There are two separate but linked questions arising from the terrible disaster at Ladbroke Grove. One is the efficacy of national building regulations on fire and safety. It is plainly true that, if Grenfell Tower met them, they are inadequate. The second is how Kensington and Chelsea Council in particular manage their housing.
To look at the second question, I do agree with David Lammy that there is potential criminal culpability here, but I am not quite sure that he is right to describe it as “corporate manslaughter”. It seems to me that responsibility rests more with government than with corporations (though I accept that the former is a tool of the latter).
One of the most retrograde developments of my lifetime has been the wholescale “outsourcing” of delivery of public services away from direct government provision. So rather than by council employees, your bins are probably emptied and your streets swept by a private company paid to do it. Just as your utilities are supplied, your trains run, civil servants get their stationery ordered, increasingly medical services are provided, international aid projects are administered, and literally thousands of other examples.
This development was driven by the ideological belief, often fanatically held, that people employed by government are less efficient than those employed by the private sector. That ideology also depended on a rejection of the very notion of altruism; which rejection of altruism was at the heart of Thatcherism. The idea that people are only motivated by personal gain is of course quite untrue. Firefighters, who are still employed by the public, have proved that just now, beyond anything I can say, by going well beyond their contractual duty to try to help. But even accepting for one moment, for the sake of argument, the doctrine that people are only motivated by money; it plainly does not follow that public services would be more efficiently delivered by the private sector. What does follow is that public services will suffer from profiteering if run by the private sector.
But this disastrous contracting out is not always to private for profit companies. It is sometimes to what Tories call the “third sector”, meaning charities and not for profit companies. Much of the aid budget is now spent this way. Not at all coincidental, the pumping of large amounts of public money into this sector has coincided with a quite incredible rise in the salaries and emoluments of senior charities staff.
We have ended up in the situation where executive staff of charities are on over £200,000 a year, where the chief executive of Save the Children gets twice the salary of the Head of DFID, and where people who occupy what were once public sector jobs in rail, water or housing can earn ten times what their public sector predecessors were getting. At the same time wages, employment protection, conditions and unionisation for the actual workers have all been cut.
This is important because the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation Ltd is a not for profit company. No shareholders get any profits from it, and it does not remunerate its directors. This is the body which manages Grenfell Towers and did the refurbishment. Some of the (rightly critical) comment has assumed that KCTMO Ltd is a profiteering private company and this is why it has skimped on possible safety features like sprinkler systems. But it is more complicated than that.
The majority of KCTMO directors, including the chairman, are themselves tenants of the council’s housing. Three more are council appointed. The philosophy behind KCTMO Ltd is on the face of it benign – the tenants are managing their own properties. Which leads to the question of why relationships had broken down so badly between KCTMO and those apparently speaking for the residents of Grenfell Tower, particularly over fire safety issues.
Some of the answer to that may relate to social hierarchy among different types of council tenant. I do not know if anyone on the KCTMO board lived in Grenfell Tower, but imagine we would have been told that if so.
My experience of other organisations would lead me to suspect that in practice KCTMO Ltd did not operate in the way that it does on paper, and that the Chief Executive and other officers had a disproportionate influence. I have seen enough decisions in enough public bodies with a supposedly democratic structure – including universities and councils – to know that the elected representatives often find it very difficult to challenge the “expertise” of the executive officers. This is particularly likely to be true in an area like housing, where there are architectural, construction and legal issues. You quickly end up in a situation where the elected representatives are not really making decisions but only rubber=stamping the decisions of the officers. I saw various tenants who had been involved in the complaints to KTCMO interviewed yesterday, and they all referenced the Chief Executive, Robert Black, and not the tenant representative Chairman.
KCTMO’s staff costs are just over £10 million per year. I can find nothing on wage structure and what the executive officers are paid. I hope that information will become available.
But I can see no reason to believe that Mr Black or anybody else could make any personal gain from not installing a sprinkler system, for example. It appears responsibility for providing funds for this kind of capital expenditure lies with Kensington and Chelsea Council and not with KCTMO. It happens I lived for three years in Shepherds Bush and know this area very well. Ladbroke Grove is 15 minutes walk from some of the most expensive houses in the world. The idea that people in social housing were not high on the priorities of the council rings to me entirely true. In fact there is plenty of evidence that councillors are in cahoots with developers looking to demolish the social housing and build yet more massive luxury developments primarily for sale to the global “elite” of the extremely wealthy.
So much for the local picture. Nationally, it appears beyond argument that the government has failed again and again to update regulations following similar fires both in the UK and elsewhere. Yet again this is ideologically driven. Deregulation is a key principle of neo-liberalism. The government has an intrinsic belief that anything that adds costs or restriction to corporate profit should be resisted, and the idea of adding new regulation is simply anathema to them. That background cannot be ignored. The more you dig into this terrible tragedy, the more lurid a light is thrown on Neo-Liberal Britain.
O/T.
Are we gearing up for another election sooner than later?
http://archive.is/tuj93
https://mobile.twitter.com/yhWildfire/status/875308724948226048
May has certainly got a jinx. What next?
May obviously cannot go to the country a second time and say please give her more seats, because she’s Mrs Strong and Stable and that’s what she needs.
We have been fed all kinds of crap about why they’re delaying the “government’s” announcement of its legislative programme.
They are likely to hand over to Labour and then try their damnedest to undermine the government.
My guess is they will put David Davis in as Tory leader, because of his accent. The alternative is they go completely doolally and put Boris Johnson in.
I’ve been speculating for a while now. If Theresa had put a Queen’s Speech before Parliament without speaking to the DUP, chances are they would have supported it, and then negotiated for goodies on a vote by vote basis. Having entered into negotiations, she has compromised herself. Any deal will be toxic. If the negotiations break down, there is a good chance the DUP abstain or even vote against.
