At their worst, code enforcers block creativity and defy reason, answerable to remote abstractions that have nothing to do with the present case or opportunity. On the widespread estate lands of Chatsworth were a great many solid old stone farm buildings that Deborah Devonshire thought might be nice shelters—“stone tents”—for the teeming hikers and campers in the Peak District. She took the idea to the local authorities: It seemed we might as well have been trying to do in a lot of innocent people. It appeared that anyone using the stone tents would most likely die from having no lavatories,
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