London fire: just last year, Tory landlord-MPs rejected Labour's tenant safety law

boing
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By the way - as predicted, wagon-circling is well and truly underway.

Lily Allen, the singer, spoe on national terrestrial TV to say the dead would number about 150, and that she was receiving that information from local police and fire crews.

The BBC - a government controlled media agency! - has now chucked her off an important broadcast:

Other news outlets are creeping towards the 100 figure, but embedded interests want to get in and manage public opinion before the extent of the death becomes clear.

Coincident with that, it is becoming clearer that for £5,000 more, the cladding would have been fire resistant.

Further, the tower was largely populated by immigrants.

So I estimate the conservative local council has been desperately trying to stave things off, because it’s a political gordian knot (indicating the involvement of the Cabinet), and also because they know damn well they let this happen in the face of a continous stream of fearful warnings from the residents.

I recommend to everyone living in a clad tower to slice off a bit, and live stream on Youtube as they see if it burns, and how quickly it does.

@dfaris - to be fair, in this kind of environment, with this kind of tragedy, being seen in any way to quell information dispersal is going to be ruinous. That’s why you’re getting knocked left right and centre. It’s not about winning or losing - it’s about the shocked surprised, particularly and especially in BB land (where people are very, very media savvy), that anyone would advocate holding on and waiting.

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Just like @doctorow said, no “natural” disasters.

A 24 storey building with no central fire alarm shouldn’t have been built in 1974 let alone continued to exist in that state until 2017. The UK is largely ruled by an upper class that puts little to no value on the lives on the lower class.

This incident has already killed more people than the Ariana Grande concert attack and London Bridge attack put together and there are still dozens missing. Terrorists ought to leave it to the politicians.

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The scum right wing tabloids are already trying to suggest that it was “green policies” that led to this. Not trying to save £5000 on an £8.5million contract. Not ignoring hazard notices. Oh no. Putting insulation on a building.

Easy remedy; don’t make thoughtless remarks about preventable major disasters with a large political component.

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The missing are far and away immigrants:

Hence the political minefield.

I saw that, and was flummoxed until I realised the conservative establishment is revoltingly attempting to divert blame, to test and seed new ideas. They can’t help but go for two birds with the one stone - both “green is bad” and “hey, this is the shiny ball you want to look at”.

72 of the ministers of parliament who voted down the old law - 72! - were landlords.

Greazy, disgusting politiicians.

By the people, for the people please. It’s simple.

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And for the many, not the few.

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Gove is now Environment Minister, which is precisely parallel with putting King Herod in charge of nursery education. Perhaps he even thought it up? Or his wife did.

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People are dead and you’re nitpicking over the choice of words. It is not a good look.

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Leaving aside whether anyone benefits from a pedantic insistence on defining ‘maintenance’ versus ‘improvements’ (I get it’s an important distinction, massive court cases have been won and lost on it - you’re not a property lawyer by any chance? :smile:), one of the points people are trying to make is that the fire safety regulations are inadequate and that the reason they are is because the people with power and money prefer them that way.

Whether the block complied with existing fire safety regulations is therefore only relevant in a very limited sense. Obviously, if it didn’t comply, that’s terrible. The problem people are concerned about does not go away if it turns out the building complied with every detail of fire safety regulations.

There is a history to this issue. I’ll just leave this here because it is about the most neutral and complete summary I’ve found:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40302745

One of the reasons this fire is extremely political (note - not being politicised, it is a political issue right from the start) is that the UK had a fire in a tower block previously. It was a tragedy and a massive scandal, there was a major review and then basically nothing happened. Nothing substantive has been done to require any kind of upgrade in fire safety.

And now it has happened again, only with a great deal more loss of life.

Strangely enough, people are wondering why nothing was done and point the finger at the party that was in government through most of that time and which controls the local authority in which the building is located. Which just happens to be one of the richest places on Earth and certainly in the UK.

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Disaster capitalism writ small, I suppose.

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Now, we have our own New Orleans FEMA failure being protested in London - this is fabulous, in the saddest possible way: They are storming the fortresses.

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You’re not a Tory landlord MP, perchance…? This has EVERYTHING to do with the landlord. The contractors were contracted to refurbish the building were hired by the landlord. The cladding used was chosen to make the building more aesthetically pleasing for those rich twats living in the £4m+ penthouses literally across the road. The cladding, known as Reynobond, comes in 2 types: one which is filled with a mineral wool-type material, and the other which is filled with polyethylene (aka polythene), both have an outer aluminium shell. The contractors, Rydon Ltd (source: Wikipedia), used the latter. Polyethylene has a melting point of just 135°C (set fire to a freezer bag, or a plastic yoghurt pot, with a lighter - see how quickly it catches and melts. It’s also used by commercial fruit farmers to assist with ripening (‘polytunnels’) as it concentrates the Sun). Furthermore, the cladding was attached to the tower with wooden battens (looks nicer, see…?). Add the fact that most of the fire extinguishers had expired (many were marked as ‘condemned’) and the much talked-about lack of sprinklers, and the tower was a funeral pyre-in-waiting.

In my opinion, there are several questions that need to be asked here:

  1. Why the fuck is polyethylene being sold as cladding material?
  2. Why the fuck are so many Tories allowed to be both landlords and MPs without breaching ministerial and parliamentary code? At the very least it’s unethical, and I don’t see why it’s not seen as criminal, particularly as they can then use their positions to influence policy.

I have no idea what this “NFP” is that you speak of - the work was carried out by a contractor hired by the landlord - Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation - which is NOT a charity.

As far as I’m aware, the only NFP involved is the Grenfell Residents’ Action Group, which has been lobbying KCTMO for years to fix a building which should’ve been condemned, rather than refurbished.

There are 75, I believe, Tory MPs who are also landlords (mine included - feckin’ useless Tory twunt!) what should happen, if there’s any justice and good to come out of this is that MPs or ALL affiliations (although I don’t know of any who aren’t Tories), should be given an ultimatum: relinquish your property portfolio - or resign. Every single Tory landlord MP voted AGAINST making buildings fit for human habitation. Every. Single. One. Dave even boasted that he wanted to make the UK the country with the least stringent H&S regs on Earth (did I mention Dave’s one of the 75…? Dave could likely have seen the fire from his living room window).

Finally, one thing that I’ve not seen mentioned by anyone, is the fact that there is an insidious, creeping, (re)ghettoisation in London. Ghettoisation leads to people feeling disenfranchised which, in turn, leads to rioting. This is especially stark in Kensington & Chelsea where you have some of London’s poorest living yards away from some of the wealthiest.

London isn’t alone. There are signs of ghettoisation in other major cities too and in some, such as Brum, it’s really never ended,

I don’t know what the answer is - I can’t even help myself, never mind anyone else (and it’s too hot to think straight anyway!). I’m as angry and frustrated as anyone else!

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I think Blair’s lot thought this one up as a way to avoid putting their investments in blind trusts while ministers. Google Lord Mandelson for an interesting example of getting on the ladder.
But Blair was Continuity Thatcher.

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To be fair. the left of the Labour party were at it too.

£750 a week is probably cheap for a nice flat in Wimbledon now.

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Meacher was a weathercock. Even on Iraq he swung.

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That’s not true. Gavin Barwell put a lot of effort into suppressing the post-Lakanal Block review of building safety. That review wasn’t going to delay itself!

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Apart from the manufacturers of Reynobond stating that their non-fire-retardant version was unsafe for high-rises?

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