I prefer:
“Governments should BE the people”
This is really hard. Lots of work. Tedious meetings. But if we want to take the country back from the grifters it means not only voting but getting involved.
The big speech:
“If you’re looking for the guilty, you only need to look in the mirror.”
Irony on top of irony, though, when you’re leveraging race-to-the-bottom neoliberal globalism by getting unlicensed merch from China to sell on the streets of London for a pound a piece. Done creatively, Warner Bros. wouldn’t see one thin dime but we’d profit mightily, and not only in monetary terms.
Or for the DIYers out there, there’s also this royalty-free option:
Thank you for that, Millifink. Rob’s photoshops weren’t horrifying enough, and now they’ve hit a new high on the “oh shit” meter.
Because I hadn’t thought of that.
The annoying thing about Theresa May is her total inability and refusal to answer any question put to her. Every time she’s asked a question her reply is an insincere sound bite on a vaguely related topic. It just makes her appear disconnected and false. I believe that she probably does know that what happened at Grenfell is yet another symptom of the huge failings of her governments policies, but she is pathologically unable to communicate. How hard would it be to say “Yes, we made a mistake, we are now going to require sprinkler systems to be fitted in all high rise tower blocks, and I’m going to make the funds available to do this. We’re going to identify where flammable polyurethane cladding has been installed on the outsides of buildings, and we’ll replace it with non-flammable alternatives. We’re going to rehouse all the affected people as close to their original homes as possible.” That would be leadership. It’s no wonder the streets are filled with protesters demanding her gone.
If he adds sounds might as well go all in and animate the mouths in interesting ways.
They don’t have mandatory sprinklers and other such useful fire safety stuff there? What is this, the 1800’s?
We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation.
— Brandon Lewis, then Conservative Minister of State for Housing and Planning, to MPs in 2014.
(Source.)
They’re required in new builds (post 2007) but not in old buildings where the poor tend to get concentrated.
There is a chicken and egg problem them: to be a citizen in the sense of actually being part of government requires that those citizens have enough time and energy to actually devote to it. Limiting government to those with leisure time is not quite an aristocracy, and would probably be a big improvement over the current system, though.
Off topic and unrelated other than ‘witchhunt’, but I hope you and your friends saw this:
Goodbye, eedjut.
The politicos have been working overtime to suppress the bad news - they want public attention to shift to something else before everyone becomes aware of just how many people died; especially children; due to crap renovation.
That does rather stink of knowing culpability.
The Tories, like the GOP, only wish it were so. The 19th century is their Golden Age. A few exceptions like Disraeli aside, the Tories were happy to go along with the Poor Laws put in place by their Whig rivals in 1834. I’m sure most modern Tories would welcome the return of the debtors’ prisons and workhouses.
Post 2007?! Wow.
I thought her leadership of the party wouldn’t last out the year before this horror occurred. Now, either by her own colleagues sacking her for “disloyalty” (if she throws some Kensington party stalwarts like this utter scumbag under the bus) or by the DUP slowly backing away from their deal* (if she does nothing), she might be out before the fall.
[* unless the DUP is “pro-life” in the same way as American anti-choicers, i.e. care more about the lives of unborn children than living ones]
Wouldn’t the fire industry have a vested interest in preventing sprinkler installation? 
More seriously, these kinds of utterly preventable disasters are why I increasingly want to punch anyone who says “the free market will fix it!” The free market has had a near-infinite number of chances to run things on its own without oversight or regulation, and every time, it turns out that, whoops, people will do unimaginably shitty things to make or save an extra 10 cents. Things like using leaded gasoline, or cadmium paint, or not installing a sprinkler system or fire-retardant cladding in an apartment building, or not having enough lifeboats because they would ruin the ship’s aesthetic, or locking the doors of a factory so people can’t leave early. The free market isn’t interested in people, it’s interested in money.
That’s another 19th-century institution that conservatives would love to bring back: the volunteer for-profit firefighting industry. If you didn’t pay to have a local insurance company’s fire mark on your building, the affiliated firefighters would just stand and watch it burn, only taking action if the fire threatened to spread to a neighbouring (and insured) building. Sometimes there would be a little “free” market bidding war for a desperate new client, with rival companies getting into fistfights while the building burned. It’s how Boss Tweed got his start.
Well, the free market is interested in transactions. It’s the greedy, unscrupulous fuckers who twist it to the champagne-sipping advantage.
If a corporation can make $1 while harming nobody or $1.01 while killing a hundred people, then a hundred people are going to die.
I’m increasingly convinced that the concept of the limited-liability corporation is a terrible thing that should be abolished.
Edit: Oops, this should’ve been @milliefink
I’m thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JLzR1hENNg&t=19m49s (Very loud) sounds about right.
This is bulshit thing to say, the media, and authorities, are only reporting the confirmed figures, and from the outset have not attempted to hide the fact that the final figure will be a lot higher. The last I heard only thirty people had been identified. It would be totally irresponsible of them to be giving out vague and unconfirmed numbers, this is standard practice in any disaster.
The existence of this “uncanny power to steer public public discourse” remains in doubt. The tabloid media are certainly trying, though. See also the Daily Torygraph complaint that estimates of the death toll were fabricated by “Corbyn supporters” and that the public marches were the work of hard left “militants”.
In this instance, I agree entirely. I don’t think there’s any deliberate obfuscation going on; never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained by incompetence. It’s just that at the moment there’s a very high level of tension in an uncertain political climate, and conspiracy is one of our default responses to anything.
That shouldn’t take any of the pressure off Prime Minister May, of course. She’s just given one of the worst tv interview performances of her career tonight (and that’s saying something), and after such a fiasco of an election, she seems to be displaying the classic signs of being “in office but not in power”.
