Grateful for time in the garden with neighbours
Day: 17 August 2020
Checking for Spy Cameras everywhere…
I recently been tracking a lot of Spycams in hotels and airbnb’s. Yes its currently mainly happening in the east a lot more it seems, but like most technological trends its on the way westward.
It very much reminds me of my experience in the Airbnb in Barcelona. Yes its was a listening device and they did declare it once we were in the flat but its not good enough. Airbnb is the wild west for this.
The spycameras are getting super small and higher quality all the time. For the last year I have been checking my hotel rooms (pre-covid19 when I could travel) with my camera phone and light. I’m not using an app but rather the camera light as my camera sees IR no problem. Theres some quite good tips in this travel site.
By the way, don’t search for “spycameras” on the web, as you will get some questionable results!
Waterside places break all their promises and things haven’t even started
Waterside places the owner of Islington Wharf, the organisation trying to fix the latent defects (they call it resident issues) in the cheapest way possible. They recently posted out forms/contracts to gain our consent for access to our apartments.
The form will give the go ahead with their poorly thought-out plans to take over the garden for 2+ years, have access to our flats and much more.
Here is the letter I got in my postbox, its part of about 9 pages. But most of it is the times of when flats are scheduled.
Note a few things, the date of the letter is 10th August but they want a reply by the 21st August. Imagine if you are renter, and having to contact your landlord who may not even be in the same country or its all done via a 3rd party like a agent. This could take a long time and who knows what happens if the landlord wants one thing and the renters want the opposite?
There is the minimal of actual detailed information on what will happen. For example what if we have a 2nd Covid19 lockdown, how much noise could result of the work, would we have to lock our things away, etc, etc, etc…. They have requested access to my flat for 4 months next year but its not clear exactly what will happen except this outline. No deadlines or real details.
On top of this our many questions haven’t been answered. For example the sample window in the garden Waterside places admit isn’t right and they promised to replace it with a new sample. Of course this hasn’t happened. The effectiveness of the actual film is questionable, let alone if it doesn’t peel or scratch when the window cleaners come to clean the windows.
Theres also a real concern that the film is so dark that looking through it at night will be like pretty much block out the view, especially at night when you have internal lights on. The right thing to do would be to trial it in someones flat (committee members have offered) and then people could really make a decision (they blame Covid19 for not doing this) However we have to make a rushed decision based on information we don’t actually have access to, which will affect not only the next 2+ years, our health (imagine living on a building site for 2+ years), our security, our privacy, flat prices, etc.
Will I be signing the agreement?
Not a chance!!!!
I want the changes to happen (I was working in my flat while it was 31c the other day!) but the way its been rushed upon us and the circumcises is criminal. This should go down under how not to conclude an operation like this. Its almost laughable but its really not!
I find the threat at the end interesting too.
To be fair I’d rather take my chances with the management company (Revolution) because at least we can actual talk through the issues one by one and not be tied to the clock of Waterside places who just want to get phase 4 done and whip their hands of everything.