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Grenfell Tower fire


Sir Tokyo Sexwale

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this is like a statement of the human condition

you don't get fewer accidents when there is more public sector ownership

 

I'm comparing what might happen in this era, where H and S is already a robust entity, as opposed to comparing it with life in the industrial revolution

I'm replying as to what the bogeymen are. They aren't specific to privatisation but many of them are what happens when you put the market in charge.

 

If you make governing people a business instead of focussing on keeping people safe, these things will happen.

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I'm replying as to what the bogeymen are. They aren't specific to privatisation but many of them are what happens when you put the market in charge.

 

If you make governing people a business instead of focussing on keeping people safe, these things will happen.

 

You basically create a dysfunctional society by privatising our shared wealth. The more you think about it, the more obscene it gets. 

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I'm replying as to what the bogeymen are. They aren't specific to privatisation but many of them are what happens when you put the market in charge.

 

If you make governing people a business instead of focussing on keeping people safe, these things will happen.

yes, unless you check up on what they're doing, using the simple measures in place

 

let's put it another way: although about a dozen departments would have had their say in Grenfell, before and after the tragedy, what was stopping someone cutting across all the regs and desk top studies and saying "yes that's all fine but what happens if a fire starts in an apartment and spreads to the cladding?"

 

is it really a function of privatisation that has led us to this point?

if so, council stock would have been fit for purpose decades ago

 

it wasn't

 

you mentioned better regs in the US

 

how does that square with the consequences of privatisation?

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is it really a function of privatisation that has led us to this point?

 

 

To be clear - decades of cuts to public services led us to this point. For example, have you seen what has happened to the HSE over the past decade?

 

Privatising what is left is not the answer. The answer is to adequately fund public services.

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this is like a statement of the human condition

you don't get fewer accidents when there is more public sector ownership 

 

I'm comparing what might happen in this era, where H and S is already a robust entity, as opposed to comparing it with life  in the industrial revolution

It's not robust. God knows how many people just burned to death Molby.

 

There's no point taking a "oh but you don't understand the complications of this" or a "let me explain how this" stance. It's broken, not fit for use and evil.

 

Start from 100 odd people dying in housing and work back from there because any system which produces that outcome is bulls***.

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It's not robust. God knows how many people just burned to death Molby.

 

There's no point taking a "oh but you don't understand the complications of this" or a "let me explain how this" stance. It's broken, not fit for use and evil.

 

Start from 100 odd people dying in housing and work back from there because any system which produces that outcome is bulls***.

nice little rallying cry, but useless

 

we both want 100 people not to burn to death

I'm not saying I object to public money being spent, just that (as an example) council accommodation had been unfit for decades and simply increasing public spending alone, won't solve the problem

 

also, if councils are able to direct spending as they see fit, as long as they hit a broad range of targets and requirements, how does that guarantee the safety of residents?

 

the directive is to stop buildings being flammable..as a starting point; you don't need to increase the public sector presence or the public purse to achieve that

 

you may as well say democracy led us to this point

Edited by Molby
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Now saying there will be no final figure on the death toll this year. Seems a strange time scale.

Gets it off the front pages, something will have replaced it. Seems to be the only reason for this. What is horrendous is that there is not anybody able to produce and verify a list of people who rented each flat, never mind who actually was there. More than ever highlights the living ghosts we have in our cities and towns.

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Gets it off the front pages, something will have replaced it. Seems to be the only reason for this. What is horrendous is that there is not anybody able to produce and verify a list of people who rented each flat, never mind who actually was there. More than ever highlights the living ghosts we have in our cities and towns.

 

i don't really understand this. the people who survived would have a general idea of who is still unaccounted for, if there are still a few hundred then that would come out surely? just from people who knew people and neighbours? i was chatting to a friend yesterday who is a watch commander at a london fire station and he said they've been ordered from the top down not to discuss or ask about numbers and they're not being told anything either. it smells of a cover-up but you'd think it would still get out into the press just from sheer maths?

