the use of the wrong materials in the building cladding.
How is that not a maintenance issue?
It’s not a maintenance issue - it’s a using the wrong thing issue. A maintenance issue would be something like the fire alarm not working, fire doors not working etc. This is exactly the reverse - it is spending quite a bit of money, with the intention of improving the property, but potentially doing something horrifically counter-productive. Adding insulating cladding to a building is not maintenance, it is intended as enhancement. Under no legislation related to maintenance would anyone be able to take their landlord to court to force them to clad a building.
Are you a paid agent for the wonders of tenant management companies?
I’m going to leave the ad hominem stuff aside - but what would be a better way of running things? Your options are 1) Old school council runs everything, 2) Tenant-owned companies 3) Private for-profit companies contracting with the council. Of these, I’d argue that 2) ought to give tenants a much bigger say and more accountability. I’m genuinely not aware of another option - maybe smaller tenant-run companies for each building? The issue there would be the time/capacity of a smaller group of tenants - but it’s still a tenant-owned company.
In any event, nothing here overrides my main point, that Cory’s was quite wrong to link this tragedy to a proposed amendment which was about something completely unrelated.
Ah, yes, how distasteful to point out that political opportunism played a role in this tragedy. Heaven forbid we try to do anything to keep this from happening again!
By saying that people ought not discuss what should have been and needs to be done to prevent future tragedies you are providing cover for them.
The shooting of the Republican baseball team is a very different story, especially since it is a toxic climate of politics that led to that event. In that case, taking political sides on the outcome is contributing to the problem rather than demanding a solution to it.
I’m concerned about fewer people dying in the future, not keeping a political score (or being scrupulous about not keeping a political score).
Emphasis on SO SOON. You’re welcome to blame whoever you want but to immediately draw conclusions that some political party is to blame before the embers have gone out seemed distasteful to me. Far be it from me to stop you guys from rushing to judgement.
I didn’t miss that. My point stands. If you are saying that we shouldn’t put pressure on politicians to better regulate fire safety then you are providing cover for those that don’t. Even if you are saying that we shouldn’t do it only at a particular time or only at a particular place. That is the effect. Politics isn’t a scoreboard (whether we think it’s elevated or debased) that runs parallel to real life, it is real life. People are dead, political decisions played a role in those people’s deaths.
Police don’t wait a few days to start finding the murderer out of respect for the victim.
Any indictment of a political party’s complicity in this tragedy is going to require so much time to sort out and undo that rushing to judgement is only valuable for scoring points, which is what Cory’s headline and the article linked were intended to do.
Stopping an arsonist who started the blaze is the only reason that fast action is going to help the situation. If bad policies resulted in this building being unsafe, it will require policies to undo it, and that will take time.
And while I never implied that the Tory’s weren’t complicit, they’ll be just as complicit in a day or a week or a year.
More like this: take a safe car, strap plastic bottles of gasoline all around it, and drive through a burning hoop, again and again.
That building was going to go. I saw an apartment fire a couple of years back in a similar, non-refurb’d building, and flames - solid flames, like a rocket engine - were searing out of the windows. Yet the surrounding apartments were untouched except by smoke and soot.
The newly arrived exterior panels, which it must be noted are the ersatz plastic version of the mineral-based fire-retardant alternative, they lit up like Roman candles.
Who ever heard of a building burning from the outside in? Brand new one on me.
Strike while the iron’s hot. If you let the network of people who hold accountability at whatever level gather their wits and resources, then papers disappear, evidence becomes vague, memories hazy, etc, etc, etc.
Already the firm which carried out the refurb have deleted from their public messaging that all fire safety approvals were met. They clearly know the net is closing fast, and are moving to shift and absolve liability internally, to limit damage, to avoid jail.
So stop it, you sound like a messenger from the embedded interests, seeking to disrupt and confuse the nascent campaign against those very interests.
This makes no sense to me. Every day without proper fire codes is a day where more people’s lives are at risk. I can’t see how that’s a “snap judgment”. People in the UK have decisions about fire codes made by politicians who are elected to represent them. If they feel this issue is important then they should act immediately to tell their representatives what they feel needs to be done on this issue. To me, waiting seems to be putting respect for politics over respect for people who lost their lives.
