From the very first posting on this thread, I had a feeling something was amiss. It was the phrasing of the questions and their intent that seemed a bit “off” but I put that down to someone being unfamiliar with the subject or, indeed, the whole business of posting on a website.
It seems, Flatchatters, that my first instincts were correct: we’ve been had.
In a personal message last night, Libbylou admitted that she wasn’t the owner of the apartment with the exclusive use of the roof, but was in fact one of the other owners in the building, wanting to know if she should support or reject the proposals.
In her defence, there was no malice in her deception: she claims she merely wanted an independent and objective opinion.
However, why she would go to such elaborate lengths to deceive the Forum, its editors and readers is beyond me. This wasn’t one question, it was a continuing thread based on a fundamental lie that expected all the people who volunteer their time and expertise to give an honest assessment.
Anonymity is one of the fundamental principles of this Forum because it allows all of you to ask your questions without any fear of retribution from the people involved in your disputes.
I police that rigorously and even change the screen names of newcomers who haven’t bothered to read the instruction not to use their real name or, especially, email address as their screen name.
I believe the ability to ask questions in complete confidence is one of the reasons we have recently clicked over 22,000 posts in more than 5000 different topics.
In her message, Libbylou also raised the issue of whether our answers were biased in favour of the questioners. I suppose what she was saying was, do we tell people what they want to hear?
The answer to that (as you can see from the previous discussion) is a resounding “no”. We endeavour to give people the best advice we can and, when the situation is complex and/or the stakes are high, we strongly recommend they seek professional legal advice.
But even lawyers are more likely to tell you how to achieve what you want, rather than just rattle off what the law says and let you work it out for yourself. If you want to ask a question and get a blunt recitation of the law (plus a potentially suspect interpretation) contact Fair Trading.
So if we are guilty of anything, it’s that we offer advice that helps readers to achieve their aims – or modify their ambitions – within the parameters of the law.
We have even given advice to Airbnb hosts, even though that organisation has been encouraging people to breach their planning laws and by-laws and is, in my opinion, a greater threat to apartment communities than dodgy developers, incompetent managers and bad neighbours, all rolled into one.
I was sorely tempted to delete the preceding discussion but, regardless of its origin, it has a lot of good information that may be helpful to other Flatchatters in similar situations.
Meanwhile – protected by our policy of anonymity – only Libbylou knows who she is and if she (if she is, in fact, a she) wants to come on here and apologise to you all, I’ll be happy to let her.
Otherwise, I think we’ve heard more than enough from that quarter.
By the way, if you are wondering about the security of this website, I have Libbylou’s real email address and IP address on file from her registration. But I would never reveal either unless it was something much, much more serious than telling fibs and pretending to be someone you aren’t.