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i think the problem is that the intensity ofthe fire and how long it burned for will mean there is very little if anything left of the poor souls inside. a cremation usually only takes 4 hours. thsi place burned for a day and a half. But i do agree the numbers seem very low, i cant see how they cant say" theres x amount confirmed dead and we believe there are a further x amount still missing"

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Gets it off the front pages, something will have replaced it. Seems to be the only reason for this. What is horrendous is that there is not anybody able to produce and verify a list of people who rented each flat, never mind who actually was there. More than ever highlights the living ghosts we have in our cities and towns.

 

 

how do you mean?

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nice little rallying cry, but useless

 

we both want 100 people not to burn to death

I'm not saying I object to public money being spent, just that (as an example) council accommodation had been unfit for decades and simply increasing public spending alone, won't solve the problem

 

also, if councils are able to direct spending as they see fit, as long as they hit a broad range of targets and requirements, how does that guarantee the safety of residents?

 

the directive is to stop buildings being flammable..as a starting point; you don't need to increase the public sector presence or the public purse to achieve that

 

you may as well say democracy led us to this point

No. What's useless is the tone you're taking through this whole thing. It's sneery and self important.

 

How you read Jarg's post for instance and end up doing the equivalent of "no no but listen to me" I don't know.

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how do you mean?

The number of people who exist without being counted, or recognised, or appearing on any sort of official record. I get that this is a tragedy of enormous proportions but the people who it has impacted are of a demographics that in other times would have been called "underclass" . The fact that in such a rich country, such a rich city this exists is awful.

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The number of people who exist without being counted, or recognised, or appearing on any sort of official record. I get that this is a tragedy of enormous proportions but the people who it has impacted are of a demographics that in other times would have been called "underclass" . The fact that in such a rich country, such a rich city this exists is awful.

Yeah this is it, there's going to be have been many more people in there than the records will show but even allowing for that the current official number seems way too low for a heavily populated building of that size.

 

Even the number of people living there who are on official records is going to be way in excess of that and they must have an idea by now how many of those have not been accounted for by family and friends.

 

Stinks of a trying to shift the story off the front pages.

Edited by TommoK
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No. What's useless is the tone you're taking through this whole thing. It's sneery and self important.

 

How you read Jarg's post for instance and end up doing the equivalent of "no no but listen to me" I don't know.

I get the impression that Molby has something he'd like to say but is dancing around the subject a little, but maybe I'm wrong.

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It's not robust. God knows how many people just burned to death Molby.

 

There's no point taking a "oh but you don't understand the complications of this" or a "let me explain how this" stance. It's broken, not fit for use and evil.

 

Start from 100 odd people dying in housing and work back from there because any system which produces that outcome is bulls***.

 

Correct.

nice little rallying cry, but useless

 

"'Patronising' is when you talk down to people"

 

No. What's useless is the tone you're taking through this whole thing. It's sneery and self important.

 

How you read Jarg's post for instance and end up doing the equivalent of "no no but listen to me" I don't know.

 

Correct again.

Deregulation - this could not have happened in Germany or USA as regs prevent it.

 

If it couldn't even happen in the US then that really is an indictment.

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Yeah this is it, there's going to be have been many more people in there than the records will show but even allowing for that the current official number seems way too low for a heavily populated building of that size.

 

Even the number of people living there who are on official records is going to be way in excess of that and they must have an idea by now how many of those have not been accounted for by family and friends.

 

Stinks of a trying to shift the story off the front pages.

