That’s kind of what I was imagining. But I’ve never personally encountered that,
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As well-known hate behaviors become less acceptable, sneaky assholes create new ones 
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The July 12th bonfires aren’t about the bonfires themselves either.
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Exactly. The hell with May. Her policies helped lead to that disaster, and so far as I know, she’s done nothing to address it. Her outrage falls a little short.
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It would not here ether now, but this was a tower built in the 50’s
Even more pedant alert - the regulations do in fact prohibit highly flammable cladding panels.
More specifically they in fact prohibited using these panels in this way.
Grenfell (and all the other buildings, let’s not forget that there are still many, many buildings in the UK in just as dangerous a state) was a clusterfuck of numerous cock-ups, incompetence, negligence and outright recklessness by lots and lots of people.
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That’s explicitly just for US free speech…
Just to add to what @anon50609448 said - there is no ‘sentence’.
Some people (who handed themselves in to the police) were arrested on suspicion that there might have been an offence committed.
Arresting suspects is a) what the police do and b) is an important safeguard for the suspects.
There are all sorts of rights and safeguards that kick in once you have been arrested but not before.
Well then, you’ll no doubt be thrilled to learn that the government doesn’t decide what is tasteful or offensive. Neither of those words appear in the legislation. The closest that gets is whether something is ‘abusive’ or ‘insulting’.
The options are: threatening, abusive or insulting or disorderly words or behaviour.
Whether any of those are met is left up to the court system (and to a certain extent the person who the actions are intended to offend/harass).
And yes, they have to be intended to harass, alarm or distress someone and actually cause that person harassment, alarm or distress.
The inquiry is still trundling along…
https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/
I suspect however that there may be very few (if any) arrests simply because the failings are so widespread and it’s likely that no one person or organisation did anything sufficiently culpable.
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It’s US-centric, yes. And happily it’s grown well beyond the utility I’d initially hoped, which was to a prevent free speech tangent from derailing a long-obsolete thread about the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. In that spirit I would hope anyone who wanted a free speech thread centered on another country would create one for the purpose. But that said, the reason I haven’t created another generic free speech thread is because IMHO many of the arguments it would host have already been examined in detail in the original thread.
And that’s mainly my point; free speech is a valuable topic, but it tends to take over the topics in other threads with discussions that repeat themselves again and again. Fortuitously, and with the caveat that we have four days still to go, that seems not to be happening in this thread.
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If they’d stuck to a traditional Guy Fawkes bonfire, they might have been fine.
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Bravo for this point! There’s a lot of magical thinking in that particular free speech argument.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” is a powerful metaphor, but bring the sunlight to the thing that needs disinfecting (i.e. support investigative reporting). America has let the metaphorical infection block out the damn sun.
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This discussion reminded me of this sketch. One architect asks whether they didn’t intend to slaughter the tenants, the winning proposal bursts into flames. Reality imitating art?
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True, but that would involve arresting people with money and/or power. I mean, come on…
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Hmm, what kind of a pedant does it make me to point out that your post wasn’t pedantic at all, being a substantive correction germane to the discussion.
So, good post, but no pedant badge for you!
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Sadly, probably not. Those with money and/or power will almost certainly be nicely covered. The only people likely to be found culpable for anything are people like buildings inspectors who took the developers’ word for it that the system was up to standard or possibly some poor schmuck employed by the developer.
The Council and the management organisation will be able to point to their contract which will have required compliance with all relevant safety regulations. The developer will be able to point the finger at the specialists they hired to design the cladding. The specialists will point to their list of requirements and point the finger at whoever actually had to turn their spec into reality. That person will try and point the finger at the manufacturers who will point out that the stuff was not rated for what it was used for and was not installed in accordance with their recommendations.
Foiled again!!! 
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