If they vote against, the Tory Queen’s Speech fails. If the DUP abstains, the Tories need 317 votes, and they have 317. There is zero margin for error, apart perhaps from Lady Sylvia Herman. One rebel, one abstainer, one person unable to attend and they lose.
That then gives rise to an interesting situation. Corbyn then has a chance to present a Queen’s Speech. The Tories have a choice. Either they can abstain, and let Corbyn become a minority PM, or they can trigger an immediate further election. Common sense says they should do the former, change their leader, and then bring him down at a time of their choosing. But do they have that common sense?
One other nagging thought. Are there just half a dozen Tories for whom a deal with the DUP and a hard Brexit will be too much to bear, who would defect and sit as independents or join the Lib Dems? I can’t rule out the possibility that there just might.
“With Grenfell Tower, we’ve seen what ‘ripping up red tape’ really looks like.” George Monbiot
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/15/grenfell-tower-red-tape-safety-deregulation
Just watched Andy Slaughter, Labour MP (Hammersmith) re the fire . I did not get an sense of confidence or substance. He was hesitant and when he was pressed about the background of the legislation. He was evasive and unconvincing. Definitely no sense of a dynamic personality or a questioning individual.
Now i very pleased that Labour have recovered but that person was not very impressive.
Lily Allen was rather angry but i suppose she can afford to be.She has drawn attention to the likely number of deaths-somewhere in the order of 150 apparently.
Anyone who has any experience of the building industry will know that it is awash with fiddles- shortcuts, and omission of expensive but unseen items. Fire prevention measures may have been bodged.Building control is almost certainly inadequate.
It is a very strong impression of local government that it has been squeezed for many years. One of the effects of this has been that people who actually knew how to d things were paid off/retired because they were often at the op of the pay scale. Many people were shifted on to pension. As a result local government has become hopelessly dysfunctional and has, certainly in the two areas I have recently lived in, developed a bunker mentality where the public and their complaints have become the ‘enemy’ .In both areas there was also a move to recruit, at very competitive salaries, business wizards from the private system . I can say without hesitation that this has backfired badly, In both cases I have knowledge of, the individuals have not adapted well to local government.
I think there is a very real issue about resources. People working in LG are often performing well below an acceptable level but part of that must be the pressure and failure to provide adequate resources.computer systems in some cases are ante-deluvian. The old public service ‘ethos’ has been abandoned and while there were many appalling stories of how that process worked, the reforming zeal of private enterprise methods and private enterprise values has not actually worked.
All you need to know about Andy Slaughter was exposed in this interview by Galloway;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRRyh8M6hjY
Replace the word ‘regulation’ with ‘protection’ and phrases like “bonfire of regulation” takes on a very different meaning. What sane person wants a “bonfire of protection”
Idiots like William Rees Mogg may want us all to side with the vested interests that would have us return to the world he lives in in his mind (1850’s Britain, or present day India) but by simply using the word ‘protection’ instead we can take back control of the entire debate.
Indeed. One would swear that regulations were simply brought about to annoy people and thwart business. That armies of bureaucrats were sitting around churning out “red tape” for the sheer hell of it, competing with one another to get the most useless encumbrances on the books.
I recall Michael Heseltine arguing for regulations on TV. As well as being job creators (the motorbike crash helmet industry in Europe was barely existent before they were enforced), he argued that the word ‘regulation’ was just another way of saying “high standard”.
Fire chiefs should be looking for evidence of some kind of incendiary device, like WP.
Write to tell them – doubtless the possibility of arson has never occurred to them.
You could well be right, Trowbridge. And we could be in for more such events and soon. The 1999 Moscow apartment block bombings were much admired by, among others, Tony Blair. He told Putin after 911 that he was sure Putin understood the situation in the US, since Russia had undergone similar with those bombings in 1999, wink, wink.
The authorities should be counting all the calcined bones they’ve encountered in the upper levels, in their brief forays, but apparently this doesn’t count for the number of dead.
here goes
https://www.thecanary.co/2017/06/15/lily-allen-just-accused-media-covering-grenfell-tower-death-toll-live-channel-4-video/
cover up underway
Grenfell Tower fire: Police open criminal investigation into blaze that killed 17 as fears grow death toll could reach 100
Search for the victims could take ‘months’
15 June 2017 19:55 BST|
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-fire-criminal-investigation-manslaughter-police-latest-a7792446.html
Apparently the cladding used was Reynobond PE. This has a polyethylene core which is inflammable. Arconic do the same kind of panel under the name Reynobond FR, which has a fire-resistant mineral core:
https://www.arconic.com/aap/north_america/en/product.asp?cat_id=915&prod_id=1534
Probably cost too much…..
@Ba’al
The DM estimate that using PE panels instead of FR gave an additional profit of nary £5K.
PE-plastic ‘flammable(DE)’ tiles £22/sq.m
FR-fire-resistant tiles ~ £24/sq.m
they estimated 2000sq.m cladding on Grenfell.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4609334/Fireproof-cladding-Grenfell-cost-5k-more.html
Yes, glad the DM got a quotation for the work! . It also made Radio 4. I am trying to think of words to express my disgust, but they don’t appear to exist in English.
I believe it was £2 per sq metre more expensive. Approx £5000 for the whole building.
The Express (I know…) reports that the cladding cover was zinc, not aluminium. Arconic supplies a zinc option for other of its products. Not only has zinc a very low melting point, it burns in air very readily. Published closeup pictures are consistent with the cover melting rapidly and forming a thick oxide layer (unlike aluminium – the layer is thin and it is reluctant to ignite in bulk) as it flowed. That is, the entire cladding unit, not just the core, was a fire hazard. The pale colour of the smoke in the BBC pic would also support the idea that the metal itself was burning – zinc oxide smoke is yellowish when hot, and white as it disperses and cools.
http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10631190.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/PROD-Major-fire-at-Grenfell-Tower-on-the-Lancaster-West-Estate-in-North-Kensington.jpg
BBC pic – sorry:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/720×405/p055vxpw.jpg
I believe the cladding product in question is banned in the US for buildings above 12m high (40 feet).
