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Neighbours and Etiquette
Neighbours you don't want - it's been a hard day and I was expecting to sleep like a log. But it was not to be.
I ring my neighbour's phone. He can’t hear it above all that racket! I ring the police. They arrive 45 minutes later. I hear them talking to the neighbour. The music goes quiet. The police leave. The DHOOF, DHOOF starts up again 10 minutes after the police have left. It’s louder than before. Sound familiar? Well, something can be done about it as we explain below and on our other pages about neighbours. We all have a part to play in it. There is no one way to deal with the huge variety of neighbour problems that people are faced with. But a good way to start is by being friendly with the people next door and then the ones next door to them. Be courteous and helpful without being meddlesome. Get to know them first (including their children and dog). If you can get to like your neighbours as well, you will probably find their behaviour not quite as annoying as you thought before you made some sort of contact. The children could be brought around to co-operating and their dog might respond to your voice. What is neighbour etiquette? It is not our business how others live if they leave us to live our lives in peace. It is our right to enjoy peace and quiet in our homes. That right supersedes the right of our neighbour to create a noise or disturbance that intrudes into our dwelling.
If neighbours do not leave us in peace, their interference and intrusion into our lives and senses can have very detrimental effects on our well being and health. This exemplifies the need to have a code of good Neighbourhood Manners and Etiquette. In a nutshell - show respect and consideration for your neighbours. Contact your Local Shire or Council office and ask them what ordinances are in place to deal with problem neighbours. Ask them whether they have a Code of Behaviour for Residents living in their area of jurisdiction. If not, why not? Ask them what is being done to establish such a code. If they do have a Code of Behaviour for Residents, do they actively promote this code to ensure Good Neighbour Relations? If not, why not? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! We should expect our shire and council offices to educate the 'rabble' among us to conform to a code of behaviour that will ensure peace and harmony in our suburbs! We are all entitled to peace and quiet in our lives without the fear of anti-social behaviour impinging on that right. Use this
We need our shire's/council's co-operation to help curb the problem of neighbourhood anti-social behaviour because the issue is too important to neglect. It has got out of hand in many parts of the world. We need to stand up and say with one voice, "Stop!" This link may help you to contact your
Local Authority.
To maintain peace and order, some form of intervention or arbitration becomes necessary, before he becomes a
Neighbour from Hell.
Once they become law, the details must be spelt out and law enforcement follows. There are many ways of dealing with neighbour conflict before it gets out of hand and becomes a matter to be dealt with in the courts. There's an old saying, "an Englishman's home is his castle", and he expects to live in peace in it. But today few of us live in a castle; in fact, we are literally living on top of one another in increasingly higher densities. We find our personal space being encroached on more and more. The result is our capacity to show tolerance and consideration is tested to the limit when common courtesy is not shown to us. Neighbour disputes can turn ugly fast.
This is of such serious concern that on a global scale government agencies have taken initiatives to enact laws to define what constitutes a breach. Those laws define steps to remedy the breach (and the penalties for failing to do so) so that early intervention can prevent an escalation of the situation into full scale violence. Only some of these agencies actively ask residents to observe common courtesies of respect and consideration towards their neighbours. Few of them actively advise residents of their rights and remedies when faced with a situation that is causing a grievance such as Noisy Neighbours, Barking Dogs, Undisciplined Children and many others. More needs to be done. You will find help from some of the sponsors listed at the top or right side of this page. Check them out.
Vandalism includes the destruction of public property by skateboards or the defacing of property with graffiti. Communities are now starting to band together to stamp out this scourge in their suburbs. One such army of volunteers in Western Australia is promoting 'vandalism prevention awareness' in schools and is actively recruiting members to be the eyes of the community to help discourage this mindless activity. Wherever you are you can be a part of this movement called
(PAV) - People Against Vandalism. 
We would love to hear about your experiences on our interactive visitors forum
Neighbors
of breaches of neighbour etiquette (and how you resolved the situation) for possible inclusion in our
Rage Page.
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