The beggar and the beech hedge, they both had to leave on Thursday evening. And in both cases, a small issue led to a huge fuss. The beggar was sitting in a rather unpleasant street in Heerlen where few people walked past. His dog lay next to him in a basket, looking convincingly starved. The Heerlense boas The enforcers Colleagues had drawn the attention of the man who was sitting on the sidewalk with his cardboard cup in front of him, disrupting the street scene, thereby violating the law that prohibits begging. They asked him for his ID and he produced it without any fuss.
A passerby started to get involved. What he said was hard to understand, but the bottom line was that the enforcers were imbeciles, that they should leave the poor man alone, and that they should get involved in really bad things. The ID did not correspond to a name in the systems, the man was taken to the police station. We were not told how it ended, but a report will have been drawn up, a fine issued and the man will have been sent away. That fine will never reach him. You may wonder exactly what problem has been solved here.
As popular as ever
In Heerenveen there was no problem for 45 years until the house next to Klaas and Annie was sold to a young couple, Anco and Fenna. They live in a detached house, as do the neighbors. Both have a large piece of land around them, unobstructed views, plenty of space. A neat, neat beech hedge divides the strip of greenery leading to both plots.
As soon as it concerns property boundaries, land registry and prescription, you know that you have arrived at the Dutch super enforcer. Frank Visser hasn’t been one for a long time Driving judge more, his program is now called Mr. Frank Visser makes a statement. The program remains popular, even the repeats are often in the top 10. Underneath every dispute, no matter how futile it may seem, there is always something greater underlying it, something fundamental and irreconcilable, something that often cannot be expressed in words, only in arguing.
In Heerenveen, a dispute had arisen between neighbors about a beech hedge and a ditch. Klaas had had wells dug in that ditch with his own money to allow the rainwater to flow away. He planted the beech hedge with his own hands 45 years ago and cut and maintained it all those years. Then the neighbors bought the house next door. During the first viewing, they had started using a measuring tape with the land registry data at hand. That beech hedge had to go. Why? Well, the ditch had to be closed, the ground raised, gravel placed on top, so they could park their cars next to their house.
“Over my dead body,” says Klaas. Does he have an argument? Not really. Yes, he is afraid that his house will be flooded if those wells are removed, but the neighbors have long since promised to arrange the drainage properly. The ditch is a generation gap. Klaas doesn’t want it, because he doesn’t want it. The young couple wants it because they apparently do not want to wait with those parking spaces until “the very elderly couple” dies.
Klaas has pain in his bile, his liver, his stomach, his heart and feels in his gut that he will be defeated at the hearing and announces in advance that his life will be what he wants. concerns is over. And indeed, something fundamental emerges from that ditch during the hearing. Klaas believed that through his years of caring for the beech and ditch he had acquired some right to decide about it. He doesn’t have that. He is a tenant, the young neighbors are a buyer. The land with the ditch and the beech is their property. The beech can go. But what problem has been solved?