Ok. So I’m wrong, and parading the headline that a party was complicit within six hours of the actual building burning wasn’t at all unseemly. How many buildings are now safer because of it? Is a single apartment dweller anywhere in the UK any safer today because this iron was struck yesterday morning, while they were still fighting the blaze? Any sudden legislation passed in the middle of the night? Any unsafe buildings torn down? Any arrests made? And politicians hounded from office and replaced with angelic reformers?
Mentioning that corpses are “still smouldering” is in the most extreme distaste - but you did that to divert attention
You ignored my very pertinent point about immediate response. In the opening moments of media, this is a critical window of opportunity to get truth out, before anyone has a chance to circle the wagons.
Don’t call me an idiot. It’s idiotic, and represents idiocy, and the thinking of an idiot.
The relatives are screaming for justice. Should they await the equalisation in temperature between their families’ corpses and the ambient atmosphere?
When discussing matters of social import, if we dance delicately around niceties, nothing will get done.
Answer me this: Do you condemn those responsible for ensuring the safety of the inhabitants of the structure?
Okay, at this point I’m just baffled. When things are important to do, it is best to get started, even if it will take time to get results.
Could I ask, though, what the point is in delaying? I get that you have this notion that it is bad to play politics with tragedies, but since you are asking me to drill down on why it is good to raise awareness of public safety risks sooner rather than later, I wonder if you could actually explain what we are balancing that against.
Suppose, all other things being equal, by starting to talk about this two days earlier we, years from now, get a useful resolution two days earlier. Suppose our total gains from starting two days earlier is two days times the per-day liklihood of a fire times the damage done by that fire including human lives lost. What is it that we are balancing against that? Distaste?
Look. Can we agree that something I find distasteful you might be ok with? You might not like olives, but I do. So my original premise was that I thought something was distasteful.
Since then, I will admit that for the most part, I’ve been trying to defend myself from a dogpile for an off-hand comment I made. I frankly really couldn’t care less about the political parties in England. Both sides can go fuck themselves as far as I’m concerned, and frankly, any person with political power, liberal or conservative, allowing a 20+ storey building to have inadequate smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, and fire escapes is criminal. Why Labour stopped fighting just because the tenant safety law was voted down is as good a question as any at this point.
As for why I think that using a tragedy to make political points is wrong is because it tends to dehumanize the victims and turns their pain and loss into a chess piece on a game board. Is there a decent amount of time to wait before pointing fingers at your political opponents for the blame of a tragedy? I don’t know. As I said earlier, I think you should at least wait until the fire has been put out, and the victims cared for before shouting accusations. Clearly, it’s obvious that I’m in the minority in that opinion.
But I’m done. You guys all won the internet today. Hooray for you.
After reams of text about how we shouldn’t be talking politics and immediately following a comment that you don’t care about either political party, you throw in a dig at Labour? If you don’t know much about this situation then you don’t even know whether Labour stopped fighting or not. You know that their bill was voted down and thus is not law at this time.
You think it’s criminal that politicians would allow buildings to have inadequate fire protections. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. That concerns about whether or not something is distasteful shouldn’t take precedence over that fact that there is and ongoing crisis in fire codes.
I understand that you feel that politicizing a tragedy turns the loss of the victims into a piece on a chess board. I think that is a symptom of us (as a collective, not you in particular) regarding politics itself as a game rather than responsible grown-ups making decisions about how to run the country, including life-and-death ones. This is not about Labour’s queen taking Conservative’s bishop. This is about how a nation decides to let buildings burn and people die.
[quote=“dfaris, post:14, topic:102711”][quote=“jannamark, post:10, topic:102711, full:true”]
Coming to the defense of those whose greed and neglect led to this tragedy may be even more distasteful.
[/quote]
Are you suggesting that I’m providing any cover for their actions?
[/quote]
In a word, yes. In a post entitled London fire: just last year, Tory landlord-MPs rejected Labour’s tenant safety law, the topic of discussion might naturally explore the politics of landlord responsibilities and tenant rights, the greater access to political clout that landlord-MPs might have than their tenants, perhaps even how the lust for money might be the root of failures to address human health and safety issues in an economic landscape riddled with inequalities.