“This development was driven by the ideological belief, often fanatically held, that people employed by government are less efficient than those employed by the private sector.”
That’s the lie but the truth is that breaking lines of communication and accountability are methods of allowing sinecures to be created. The senior suits are paid bundles but only if they cut wages and costs through the deployment of incompetence, negligence and corruption. This isn’t ideological per se, it’s amoral pragmatism.
It’s pure ideology:
https://twitter.com/paulgslatter/status/874997940166819842
The security regulations could be fine! Does anyone follow them? Can we compare it with WTC7? Who is the beneficiary of insurance policy?
I Kept thinking, About the Families in the Twin type towers close by.. Renovated exactly the same way, Cladding ect.. How terrified must they be having witnessed the Horror of Grenfell tower inferno.
I felt like putting my thoughts to poetry..all so tragic and sad –
Grenfell Tower.
How Did Families
Sleep last night
With the Echoes
of Children’s cries
and souls that perished
in the Tower close by
Terror and Nightmares
Shaking and Whimpering
Now, every sound
and smell
opens the wounds
and images of Hell
And Everyone Knew
Sitting upon
a Time Bomb Ticking
Politicians Know Greed
Votes for Self gain
All Lip licking
Dire warnings ignored
Years Stretched Taut
Tension Flaying
the fabric of peace sheared
Now those voices Unheard
Lost to a Fate they Feared.
I’d wager that the reason for the installation of flammable cladding came direct from EU ‘environmental’ legislation, and possibly part paid for by EU grants.
Sounds like you’ve got the EU on the brain, Fredi.
Fredi, stop blaming others, its a council planning department that agreed to this refit and specifications of the cladding. I feel that legalistic avenues, past large patches of long grass, are highly speculative BS.
You can adhere to the sustainable code of housing, or carry on placing poor people immigrants, refugees and people in need of housing, at risk.
And we have not even talked about private estates and their lack of investment, and, if put to the schafott, what it would require to safeguard tenants, private and public.
I’d wager 10,- £, big Fredi, that you are wrong, that all of this is a home made disaster by people who have no economic competence, who don’t want to meet the public or be accountable, and who, god forbid, might have accepted favours from this so called not for profit intent.
RHP clad all the social housing in Kilmington road SW13 a few years ago, different borough , same sort of thing, cost a fortune, justified by EU environmental legislation..
The requirement to prevent water access – and hence damp conditions, and improve thermal insulation may well have been a response to EU legislation concerned with energy efficiency. The ‘requirement’ to do this on the cheap, and using inflammable material, probably wasn’t. Fire and building safety regulations are the province of the national government.
Not so sure of that.Some years ago the (Labour) government gave away millions of EU money in the form of insulation grants. A complete disaster for man , many people who were tricked into it by miss selling fast talking corporate interests cashing in on the free money bonanza.
Many properties became damp due to the pumped in insulation bridging the gap between cavity walls, thus providing a conduit between damp and dry walls. These issues were virtually impossible to remedy without vast costs. No money EU or otherwise was forth coming for the victims of that EU inspired scam .
i wonder what the ‘carbon debt’ of Grenfell Tower disaster will work out at by the end of it all.
@ fredi
Insulation done well doesn’t cause problems. Only if it isn’t done well … damp and lacking ventilation causes walls and wall papers to rot – covered in fungus literally.
Good idea. Bad execution.
“Not for profit” – ha! Most of the scams with such bodies in the housing sector are with maintenance contracts. The bastards who run them get even bigger backhanders than they would if they worked for the council, because there’s less “oversight”, i.e. fewer people to pay off. Often there are “Mr Bigs” behind the scenes – sometimes organised crime, sometimes oh so “respectable” big business interests, property management, finance, etc. Politics is just an area of economics.
The very same product is apparently banned in both Germany and the USA
Nope, it isn’t banned.
And this type of insulation does cause lots of problems over here, too. Mineral wool doesn’t burn that quickly but it is also more expensive and more difficult to attach. Guess what happend …
“The more you dig into this terrible tragedy, the more lurid a light is thrown on Neo-Liberal Britain.”
Very much so. Truth is, the people in the building were deemed unimportant. They come to the attention of their landlords when they don’t pay their rent, otherwise barely existed. It always strikes me that there is nothing wrong with being a landlord – but there are responsibilities. Does your average member of the rentier class care to meet these responsibilities? Course not. They outsource to an agency, and anyone who has dealings with agencies knows what a bunch of sharks they are. You’d think they’d be a bit nicer to someone who, after all, is paying the mortgage of their client, but nope, they are dicks, and you are forced to sign an absurd legal contract for the privilege of paying too much rent to someone you’ll never meet.
I understand there are good landlords, and some of them get screwed by their tenants. But, that’s just a risk that landlords take, and they do have legal avenues to pursue. Your average landlord simply doesn’t care, which tell us something about the UK, and Australia. I’ve always refused to get into the buy to let scam, mainly because at some point a whole bunch of people will get hosed. I also consider it fundamentally unethical: I should pay my own mortgage, not get help from some student., The discourse of ethics rarely, if ever, enters the world of finance, or parliament.
I am hopeful that the expended lives of those poor people will now shine a light on the rentier class. It appears that they believe they have a divine right to make money, but they don’t. When JC become PM, and he will, hopefully he can introduce important bills around safety, and social housing. Much needed.
Most landlords I’ve met practically whinge their tits off complaining about their tenants. They don’t know right from wrong, and they don’t view themselves as the dirty leeches that they are.
Funny how “council trash” and other working class renters are the scum of the earth, most of the time, from the point of view of pretty much every Tory in Britain, but now that some of them die in a fire when the cameras are rolling, they’re the Tories’ bosom buddies!
Do you think they’ll have a minute’s silence for the “unknown social housing tenant” in the royal enclosure at Ascot next week?
