Spa-Francorchamps race track in Belgium is currently waiting to find out if it will ever be able to host another race...
...while an investigation is done into complaints by the neighbours that there's too much noise there from the cars racing.

The track's been there since the 1800s, so every single one of the neighbours moved into their house knowing it was next to a race circuit.

O_o
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 18:43, 14 replies)

People are idiots -
They get the same trouble up at Combe - it's a racetrack, you knew it was there when you bought your house! Idiots.
(Dregen, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 19:02, closed)

People who buy houses next to airports, too...
...then complain about the noise and get free double-glazing O_o
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 19:13, closed)

Well, there's a legal precedent here
which the complainants seem to be missing.

If the racetrack is built after the people moved in, and is noisy, they can legitimately sue.

If the racetrack was there before they moved in, they can get bent. Whinging fuckers.
( drunkenoaf, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 22:42, closed)

Do you mean Castle Combe?
I thought house prices there were ridiculously high, so the people who complain probably have no interest in racing. However, I had a greeat day there once on the skid-pan.
( M3rx likes the Asian ladies, Mon 5 Oct 2009, 11:31, closed)

Same deal with Alton Towers
They used to do the best 'fireworks to music' show I'd ever seen as part of their annual Halloween Spectacular...then one of the new 'neighbours' set off a case about unreasonable noise and they're not allowed any more. For fucks sake...
( Jessie © needs pirate name suggestions, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 19:14, closed)

I hope
they die soon.
(AndyC4m Eject Eject [><], Thu 8 Oct 2009, 11:48, closed)

Having watched this happen to many of the smaller UK tracks (Castle Coombe anyone?) that you probably haven't heard of
but were a vibrant part of the community and a source of local commerce (as well as creating opportunities to take the assorted muppetry off the public highway), I've worked out their logic. It goes something like this:

1. Buy cheap house in country. It's cheap because of the noise of the nearby racetrack.

2. Complain vociferously about the "noise hazard" and how it's making your live "a living hell." You knew about it before you moved in, but that's not the point, because this is:

3. After a campaign which you have riled up with your neighbours, you eventually get the local planning officer to shut the track down or serve a noise abatment order upon it (which restricts the vehicles that can use it and ultimately shuts it down through commercial means).

4. Your cheap house in the country is now an expensive house in the country because it's all lovely and quiet.

5. Sell house and you're quids in.

Call me a cynic, but this is how I see it.
(dxg, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 19:34, closed)

Sadly, I suspect you're dead right :/

(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 19:36, closed)

there is only one word for people like that:
cunts.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 21:51, closed)

Like these souless cunts
www.peopleagainstmotocross.org.uk/index.htm
They closed the forum down due to an influx of angry bikers .

Nimby wankers
( bane, Sun 4 Oct 2009, 23:41, closed)

Unusual choice of metaphor by them
About a motocross track being like a pernnial weed, which will keep on growing: It's true. There's this one course, founded just after WW2, which due to a lack of local opposition is now 3,870 miles long; currently growing at a rate of two hundred metres an hour. Participants who drive slowly enough will never complete a lap; and some have even been known to die of old age whilst finishing their first circuit; and due to the requirments of supervision and first aid coverage, requires the highest steward-to-participant ratio on earth.
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Mon 5 Oct 2009, 0:04, closed)

these are the kind of anal fuckers
who will tie you up in a 20-year fatuous legal battle about your privet hedge growing leaves half an inch over their property line.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Mon 5 Oct 2009, 0:46, closed)

I reminds me of
when we first had an influx of Londoners moving into my village in Dorset. Someone wrote to the local paper complaining about the smell of the farm nextdoor.
On the same letters page was another complaint about the cow shit on the road.

I think the next weeks paper was full of "fuck of back to London" then letter. I'm sure the letters were published just to show how dumb the Londoners were.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 5 Oct 2009, 8:59, closed)

and ...
... has the mount of noise made by the track increased or decreased in that time?

It's perfectly possible that the racetrack (either cars or PA) is much noisier than (eg) ten years ago, and that people are complaining about the _increase_.
(haberman is singing in the changes, Tue 6 Oct 2009, 16:13, closed)