not. It would just suggest I had a very large chip on my shoulders.

Pic: Gareth Lee

Vow of silence

I'm still subject to an indefinite gagging order I signed when I left a well-known charity ten years ago. I had to sign it as part of a voluntary redundancy package and it stays in force until the day I drop dead. It forbids me from saying anything about how the charity was run and any disturbing incidents I witnessed while I was there.

Not only that but it forbids me from even revealing that I signed a gagging order or what the order specifies, which means that right now I'm breaking the law. But given I'm not revealing anything too damaging, and not naming the charity, I doubt if a solicitor's letter will drop through my front door any time soon.

The order also forbids me from making disparaging comments about the charity or taking any legal action, such as claiming unfair dismissal, claiming the national minimum wage or claiming age discrimination.

I gather gagging orders are getting more and more common, especially when someone is leaving a workplace, possibly under a cloud and probably knowing of all sorts of negative things that could wreck the organisation's reputation. Even sexual harassment can be hushed up by such orders.

In June it was revealed that the House of Commons spent £2.4 million on 53 redundancy-related non-disclosure orders in five years.

Well, just to carry on breaking the law, I can disclose that my own gagging order followed a severe personality clash between several workmates, and a new manager's desire to clear out those of us he regarded as "dead wood" in order to hire people more to his liking.

Hardly explosive revelations, especially as similar things must go on in every charity in the land. So a voluminous five-page gagging order is absurdly over the top.

But it's a nice little earner for the lawyers.