Spectator readers comments are unusually sincere at the moment (between the astroturfing) something seems to be dawning there. Consciousness, perhaps even conscience…
well said Lilly Allen… sincere concerns for the grieving relatives and for the community which she fears will turn upon the authorities if they continue to down play the immensity of this tragedy in terms of the death toll. It might not be known but its known to be many times 17.
40 years ago there were no MCBs. You relied on a strand of wire to burn before your appliance did. In reality the appliance often melted if there was a loose connection and arcing across it. The fuse wire can’t tell the difference between a toaster toasting and a loose connection melting plastic.
Arcing detectors are now available and will be featured as a possibility in the 18th edition of the EIC electrical wiring regs BS 7671. But , unless this incident penetrates the Tory establishment, it will not be made compulsory for new buildings.
The problem is that electrical termination is done by what the JIB calls Improvers, and they are forced to work either by price at flat out speed, or under the threat of being sacked for not working fast enough. They don’t have time to make a good job of their work. When I was doing it a couple of years ago, I was making up downlighters in my own time the middle of the night in order to keep my job.
As Craig so rightly points out, neo-liberalism gives managers time and money to negotiate their due diligence, which means passing the buck to others legally, but it gives no time or money at all to the installers to provide the best equipment or the best practise. Turkeys don’t vote for Xmas.
I wouldn’t want to bore anyone by banging on about RCD protection. An RCD is not an overload device. It detects leakage either into people or into places its not supposed to make live. I work in a building which was deliberately installed without RCDs 10 years after RCDs became normal best practice. That’s pure corporate cost cutting and collusion by the council inspectorate. The building regulations system has been bludgeoned by corporate power into submission to the lowest common denominator of electrical working practice.
It would bankrupt the corporate housing world to install current best practice retrospectively in to its housing stock. Apparently the UK population thinks that would be a bad thing and has again voted for the shareholder bubble on which these innocent Moroccans, Libyans, Eretreans and others’ lives have been sacrificed.
Sacrificed to Mammon the Thatcher market god.
“The problem is that electrical termination is done by what the JIB calls Improvers, and they are forced to work either by price at flat out speed, or under the threat of being sacked for not working fast enough.”
Interesting to get perspective of someone who knows about electrical engineering (I know jack shit). And what you say above is, I suspect, the consequence of zippy high flying managers who also know jack shit, like me, about electrical engineering. MBA culture is very destructive, and I’ve worked for several high flyers who, put simply, I wouldn’t put in charge of so much as a local pub. A high-ish IQ can be hugely over-rated, can it not?
A job as important as this should, of course, be allowed to take the time it takes, and a little extra for caution. But the power of the landlord lobby is entrenched now, and only a great crash can change this. Bring it on, I say.
Thanks for the compliment , Hieroglyph. However in the real world, which is run by the multiple owners of homes in Ladbroke Grove and farms in the shires of England, all we’re going to get is a great cover-up.
Yes, those who live by dick-swinging might get swatted by the odd swung dick. All part of the game. They will pretend ignorance, feign dementia in court and retire politely to their second homes, or their third or fourth homes in Portugal etc. Rien de Rien, Je ne regretted rien, is their motto. Mind the boom when power transfers from right to left and Corbyn gets to power. They are the descendants of champagne socialists, Anglo-Irish peers, vicars of the C of E, and they don’t give a flying fuck.
Hi giyane – I’ve always liked what you’ve posted here. You understand the inhumanity of capitalism. But who are the “they” in your last sentence?
Thank you too Arnold for your compliment. Yes, the they. I went to school in London and I married into a rather posh clique who inhabited the millionaire slums of Notting Hill Gate.
They are a small selection of those who I spent my early adulthood opposing when I was a pupil at Westminster School. Very childish of me to drag up my feelings of bitterness at that spoilt set of swingers and charlatans who make up the privileged of our society. Even more childish of me to expect any hope of revenge against their stuck-up, disingenuous, dissolute social mores. Fate has ordained that the extremely rich dwellers around the Tower Inferno enjoy a shared cosmopolitan fate to live in the same place, the neo-cons and the neo-conned, the ultra wealthy and the vagrant asylum seekers they have made in 30 years of relentless war against Islam. Love at first sight.
What yearnings of the lost souls of the oppressors caused them to invite their own persecutees to come here and live in their cheesy paradise. What yearnings of the wretched asylum seekers caused them to come here to emulate and share their life with the neo-colonial elite? All I know is that both parties have fulfilled the deepest yearnings of their inner hearts to share the same space. I know some from both communities, the refugees and the share-owning elites.
They have to let their yearnings to grow further and one day they may actually meet. The cruel, spoilt and ignorant with the gentle, suffering Muslims. This accident is a precursor to the meeting described in the gospels between Dives and Lazarus, and in the Qur’an similar, between the dwellers of hell-fire and the dwellers of Paradise.
“Will you give us some water” , ask the selfish, spoiled agents of colonial oppression from their burning fire. “Sorry not allowed by God.” reply the victims of USUKIS bombs and terrorism sponsored by the evil West.
Today the maintenance team received a complaint about vermin in the cupboard above the cooker in a student flat. We knew there was a starling nesting in the ventilation duct but we didn’t know there was a safe bedroom suite 3 metres down the pipe. Anyway the nature lovers among us decided it was illegal to disturb a live nest. The Chinese students showed no interest in the possibilities of birds nest soup.
Hi,
Would anyone be able to track/plot the growth of salaries of individual charities/chief executives over the last 30 years please, at least across the largest ones.
Also, please share widely: https://twitter.com/Fi_Rutherford/status/875332304633200641
After any terror incident, the media are ghoulishly ready to inflame and maximise fear and anger, and as lily Allen pointed out, here they’re trying to underplay it instead, why………
If this horrific incident ends up killing as many as some suggest, and towards the total deaths from domestic terrorism over the last 20 years, will the same level of investment in social and safe housing be spent, or will we still prefer £200bn on a nuclear system that would kill all of us in an instant in some distopian future, over the actual here and now living safely.
