Noise Nuisance The greed for profit shared by land owners and builders results in as many houses as possible being packed into as small an area of land as possible. This places neighbours too close for comfort.

To help achieve the tightest possible packing density, houses are joined together in pairs (semi-detached houses) or in long rows (terrace houses). Each house shares a wall with at least one other. Noise in one house is therefore readily transmitted to houses adjoining it. The noise of rowdy children or domestic arguments. Noise from music systems, television sets or workshops.

When we were first married, my wife and I lived in a terrace cottage. It was an old terrace. The adjoining walls were very thin. There we had to listen to the constant noise of football matches from a neighbour's television all Saturday every Saturday. We could not so much as hold a conversation in our sitting room. Each night our neighbour's television would be on loud until very late so we could not get to sleep. This was especially trying when I had to work early shifts commissioning the software for flight simulators; a task for which I had to be mentally alert. Our neighbour's attitude was that had a right to listen to his television in his living room. Our contention was that we had a right to be able to hold a quiet conversation in our sitting room and to be able to sleep in our bedroom.

Then there is the young delivery van driver who shatters the peace of a quiet neighbourhood when he opens the door of his van and unleashes the full force of his pounding sound system into the surrounding homes. Then there are the jobbing builders repairing a roof or a driveway who, for the duration of their job, assault the ears of all who live and work in the street to constant nauseating pop music from their ghetto blaster. No concern for anybody around whose work may require them to think or concentrate. They are totally selfish and inconsiderate towards others.

We have 3 neighbours whose gardens back onto ours. Their houses are in a different street from us. One of them is a large family whom we rarely hear. Another is a childless couple who seem to go to work at night and sleep during the day. The third is a family with two boys. It is the rowdiest family imaginable. From when the boys were very small, their mother tried to control them simply by shouting at them at the top of her voice. Consequently, the two boys followed their mother's example and shouted everything they said at the top of their voices. As a result, the whole neighbourhood knows all sorts of intimate and clinical details about every member of the family.

This family (who embarrassingly shares our surname) is not a nasty family. In fact, they are quite reasonable. They are just extremely loud!!! They hold conversations in the garden at a constant shout. The most annoying thing about them is that none of their adjoining neighbours (including us) can enjoy sitting in the garden in the summer without having to endure a constant chuntering football, cricket or racing commentary from their radio. This is punctuated regularly by a loud rendering of 'Tragedy' by Abba. We still get this even in 1999. This in itself is a tragedy.

I think that this family, if they choose, should be able to make a noise and enjoy themselves the way they want to. But so should all their neighbours be able to enjoy peace and quiet if they want to. The reason we cannot is because people of totally different temperaments, interests and cultures are forcibly squashed cheek-by-jowl in densely packed housing developments like caged animals. And this is because they have been dispossessed of the space families need. There is plenty of habitable land on this planet for all families to be able to have adequate space in which to live the way they want to.