 

If you know the area as I do (having lived there and because my partner's business is within 500m of the Tower), you would understand the difficulties. The Tower had no security system that logged who was in the Tower at the time. The official records will only show the names of the council tenants and the leaseholders who bought their flats under right to buy. There was no love for authority even before the fire so changes to that record would often not be notified to RBK&C. As you are aware, rental values in Central London are high and it is not uncommon to find council tenants subletting their premises and renting privately elsewhere. More significantly, leaseholders who have exercised their right to buy have also sub-let their premises to take advantage of the same rental values. It is highly unlikely that the leaseholders engaged the services of the expensive estate agents that are prevalent in the area when letting their flats and therefore tracking down who on paper had the right to occupy is not straightforward. It is highly likely that many of the occupants of the Tower had only an informal agreement which was not documented. This has a knock-on effect in ascertaining who is actually missing since those who may have been letting their flat without permission or proper records being kept are hardly likely to want to make this fact known to the authorities and the natural assumption that will have been made is that they, as the person named on the official records as occupying the property, have survived the fire and require the support and assistance that is now being offered. Furthermore, as the fire occurred during Ramadan, there were many families gathering to break the fast who may have been present when the fire broke out. Members of extended family or friends or residents may not have been reported missing or their absence associated with the fire yet for a host of reasons.  As a lawyer who has been volunteering locally for the past couple of weeks, I am privy to information that I am not prepared to disclose on a public forum, but I feel the need to highlight the above in order to illustrate the extent of the investigation being undertaken and to cool unhelpful conspiracy theories about the number of casualties. The exact number who died is not important to those who are seeking confirmation whether a missing friend or relative perished in the Tower.

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Sir Ken Knight, the chair of the independent panel set up to advise the government on its response to the Grenfell fire, had previously authored a report calling for £200 million of cuts to vital fire services and advocated against the retrofitting of sprinklers. They do not give a single f***.

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If you know the area as I do (having lived there and because my partner's business is within 500m of the Tower), you would understand the difficulties. The Tower had no security system that logged who was in the Tower at the time. The official records will only show the names of the council tenants and the leaseholders who bought their flats under right to buy. There was no love for authority even before the fire so changes to that record would often not be notified to RBK&C. As you are aware, rental values in Central London are high and it is not uncommon to find council tenants subletting their premises and renting privately elsewhere. More significantly, leaseholders who have exercised their right to buy have also sub-let their premises to take advantage of the same rental values. It is highly unlikely that the leaseholders engaged the services of the expensive estate agents that are prevalent in the area when letting their flats and therefore tracking down who on paper had the right to occupy is not straightforward. It is highly likely that many of the occupants of the Tower had only an informal agreement which was not documented. This has a knock-on effect in ascertaining who is actually missing since those who may have been letting their flat without permission or proper records being kept are hardly likely to want to make this fact known to the authorities and the natural assumption that will have been made is that they, as the person named on the official records as occupying the property, have survived the fire and require the support and assistance that is now being offered. Furthermore, as the fire occurred during Ramadan, there were many families gathering to break the fast who may have been present when the fire broke out. Members of extended family or friends or residents may not have been reported missing or their absence associated with the fire yet for a host of reasons.  As a lawyer who has been volunteering locally for the past couple of weeks, I am privy to information that I am not prepared to disclose on a public forum, but I feel the need to highlight the above in order to illustrate the extent of the investigation being undertaken and to cool unhelpful conspiracy theories about the number of casualties. The exact number who died is not important to those who are seeking confirmation whether a missing friend or relative perished in the Tower.

 

Very interesting post, however

 

Sir Ken Knight, the chair of the independent panel set up to advise the government on its response to the Grenfell fire, had previously authored a report calling for £200 million of cuts to vital fire services and advocated against the retrofitting of sprinklers. They do not give a single f***.

 

There is a coverup on the go. 100%. Seen all this before.

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Cuts to legal aid may have stopped tenants in Grenfell Tower from pursuing safety concerns that could have prevented the fire, the president of the Law Society, Robert Bourns, has suggested.


His comments, made at the launch of a report on access to justice, will revive the political debate over the provision of legal advice and representation to those who are vulnerable and least well off.


“There have been reports that tenants of Grenfell Tower were unable to access legal aid to challenge safety concerns because of the cuts,” Bourns said. “If that is the case then we may have a very stark example of what limiting legal aid can mean.”


 


No 'may' about it - the residents have said that it did.


 


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/29/legal-aid-cuts-may-have-stopped-grenfell-tenants-pursing-safety-concerns


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