Yours kindly,
MN
Craig, thank you for exposing Cameron’s Big Britain. ” But this disastrous contracting out is not always to private for profit companies. It is sometimes to what Tories call the “third sector”, meaning charities and not for profit companies ”
Keep hammering nails into the coffin of Thatcherism. It should have been buried at the last global crash in 2007. While bankrupting the UK economy it has succeeded in destroying Africa’s richest nation, Libya, and the Middle East’s only pluralist country, Syria. Quite how it has managed to do this while pretending that they have no money, nobody knows. There’s money for terrorism and the ensuing immigration of asylum seekers and for an election which will whitewash Cameron’s crimes against Libya and Syria. But there isn’t enough money to refurbish or build council housing.
Once again democracy gets UK politicians to serve the Islamophobic agenda of the Zionist supremacists, and then whitewashes the perpetrators’ war-crimes, leaving them tending their gardens in leafy shires.
Nice work if you can get it. In those vast swathes of Blue of rural England do they really believe that the Tory war-criminals are going to transfer the EU cash to UK farmers? Those same politicians who import milk from Poland in order to bankrupt the UK farmers’ milk price?
I’d like to see them turning a little purple when they see what May actually delivers them in the Brexit negotiations. I’m not expecting the Tory heartlands to actually turn red. But in Scotland the heather-coloured dreamers about Scottish fishing rights will definitely soon be seeing red.
“it has succeeded in destroying Africa’s richest nation, Libya, and the Middle East’s only pluralist country, Syria.”
Muammar Gaddafi built infrastructure and improved the life of (common) citizens. And it worked. Not just for the population, but for the “economy”, as if that is a separate and elevated ting. And by this he proved the dominating (neocon) dogma in GB and the US to be false.
Razing common goods, tax havens, Investor State Dispute Settlement (Corporate sovereignty), and so on is even more unpalatable when there is an shining example that it isn’t just unnecessary, but harmful. It is and were evident for everyone that cared to look.
He also argued against ISIL from a religious standpoint, and were successful at it. This irked the ISILs supporters.
And the US and its vassal states war on Libya commenced.
I must say that I find the behavior of the “faulty fridge” man baffling after the fire broke our in his kitchen.
Stories like that blaming individuals are a blatantly transparent way of diverting attention and anger from the real culprits.
Quite.
I heard that the block was subject to power surges amongst all the other failings.
Strange that some of the flats were in private ownership.
‘The block is part social housing and part private, sold or rented out by KCTMO.
Ranging from two to four bedrooms, with four to six flats on each floor, the majority of private flats are two-bedrooms.
A two-bed, one bath flat on the 18th floor was recently advertised for rent for just under £2,000 a month, not including bills. The 828sq ft apartment came furnished and would be right in the middle of the blaze. (photos)
Another two-bedroom flat on the 15th floor sold for £250,000 two years ago, before the refurbishment.
Adverts for flats boast about their new renovation and panoramic views of London landmarks.’
Were the flats being flogged off leasehold as they became vacant?
Appalling use of English language. D Express. Sorry. 🙂 http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/817026/London-fire-Grenfell-Tower-Latimer-Road-flats-rent
Sharp Ears
“Strange that some of the flats were in private ownership.”
Not strange at all. This is absolutely standard in all types of social housing (except co-ops). Has been for a long time.
I suppose they now can reason that this old cheap building be replace by a newer and more modern and safer building? Which will unfortunately cost so much that the unemployed can no longer be housed in such modern accomodations?`
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Perhaps the fire served the purpose of turning that high-rise into a privatised money-making rent lot?
You don’t want to see my concerns about it also being an act of terrorism, so I won’t explain them.
Trow – Boris removed the fire services – last year on August 31 the Tories sneaked out that sprinkler systems would be removed from state schools and other publicly own buildings. This attack is part of a wider neoliberal move to removed public buildings and council blocks. Private building codes insist on water sprinklers and other safety divides – this removal of regulation is deliberate. It does not matter whether the fire was deliberately set or as a result of poor maintance. However it has long been the case in London that small time mafia will offer the service of “insurence torching” buildings and cars. Considering the management company behind Grenfell were reported as acting in this manner the idea they paid a bloke to do the job is certainly not out of the realms of possibility.
The tower blocks are just disasters waiting to happen, and the terrorists are taking advantage of this obvious fact that the government is essentially powerless to stop. In fact, it has just increased opportunities.
And it does matter who committed the crimes.
If you watch the video of Maitlis interviewing Prime Minister Theresa May :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftY1NlPk5YY
I doubt that this Prime Minister intends to make schools and private buildings safer. I doubt she will discuss safety regulations.
Link courtesy to another poster!
The police commander just said that the flat in question has been searched and that the investigation revealed there are NO grounds to suspect that the fire was started deliberately. I find him credible.
How about doing some forensic work?
When fires commune a fridge,it i hard to determine when and how the fridge burned.
Remember how the gross murders of Kelly, Todd and Williams were covered up.
Another overlooked safety issue concerns fridges:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210334/Alert-new-wave-exploding-fridges-caused-environmentally-friendly-coolant.html
‘Very rare’…certainly. But as appliances age, they don’t get any safer. Not wholly impossible.
Trowbridge,
Whilst my access to news has been extremely thin over the last few days, and I do have trouble with some of your views (like you don’t even seem to get 9/11 yet – and you are not thick), I do not necessarily completely dismiss your view that this was an act of terrorism. Whilst electrical fires do happen, and can get serious, they normally only cause major damage if completely unattended (you are asleep or are away). So far as I am aware, the guy who’s fridge caught fire – knew it was on fire and told his neighbours and phoned the police and fire brigade. Then no one apparently did anything much, until the entire tower block burnt down. I do find this a little odd, but some people panic even when they see a little fire, so I still think it more likely, that this was not a terrorist attack, but an accident waiting to happen.
