Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/18/combustible-britain.html
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I guess they have a point. It’s not like the people living in these crematoriums have the means to suddenly move elsewhere for a vague better chance of not dying in a fire.
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Remember:
Terrorists and arsonists = criminals
Corner-cutting landlords and Tory-dominated councils who allow buildings where poor people live to become firetraps = pillars of the community.
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That looks more logical.
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Conservatives: you can be homeless or live in a firetrap, we don’t mind.
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Nervous laugh, yes I am.
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Now, of course if replacing the cladding of these buildings had been important for any of these councils, this discussion would be moot, because it would all have been replaced months ago.
I’m afraid there’s only one word for it the next time one of them catches fire: Murder. And 'twas the Tories who done it.
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An excellent, perhaps definitive, example of late stage capitalism.
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See? The free market really DOES provide choice!
Edit: sorry, that should be the “free” market.
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Well, you’re not wrong… 
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Wow, we’ve finally found an area where vague fears of ‘terrorism’ inspire vigorous inaction and denial rather than an enthusiastic call for expanded powers, additional surveillance; and possibly an open-ended war.
Too bad it’s also an area where the measures involved would be relatively simple and cheap and also effective against a class of fairly common accidental occurrences; but one who would stage truly sublime security theater must know their audience, I suppose.
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London isn’t the only city facing this issue. Melbourne has around 1400 buildings with similar cladding and they have refused to publicly release the locations:
The Age - Council orders Brunswick block owners to fix flammable cladding
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And let’s not forget that in one development, the tenants have been told that they have to pay the £2 million cost of removing the cladding - not their £850 million landlord. Until the cladding is removed they can’t sell their homes and getting things like insurance or new mortgages will either be impossible or prohibitively expensive.
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One wonders if that problem is part of the reason why ‘arsonists’ are on the list along with ‘terrorists’.
It’s pretty clear that nobody cares enough to fix the problem, and the passage of time diminishes the emotional impact but does nothing to soften the resolve of people who don’t want to pay for the fix; so setting the affected buildings on fire is probably the only effective way of forcing a renovation.
Arson risk is nonzero even when the pool of arsonists is restricted to people who want to see things burn; but here you’ve got all the residents who might prefer a controlled burn at the time of their choice to a surprise at some point in the future.
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Also:
“Terrorists!”/ “Communists!”/ “Meta-physicists!”/ “Bourgeoisie!”/ “Separatist!”/ “Deep State!”/ “Witches!”/ “Heretics!”/ “The Devil!”/ “Sin!”
=
Obey the Authorities!
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There is a pretty easy solution to this. The properties should each get an ID number not publicly traceable back to them, and then the status of the cladding removal for each of the buildings should be made publicly accessible. That keeps the government honest w/r to the progress of fixing the problem without abetting terror or endangering the occupants.
The important thing is not to hire the Equifax security people to design the ID assignment/storage system.
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In the course of “investigative journalism,” the press should take it upon themselves to non-destructively test these Grenfell clad buildings, with the permission of the site user/tenant/leaseholder.
The more pragmatic, empirically-minded arsonists would attempt to burn down all buildings of a similar vintage, so as to arrive at a definitive public list.
(It saddens me to have to put this “/s” here–“s” for “Swift”–so that I don’t end up on more international watchlists.)
We didn’t want you to worry over the results of your cancer screening…
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