Should we engage in that discussion, that obviously political discussion? Especially after the 2nd comment in this thread, that is, yours:
Would you prefer that we wait for a less distasteful moment to discuss the issues, for propriety’s sake? How long should we wait, a week or two, maybe three? (Of course by then, this thread will be closed.) And in that time, no landlord-MPs would be so distasteful as to use their greater access to the political process, the law, and the press to solidify their gains, shape the conversation, or shift blame, surely!
I am really confused why you seem to be so fundamentally uninformed on a subject that you insist on commenting. I am going to be generous and assume that you just struggling to process the easily available information on the Grenfell tragedy rather than intentionally spreading alternative facts.
[quote=“Prentiz, post:42, topic:102711”]
It’s not a maintenance issue -
[/quote]
Choice of material is a maintenance issues. Period. The materials chosen for the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower have been known to be unsafe. Fire Safety Experts have warned against their use for years. It is a maintenance issue. Period.
[quote=“Prentiz, post:42, topic:102711”]
but what would be a better way of running things? Your options are 1) Old school council runs everything, 2) Tenant-owned companies 3) Private for-profit companies contracting with the council. Of these, I’d argue that 2) ought to give tenants a much bigger say and more accountability. I’m genuinely not aware of another option - maybe smaller tenant-run companies for each building?
[/quote]
Have you read or listened to anything the people involved in this tragedy have written or said?
Your “accountable” option 2) KCTMO was considered an unaccountable sham by the tenants. KCTMO threatened to sue the tenants who raised safety concern. Threatening to sue the people you are supposedly representing doesn’t really smell of accountability.
I am struggling to understand how anyone with basic knowledge of the facts would consider Tenant Management Organisations a particularly good way to run anything. Just look up the number of court cases regarding maintenance. Thanks to this horrendous and utterly avoidable tragedy we will now find out about every last criminal detail of how these quasi Mafiosi structures operate and syphon of public assets.
[quote=“Prentiz, post:42, topic:102711”]
nothing here overrides my main point, that Cory’s was quite wrong to link this tragedy to a proposed amendment which was about something completely unrelated.
[/quote]
Do explain how is housing legislation not relevant to an issue on housing? Cory’s point is that housing in the UK is a legislative and political shambles. The fact that MPs rejected legislation which required landlords to ensure housing is fit for human habitation seems highly relevant in this context. The fact that thanks to Thatcher and her various co-horts housing is generally a fragmented mess. And that as a consequence legislation differentiates between different kinds of landlords is a small detail which doesn’t effect the central point.
So, I’m going to keep ignoring the ad hominem stuff. Sorry about that.
Choice of material is a maintenance issues. Period. The materials chosen for the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower have been known to be unsafe. Fire Safety Experts have warned against their use for years. It is a maintenance issue. Period.
OED defines maintenance is as “The process of preserving a condition or situation”. Historic England defines maintenance work as "“routine work necessary to keep the fabric of a place in good order”. The intention of adding the cladding to the building was to make it look more attractive, and to improve it’s insulation. It was clearly intended as an improvement, and not as maintenance. If you can find a legal or other definition that supports what you say, feel free to post it.
I am also not sure it has been established that the materials used in the cladding were known to be unsafe. Certainly they appear to have been used in a range of other similar refurbishments, and the claim at the minute is that they complied with fire regulations in force when they were installed. This will clearly be an important point for the public enquiry - and if they were known to be unsafe people should be going to prison.
Great, well which of the alternatives would you prefer - run by a private company for the council, or run by the council? I can’t see how either would have represented tenants better? I’m not saying that this Tenant Run Company was good - only that is is seen as the form of organisation which best represents tenants interests. It may not be the case in this instance.
Sure - Cory suggested that the rejection of the amendment on private housing was a factor in this case, which clearly it was not. Given this is with reference to council-owned housing, I’m not sure what relevance Thatcher has particularly. FWIW, the Defective Premises Act 1972, and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 both oblige landlords to repair their properties.