Incidentally, a warning about 18650 and lipo batteries used in some of the latest toys – like very high powered lights, vape machines and toys such as drones (they may be in your laptop and electric car too). They are far more dangerous (and more powerful) than earlier generations of rechargeable batterlies like lead/acid Nicad and NiMH. This is particularly true when they are under fast charge. Do not charge them unattended indoors, or you may burn your house down.
Tony
The Times is saying that four directors were paid £125,000.
You are right though that there are many areas of public life where ordinary citizens participate that are simply too technically complex for them to have any critical grasp over.
The same can be said of local authority councillors too. They are just ordinary citizens, elected, who are paid £16k a year, and who have to arrange with their employers to work part time on their day jobs in order to serve on the council. They sit on committees like planning, reviewing complex major planning applications, and they depend heavily on the council’s paid officials for advice.
Hi
i absolutely agree. I have just had ‘dealings’ with the local council. The elected councillors seem to operate within a restricted bubble-they seem immunised from what is actually happening. They are often (but not always) perfectly decent people trying to help others but I have developed a sense that the principal officers of the council are operating without any restraint or accountability. They are in effect bombproof and when their actions turn out to be wrong or unnecessarily costly or wasteful there is no accountability as their actions are, in theory, guided by the elected representatives. There is a huge shroud of convenience hiding what actually happens in Local Government at the upper levels.
There are supposed to be checks and balances such as inspection and ombudsman but I must say I have very little faith in these processes, and as for the MPs , everything is governed by petty party advantage. If there is a Tory administration a Tory MP is loathe to find fault, even when there are glaring issues.
However the councillors seem to have virtually no instruments or levers over the permanent officers. These individuals are extremely well paid and do exactly as they please, or evade responsibility. There is definitely a real problem here.
If the executive officer isn’t accountable to the council, that suggests a failure on the part of the councillors. Certainly the EO has a great deal of independence, due to his expertise (alleged or real – both kinds exist), but he can be held to account by the council. They, after all, appointed him. But there’s a Catch-22. As the council has to delegate an action concerning the EO to the EO -councillors have nothing to do with the process of administration, only its direction – the only real sanction which is likely to be effective is to fire him.
It’s not a good system. But what alternatives exist? The ideal might be to have elected representatives with the bureaucratic and technical expertise of the EO shared out among them, working longer hours than councillors currently do, and taking a real part in the administration of their decisions. Which would be extremely expensive and difficult to find local candidates with both the political interest and the qualifications needed. It might also open up the market for bent councillors with contractor cousins even further.
Hi. I’ve worked in local government for over fifteen years now, in the north of England, and I’m afraid I don’t recognise your generalisations. Yes, there are some officers in councils who are shit, but that’s true of any large organisation. The overwhelming majority of people I’ve met and worked with have been conscientious and hard working, and in recent years have been sounding the alarm as loudly as anyone about the impact of public sector cuts.
I’m most familiar with work around refugees, homelessness and provision of adapted properties for elderly, ill, or disabled tenants. Across all these areas we are most definitely accountable to elected members and ombudsmen, as well as ICO and financial audits, and to the local press and our service users. I have a member of staff who spends half their working week responding to and passing on pertinent and informed enquiries from MPs and elected members, and no important decision is made without scrutiny and, if necessary, revision by our cabinet. People in local government, especially those who work on the front line, generally care deeply about the people in their cities. In any organisation you’ll get some people promoted past their level of competence, but to claim senior council officers across the country “…do exactly as they please and evade responsibility” is just plain wrong.
“People in local government, especially those who work on the front line, generally care deeply about the people in their cities.”
Yeah, but the senior individuals are cunts, as you well know.
No, Arnold, they’re not. They’re normal people.
It’s easy to say a few bad apples cause problems. That is said about the police too. When you operate in a sytem that is deliberately starved of money and you end up carrying out policies you know will cause damage it does not mean you are doing a good job – it means you are excellent at being servile, generally in order to protect yourself and your job and your income.
If what you say is true where have all the services for disabled peoeple gone?
Why have so many disabled people died and councils have not objected?
What does it take for people and organisations to be accountable to the people who pay them – your tale does not wash.
Go home and reconsider your argument
What makes you think councils raise no objections? The LA I work for has been screaming to the rafters about the short and long term effects of cuts to funding and services.
And you have an extremely uncharitable view of public sector workers. Regardless of who is in government somebody has to help the vulnerable in society, either by working with supportive legislation or by fighting against underfunding and idiotic government. Either way just downing tools is not an option if you are a social worker, carer, teacher, homeless support worker, etc etc. Just because I work for the council does not mean I support austerity or the Tories, or that I am “servile”.That’s insulting and ridiculous.
I would accept the characterisation that you provide. i am sure the majority of people in LG are pretty straightforward and hard working in often difficult circumstances not least of which is the constant attack on resources and the subtle undermining of a pubic sector ethos. In the past the Public sector was held, by most people to be in some kind of collective ownership and accountable to the ‘people’ (electorate). The last thirty years have see an erosion of the values that underpinned the system. Partly, some if this is to do with greater levels of technical expertise required but the more important point is the ideological one which dominates pub;ic discourse now -and that is the ideology of the Tory that holds that ‘commons'(collective interests held in collective ownership) is something intrinsically undesirable and a burden on ‘them’. In other words there has been an incessant campaign that suggests that these activities of the ‘state’ must be minimised. Deregulation is necessary to further this agenda and it also involves the recruitment of suitable people into the key positions and the adoption of methods and attitudes that prevail in the profit-oriented corporate world. This has been the agenda since Thatcher. Blair andf Brown of course tried the third way and had a gentler approach but essentially they had bought the notion that private motivations (principally monetary interest) is the overwhelmingly important factor in determining the meritocracy that is supposed to develop ( but never has) under the kindly guiding hand of the market. Unfortunately there is a residue of stuff(services ) that are simply cannot be monetised or are extremely difficult to monetise. It was always considered to be unthinkable that primary and secondary education could be ‘monetised’, and it tacitly ‘protected’ by coming under the values of a strong public system, but it is now clear, especially in England that this concept has now being abandoned to the private sector. Of course it is also clear that the idea that the traditional public services always delivered an excellent result is nonsense. Unfortunately it is turning out that these technically demanding activities are not so easy to make sense of while they are detached from the public good.
