Hard Times Are So Much More Civilized in the UK

We still have so much to learn from the Brits. They've got the stiff upper lip, the afternoon tea, and they've got legal squatting.

According to the BBC, a bunch of art students have moved into a couple of vacant mansions at a fine address in London - Park Lane. They're holding open houses, exhibiting art and generally proving to be pretty good neighbors. Their "landlord" (are you a landlord if you don't get rent, or just a victim?) may be the Duke of Westminster, who apparently hasn't used the homes in years. They're valued at 15 million pounds. Each.

The new tenants are art students, 30 to 40 of them per building. Squatting is not illegal if you don't force your way in and you cause no criminal damage. The students say they're not crackheads, they're not wrecking the places, they're just enjoying the finest free student housing ever.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7845746.stm

So let's consider this notion. We've got an awful lot of empty homes owned by banks that can't sell them. We have an awful lot of people who are having trouble paying their bills. The lines at soup kitchens are getting longer. Utility companies report a rising number of delinquencies...and bigger ones.

What if we started letting people live in those empty houses across the US legally? What if the banks signed a deal that required they keep the places up, didn't allow the pipes to freeze, basically acted as caretakers?

Am I missing something or could this make sense?

*UPDATE* Let the Games Begin - Second Depression II-

Our roving boy has been found - here's the background, or skip to the end if you know it already:

As the ripples from Bernie Madoff's scam become a tsunami washing over global investors and carrying away their money, as the body of a European financier is removed from his Manhattan office, here's a little slice of reality from the BBC. They're watching.

38 year old Marcus Schrenker is missing after his plane crashed. It appears he did it to fake his own death.

Schrenker's financial management companies are in trouble. They're under investigation and are said to owe half a million dollars to an insurance company.

He took off in a single engine plane from a small Indiana airport this past weekend, bound for Florida. He was alone. Somewhere over Alabama, he made a distress call. His windshield, he said, had imploded and he was bleeding.

The rescue effort began - apparently a little more quickly than Mr. Schrenker anticipated. Military planes intercepted his little Piper and found it on autopilot, with the door hanging open. No pilot.

It soon crashed into an Alabama swamp, near a neighborhood. Police say there was no blood, no pilot, and no smashed windshield.

But our hero isn't totally missing - a man matching his description checked into an Alabama motel and explained his appearance as the result of a canoeing accident. He later was seen running off into the woods.

Do they have alligators in Alabama?

Apparently if they do, he dodged them, too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7829868.stm