This week on Freedom News blatant rip-off of a much more successful and better written Vice column, we commemorate 10 years since the criminalisation of squatting in residential buildings by George F glibly presenting housing opportunities for those who would wish to take them and by asking – how secure is your door?

What is it? A door. Specifically, a locked door. Specifically, a door locked by a Eurolock, also known as a cylinder lock. Also known as the most popular brand and type of lock across Europe.

Doors, according to this wonderfully instructional video, are there “to keep you safe inside, and the bad guys out … real door, real street, real life.”

But today on LSOFTW we have to ask – how secure is your door? Indeed, how secure is any door? Surely, the ultimate in door security is a wall? But then what sense does a building with no doors and only walls make? How would anyone use it? And whats the point of enclosing spaces off if nobody is using them? And if people need spaces, shouldn’t we be morally obliged to tear down those walls – which are if anything failed doors?

Unfortunately this instructional video falls short of answering this philosophical dilemma, so let us approach instead as curious investigators and in a similar way explore how this lock company highlights the issue of door security.

In this same video, an intruder who looks a lot like your uncle Terry takes only 9.2 seconds to fuck that lock up and get in to grab those car keys. Watch it and marvel.

Where is it? It’s right there for the taking, in fact, every street, across the city. In worst case scenarios when a commercial property is squatted the typical fastest legal route to remove squatters and ascertain the lawful possessor is through an interim possession order (IPO). This draconian law was brought in by the Tories in 1994’s Criminal Justice Act along with legislation against repetitive beats as a direct assault on the burgeoning squat and free party scene, and means that upon being granted by a judge and correctly served, it becomes a criminal offence for anyone to remain upon the premises in the interim period until a full possession order can be granted. When served, occupiers have 24 hours to vacate before the police can force entry and gain access. Typically, in order to get an IPO hearing, papers have to be filed at the court, a date set, and the paperwork served correctly upon the property. On average, the fastest time scale for this is 10 days, from entry to the IPO being granted.

Quick math – that means that for 9.2 seconds of effort, you could get 10 days of housing.

In 10 days, there are 864000 seconds – meaning you can potentially expend 9.2 seconds of risk for a payoff of 9290322.5806452%, which nerds in the audience will recognise as a shiv’s edge off of a cool 1, 000, 000% increase.

Even factoring in the time to scout and find those buildings, to change the locks, to set-up the space, and the irritant risk of being busted in the act and held for up to 24 hours by the cops for attempted burglary, criminal damage, or going equipped, the potential payoff for this gamble is ball-blastingly massive.

And that’s if they go for an IPO, if it is correctly served, and if the police deign to enforce it. In the last year there have been multiple accounts from across London of squatters ignoring IPOs and remaining in the buildings until the full possession is granted, and it goes back to being a civil matter between the occupiers and the owners, and therefore of no interest to the police.

How d’ya like them odds?

What is there to do locally? It’s squatting more buildings and annoying rich people, isn’t it?

The rich had to ironically slave and work for the last 1000 years and more to get hold of all the property in the world, building schools and systems and banks and police states and war machines and murdering an entire fucking planet as they apocalypse-beavered away. They have to battle continuously, savagely, desperately, daily to cling on to it in the face of burgeoning wealth disparity and an increasingly pissed off populace. Just think, for the cost of a pair of mole grips and a bit of practice, you could snatch back from them what they are clinging to most desperately – property – even if only briefly, and laugh in their faces for at least 10 whole days, before doing the whole thing all over again.

Not that we would condone any of that, as committing criminal damage is, infact, a crime. And crime is bad. Don’t do it. This is just a hypothetical maths lesson.

They fucking hate it. It’s like their least favourite thing for uppity povvos to do.

With a bit of hustle and a few friends technically this means you could open 92903 buildings in 10 days. You’d probably need to do a lot of quick meth, but with the right amount, that’s still some pretty peak numbers.

How do we get in? In the 70s cis-people would often gather to eat Tiramisu and discuss sideburns, and once sufficiently enflamed by discussions of the best way to fondue, the males would all sling their car keys into a bowl and the females would fish them back out, and sub-sequently escort the owner of the keys back to their car. As anarcha-feminists and queer-as-folk, we suggest a militant campaign of car-key collection.

Let us wash our dirty faces with the tears of billionaires.

I refer you back to the video above. You didn’t read it here. Go sue that lock company. If you watch past the initial mole grips entry, Uncle Terryflaps continues to demonstrate a number of other techniques for accessing a cylinder lock. Obviously it’s a crime so don’t do it.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. DO NOT TRY THIS TO HOME!

• George F squats and writes.

Image: GeoTrinity, CC BY-SA 3.0