another factor that must be recognised is that the top end of the administrations are are powerful and the roles are occupied by technically astute individuals but councillors are often lacjking in this expertise and are divided and are often not ‘powerful’ people. Sometimes councillors are in cosy arrangements with such officers. The fact that there is very rarely open dispute between the officers and the elected individuals suggests that there is an ‘accommodation’.Such silence is remarkable plangent.
If I follow you correctly I think I broadly agree with your initial point. Hollowing our of local government and the shift from delivering to commissioning services has done damage it would take decades to undo.
Residents should reject a public inquiry and demand inquests. Theresa May understands that inquests will hold the government to more intense scrutiny.
Obviously why she announced there would be a public inquiry so quickly.
Interview with Sophie Khan solicitor for Lakanal House fire victims.
https://www.facebook.com/TheDailyPolitik/videos/1233832916738898/
Update on the Inquiry vs Inquest debate, Nafeez Ahmed has a different view, I’m wondering if the BBC interview was meant to trigger a call for inquests rather than a public inquiry.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
1 hr
ON THAT SOPHIE KHAN NEWSNIGHT INTERVIEW ABOUT THE GRENFELL TOWER AND THE SUPPOSED CONFLICT BETWEEN AN INQUEST AND AN INQUIRY
I write this as people are protesting outside the Kensington and Chelsea Townhall, understandably enraged at the way they have been treated.
In this context, I have an urgent message to everyone jumping up and down after the ridiculous Sophie Khan interview on Newsnight re: the supposed dichotomy between a #Grenfell inquest and an independent public inquiry.
I question why BBC Newsnight would give a platform to someone who displays such a flagrantly incompetent understanding of the law, despite claiming to specialise in the relevant law, which has now led sincerely concerned members of the public down a bizarre garden path.
I was involved in the campaign for an independent public inquiry into the 7/7 terrorist attacks. WE NEVER GOT ONE. Instead, we got an inquest.
I wrote a report into the 7/7 attacks that was sponsored by Garden Court Chambers. The report was made mandatory reading for all legal counsel as part of the inquest proceedings. Despite that, virtually none of the key lines of inquiry set out in that report regarding the colossal and systemic failures of intelligence, counter-terrorism and foreign policy were actually pursued or resolved by the inquest. The findings of the inquest largely ignored key facts and evidence available to the inquest, and followed the line of the security services.
Meanwhile, many 7/7 survivors who had been denied a public inquiry and had pinned their last hope on the inquest were sorely disappointed that their burning questions remained unanswered.
The 7/7 inquest, for instance, exonerated the security services and attempted to resolve the question of the ‘preventability’ of the 2005 London bombings. It then concluded that there was no basis for an independent public inquiry, thus putting to bed the very possibility of a further wider public investigation – which was very much required (See for instance https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/sabir-on-security-5/)
A simple reading of my report used by the inquest, and the inquest’s findings, demonstrates how wide the gap was between the two, and how justified those conclusions were.
(see http://www.statewatch.org/…/…/jun/Inside%20the%20Crevice.pdf)
So it’s important to recall the following facts:
1. A coroner’s inquest into an event like this is a statutory requirement.
So really there is absolutely no reason why there will not be an inquest: “The Coroner is expected to open an inquest where there is reasonable suspicion that the deceased has died a violent or unnatural death, where the cause of death is unknown or if the deceased died while in custody or state detention as defined by section 1(2) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.”
2. An independent public inquiry does not rule out an inquest.
As the Law Gazette reported, human rights barrister Simon McKay clarifies that public inquiries and inquests are “not mutually exclusive”.
But once an inquest takes place, as the 7/7 inquest shows, the inquest itself can fatally weaken the potential for a wider and more powerful public inquiry.
3. An independent public inquiry has a wider remit than an inquest and can still be chaired by an independent judge, with full legal representation for victims.
Under the Public Inquiry Act, according to McKay, a public inquiry “‘will almost certainly’ be chaired by an independent judge. Victims and other interest groups will be ‘core participants’ and can be represented by lawyers. Their lawyers can, under the Public Inquiry Rule, ask questions of any witness subject to the chair’s permission.” In contrast, an inquest “has a narrow frame of reference.” (see https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/…/tower-fire-s…/5061588.article)
On this basis, I can only conclude the following:
Sophie Khan’s Newsnight interview was fundamentally misleading. It is simply false to claim so irresponsibly that a public inquiry would rule out an inquest. It is absurd to urge the public to demand an inquest instead of a public inquiry, when an inquest is precisely an expectation by law for incidents exactly like this. And therefore this Newsnight interview is a complete slap in the face to the victims of Grenfell.
I therefore question why Khan would put herself forward on Newsnight to air views which are fundamentally counterproductive to the interests of the victims and their families.
I question why the BBC’s producers would allow this flagrantly legally inaccurate information to be broadcast as if it was factual.
I wonder how convenient it is for the Tory junta that Khan’s misleading Newsnight interview has provoked some people to begin campaigning against an independent public inquiry.
I should probably add that Khan is a solicitor, not a barrister, unlike McKay. A barrister has specific expertise in the points of law and is the point of authority for any solicitor.
In conclusion: an independent public inquiry is urgently required. A coroner’s inquest is also required, and is to be expected under the law. The police have already declared that they have launched a criminal investigation.
