Well there’s only one party that thinks more guns = more safety. I don’t have a problem with throwing all the snide comments made after the Pulse shooting back at them. Such as: I thought all Republicans advocated being armed at all times, which would deter this sort of event.
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There’s nothing yet to suggest that this fire is anything to do with poor maintenance by the landlord. In this case, the landlord is the local council, who subcontracted the responsibility to a not-for-profit company run and owned by tenants, so it’s a bit hard to see how Cory’s general political points are relevant. The fatal problem appears to have been caused by too much investment if anything - with the installation of insulated coving on the outside of the block looking likely to be a key factor. This will be a much more fruitful discussion when people are in possession of more facts, rather than just making arguments to support their pre-held political beliefs.
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The (former) residents think otherwise
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Hopefully those are things that will be looked at very carefully at a public enquiry - but doesn’t change the broader point that the landlord in this case already had a legal obligation…
Why do we have to wait for it to stop burning? A system of fuckery allowed this to happen. While it’s burning is the PERFECT time to call out those who voted down protections. I hope it’s still being shown all over U.K. news channels so they can’t escape their sin.
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And when would you like to have a substantive policy discussion about tenant protections? Because let’s face it, no one intends to go back to this issue later when they make these comments.
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But only the “right” people being armed. You don’t want brown people or Muslims or womenfolk armed now do you?
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It’s NOT our job to “help” you, especially if that involves ignoring quite obvious ongoing problems.
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Right back at’cha, Mr. Head-In-Sand. Guess what medium you’re also using/abusing?
No, it’s NOT inappropriate, no matter how you wave your arms or otherwise attempt to derail well-earned criticism, to note that this is a problem possibly, if not probably exacerbated by intentional neglect by landlords, and has been part of very specific debate and legislation in the recent past.
You can stop trying to assume airs over the matter; you’re doing nothing but exposing the paucity of your own “argument”. You can be damn sure, the victims of this tragedy and their families are going to want answers and action, not idiotic pabulum re: “respect” which is — quite inevitably — actually an attempt to shove the whole affair under the rug.
Concern-troll elsewhere.
Edit -> The post this was in response to was just withdrawn by the author but I’m leaving it anyway. It’s quite cogent to the rest of his/her posts on the matter, as well.
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So, calling for a solution to a tragedy in the brief time that people are paying attention to the issue is making great political hay, but promoting policies for political (and/or economic) gain that contribute to these tragedies is not. Got it.
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If this played part in the tragedy it’s a legislative disaster needing scrutiny and lessons for the future.
The amendment in question is minuted here (see Ayes 219, Noes 312)
It’s makes pretty dense reading for someone not in the habit of parsing legislation. Does anyone have a more comprehensible summary of what the rejected amendment actually proposed?
“politicizing this tragedy” makes it sound like the problem is an apolitical accident of nature into which somebody is injecting propaganda.
The whole point of this article is that, in most cases, fire hazards aren’t some uncontrollable whim of unknowable nature; but failure to apply the requisite engineering measures.
With the local tech level being what it is, firetraps are political even before they burn: and it isn’t ‘politicizing’ to say so.
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I tried to give it a read, but today has been very draining and my dyslexia is hard to work around in that situation.
I’ll see how I am tomorrow.
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The proposed amendment only applied to private landlords. Conservatives argued at the time that they were already legally obliged to provide habitable homes and that the current law ought to be enforced. In any event, because this was a council owned property it explicitly would not have been covered.
Really?
Are you trying to get a prize for the most uninformed post in the thread?
Everything, absolutely everything suggests that the fire and the way it spread is down to poor maintenance and a (most likely criminally) negligent maintenance organisation and government deregulation of the renting sector. There hasn’t been a single commentator in the press who said otherwise.
Maybe in 10 years time when the whole tragedy has been processed through the courts, you can eat your words. For the moment you can spend your time looking for that one article which doesn’t make the connection between this tragedy and poor maintenance.
We are all waiting.
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To add insult to injury, it looks like the building was less safe after the 2016 refurbishment that was when it was constructed 50 years before. So 50 years of fire safety and engineering knowledge ignored.
Just imagine we would require people to drive in cars without seatbelt, bumpers, made of fibreglass and send them onto a German Motorway. The non refurbishment of these 60s towers seem the equivalent.
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Nope, but you might win it!
Nobody claims that the tragedy wasn’t due to maintenance. But @Prentiz checked the facts of the actual parliamentary vote which @doctorow misrepresented in the headline to get clicks and vent about his own landlord.
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The most likely (at the minute) cause of the fire spreading as catastrophically as it did was the use of the wrong materials in the building cladding. That appears to have allowed the fire to spread faster and further than the shelter in place plan permitted. There is a secondary issue about fire alarms, but it may well be the case that, given the shelter in place strategy, there was no building wide evacuation plan because of the risks that posed. The second is the only potential maintenance issue I can see, and only then if there was a plan for a building-wide evacuation, which didnt work as a result of maintenance. The builidng is maintained bt a tenant owned and run company- pretty mich the gold standard way of organising this sort of thing. Of course, the investigation may turn out something entirely different with the benefit of more facts. In any event, it certainly has nothing to do with an amemdmemt in parliament which would never have applied to the building in question.
Great that you feel solidarity with @Prentiz and stick up for him.
Except @Prentiz did claim
at a time when every journalist, commentator and expert stated that the extent of the damage was down to poor quality maintenance–small details like emergency lights not working in a 24 storey building are real!
If you read the thread, you would see that my response was not to his fact checking post in regard to legislation-- but to his initial, very ill informed and, to those of us familiar with English housing legislation and neglectful maintenance, outright inflammatory comment.
Given the facts of the matter, his comments were at best ill informed, but more likely just the usual neoliberal fake news vitriol against poor people and the reality of the manifold ways in which they get screwed.
As to @doctorow commenting on the reality of housing maintenance in one of the worlds richest cities.
How exactly is that a misrepresentation? If people who are well off and have a public voice, cannot draw attention to the outrageousness of UK housing legislation and experience, who exactly should / can, in your view?
Especially, given that as we have now discovered, the tenants of Grenfell Tower tried and couldn’t get legal representation, because Legal Aid is no longer available for such cases!
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How is that not a maintenance issue?
All the currently available facts, from fire safety experts as well as documented in the meticulous blog written by residents, point to the outrageous reality that the building was less safe in 2017 then it was in the 1960s, when it was initially constructed. If you read the detailed articles on the Guardian site which @the_borderer already posted for your benefit, you will discover that the shoddy, badly planned and executed maintenance compromised the integrity of the individual flats, thus making the shelter in place strategy into a death trap. That is maintenance, pure and simple:
Seriously, have you read a single statement, a single word of what tenants have said or written? I am really struggling to understand what the purpose of your comment / driving trollies is here?
Are you a paid agent for the wonders of tenant management companies?
Anyone with any experience, or basic insight into Social Housing in London knows and has known for at least a decade that they are a scandal ridden shams at best, if not outright criminally negligent agents of the state.
But, how can you, at this stage, after all that is available on the battle the murdered residents fought with the so called management company with a straight face call it a gold standard?
Have some respect for those who died because the system and its human agents was too ignorant, blind, deaf and self-righteous to listen.
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