Please share this post so that members of the public can be informed of the facts and realities about this matter. Please don’t start or support campaigns based on misleading claims made irresponsibly by self-promoters. Please support the victims and their families by supporting a unified call for an independent public inquiry and an inquest.
I have met Sophie Khan. I disagree with you on a number of points.
First, Sophie is very passionate in acting for poor and vulnerable people who have been abused by authorities. The Lakanal House case on which she acted was very similar to this scenario, and she was the one who got answers for the victims. Whatever else you think about her, there is no basis to question her motives.
In the Lakanal House case, the inquest resulted in a very independently minded coroner publishing wide-ranging and damning findings and vital recommendations, which, had they been followed, might have prevented this fire, or at least reduced its impact. That experience, plus the experience of various public inquiries proving to be long-delayed cover-ups, could well lead someone to conclude that inquests are better. Personally, I think there are arguments both ways and neither approach is clearly right or clearly wrong, but I respect Sophie’s opinion on this.
A public inquiry may not lead to an inquest not happening. But it is highly likely to delay it for years. When the families want answers as promptly as possible, that is another potential argument in favour of the inquest route.
Finally, your description of the relative position of solicitors and barristers is not entirely right. Barristers are a referral profession, but many solicitors are highly expert in their fields and do not need to instruct barristers to be able to give an expert legal opinion on an issue.
So please think twice about conspiracy theories on this issue.
Gavin. Barwell, the PM’s new chief advisor, ignored recommendations for new fire safety regulations in council blocks, presented in coroner’s report into the Lakanal House disaster in Camberwell. (He was Housing Minister up until last week).
When sky news asked him for his views on the Grenfell Tower tragedy yesterday, this is how much respect he showed the victims and their families:
https://mobile.twitter.com/SkyNews/status/875622281774473216/video/1
“But this disastrous contracting out is not always to private for profit companies. It is sometimes to what Tories call the “third sector”, meaning charities and not for profit companies. Much of the aid budget is now spent this way”
The so called public, private, charity/NGO partnerships also degrade the separation of powers… all sectors involved protect each other. I believe this is a very unhealthy and unsafe situation and is leading to lack of openness and accountability.
I am going to jump back a few hours to 2.12am – the one about “Improvers” installing electrics in housing.
After an incident where some Baroness in the House of Ermine lost her daughter to a fire caused by some botched electrics, they set up a new scheme called “Part P”. You can train to become a Part P electrical installer in 6 weeks!
After 6 weeks you can install and sign off the works. I have 30 years experience as an electrician, but legally I can not sign off even on a modification in my own home ! One of the trainers I work with now was actually down south training prisoners to become “Part P” installers on their release.
The Sparky game has been decimated in the last 10 years. What was once a 4 year indentured apprwnticeship is full of 6 week wonders, adult Improvers and sparks mates pretending to be sparks.
In fact in the UK all the traditional building trades have been destroyed by a combination of agency labour, semi qualified or unqualified migrants and just plain old greedy company bosses. I have seen painters jobs offering higher rated than for electricians. A definite race to the bottom has taken place in industry over the last 20 years.
It was the death by electrocution of Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge’s daughter that brought Part P into law. A cable had been routed diagonally across a kitchen wall barely 10mm under the plaster and a screw holding a metal rack had been driven into it. However the building industry had been pressing for Part P for years previously, mainly to squeeze out DIYers. It was of course wholly unsuccessful in this as of course it’s impossible to police. The requirements were quietly but substantially watered down a few years ago.
Just wanted to say that it strikes me that an outstandingly competent police commander is in charge of the investigation. He is Commander Stuart Cundy of the Metropolitan Police. He is also obviously possessed of great humanity and caring.
He has just given a press conference along with the LFB Asst Commissioner Richard Mills.
Remember that Cundy was not told about the gun that Mark Duggan had, and the wild theory he alllegedly invented to explain it away.
Are evidence that he will not be told now, and new theories he will invent if something serious comes out?
Difficult to tell whether this is said in earnest or sarcasm, perhaps playing on “Cundy”, along the lines of the unlikely named Cressid Dick head of the operation to waste Jean Charles de Menezes, before he spilt the beans on the “training exercise” that turned out real.
Well it’s not often the words “outstandingly competent” and “Metropolitan Police” appear so close together.
‘Assistant Chief Constable – Stuart Cundy
Stuart has overall responsibility for Specialist Crime.
Stuart joined the Metropolitan Police in 1994, posted to Hounslow and Feltham before transferring on promotion as a Sergeant. He was then promoted to Detective Inspector in Lambeth, one of London’s most challenging boroughs and in 2003 became a Detective Chief Inspector. As an SIO headed up nearly 30 homicide cases, including the high profile sexual assault and murder of Croydon teenager Sally Anne Bowman and contract killing of George Francis. Following promotion to Detective Superintendent he headed the Met’s Flying Squad, working to reduce armed robbery and cash-in-transit attacks, with notable cases including the UK’s largest diamond armed robbery at Graff’s jewellers.
In June 2010, he was promoted to Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of Trident, where he broadened its remit to become the MPS lead for the prevention and investigation of shootings and gang crime in London.
Following completion of the national Strategic Command Course, Stuart was appointed as Assistant Chief Constable in Surrey Police.’
http://www.thebigidea.co.uk/surrey-police-our-people/
I assume others agree that we need a police force.
Another aspect is the quality and specifications of material used during refurbishment. The EU regulations use the CE mark for quality standards which is a self certificated system with the manufacturer OR supplier being responsible. This system is open to many forms of abuse. The EU does not police these regulations but are left to the individual countries to enforce. The old British Kite mark where standards were independently assessed has long gone but the standards now have fallen pitifully. The best standards were the American NEMA standard which resulted with excellent material and equipment. Good example of EU planning etc.
One could speculate that, who knows if any company or rich developer, is waiting in the wings to acquire the land, if or when, the tower block is demolished.