So true! And worryingly, only a very stupid person would spend so much money on decorating a flat they may only live in for 4 more years, and this man runs the country
Wouldn’t it be more balanced to tell us about the EU directive which enforced the cladding and why it wasn’t scrutinised? Why hasn’t the EU been billed for the damages? Not that the EU can bring back all that lost life, just as it cannot repair the damage it did by inflicting diesel on us. The cladding put on the Grenfell Tower when it was built in 1974 was super safe, done according to British Standards. Those were the days, when fire safety was paramount, not carbon dioxide.
As for wallpapergate, the latest smear is that the PM’s number can be rung by us all. This, after a week and more of smearing him for having a number we couldn’t all ring. Of course the civil servants don’t want us to ring him, or anyone to ring him. They want total control and for him to be in the dark.
The EU Directive was about ensuring refurbished blocks met standards of insulation to reduce energy consumption. The rules on fire safety and building materials are and were national rules, not EU.
And were diluted and their enforcement privatised by the Cameron and May Governments’ fetish for deregulation, and “self-regulation” by the private sector. The kind of “self-regulation” which led to the cladding manufacturer commissioning tests which showed that polythene-based cladding burned fiercely, then they marketed it as non-flammable.
The problem is not so much, indeed not much at all, the nature of the cladding, but the slipshod and inadequately managed manner in which it was applied. Here high tech solutions have met very low tech management. Our building industry is in many ways 30 years out of date. What ought to happen is that the companies that installed the cladding should be sued by the owners of the flats or blocks, and the directors be prosecuted by local authorities. But the nature of this highly fragmented industry, perpetually passing the buck by warranties and counter warranties, and slipping away by liquidating and refounding their businesses whenever convenient, is that it is almost impossible to make directors and shareholders responsible. There is a great reform Boris could usefully pick up.
Especially as the next tenants will probably have very different tastes-tartan swags if the rumours are true
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
This article hits many nails on the head.
Voting against government support for renewing cladding shows an appalling lack of connection with the flat owners by people, many of whom own more than one home!
cam someone please forward this to Boris Johnson? It gives a great insight how he and his fiancee are perceived by the deserving poor.!
Steve Garrett
3 years ago
“In high-rise flats across the country “ordinary, hard-working people” are being driven to financial desperation” I think you mean “low-rise” flats. I believe the gov is paying for re-cladding on buildings taller than 18m? Not that this helps people who live in one of the many low-rise buildings. Unless of course, buildings below 18m do not necessairly need to replace their cladding? It’s hard to get the full facts – that ought to be the job of a reliable journalist? But, as I understand it, lower buildings still need an assessment of their cladding, but different rules apply because fire-service access (i.e. via ladders & hoses etc.) is more reliable, and therefore the risk assessments differ from taller buildings? Are residents being unnecessairly” forced to panic” by the media? I sincerely would like to read a stripped-down, flame-proof analysis of the fund, grant, replacement requirements; including whether the gov is trying to leverage Industry to fork out more money, and how. As for No.11 – if Carrie can scam, using the power of her mind (think telekensis here!) Boris out of ridiculous sums of money to nest-build; and if Boris is stupid enough to chuck money into a publicly-owned building (think Forces married Quarter), with no hope of getting it back in 3-years, when he departs, then that’s their business. As long as I’m not paying.
The government is paying only for the cost of replacing specific cladding on buildings taller than 18 meters, not for missing compartmentation or any of the other many fire risk defects of shoddily built high rises, that we were bribed with government money to buy into. The fund will also not cover the cost of measures brought in to keep people safe during these endless delays, eg ruinously expensive “waking watch”. And meanwhile the army of surveyors and managing agents and landlords, all owning bits of each other, have had their snouts in the trough of all this government money. We had two small ACM panels that had to be replaced. Total cost from the company that built our building was £2,670. But somehow that became well over £15k when everyone had added in their fees for writing reports etc. No surprise that our managing agent has over 200 buildings with fund applications. It’s the money tree for everyone but us. And then there’s the pusillanimous insurance industry, which covers nothing much any more and is merely a way of transferring money from one set of people – leaseholders – via undisclosed commissions to another set of people – their landlords. Insurance costs on high rise buildings have rocketed this year, unless you have the all important A1 fire safety rating. Our building has young families unable to sell and move house or renew their mortgages because of the lack of the proper EWS1 clearance, and on top of that faced with ruinous service charges they have no means of resisting. There is a human rights case here surely. I am surprised no one has brought one.
Thanks, that’s interesting; depressing, but interesting. I can see a 20-year struggle ahead, with an eventual decision in favour of residents – too little, too late, and no compensation for the stress!
This should be an answer on its own and be at the top of this article as most voted.
It’s an absolute disgrace how leaseholders are being treated when all of this is very obviously, at source, the result of fatally (literally) flawed penny pinching legislation by previous expedient, venal national UK governments.
Legislation exploited to the max by those in a position to do so for profit and at the expense and safety of others much less able to resist, never mind taxpayers more generally.
Dave Smith
3 years ago
In the USA the top 1% added $4Trillion to their wealth in 2020. There is no reason to doubt that it is the same sort of increases here. That is a recipe for disaster. It cannot be defended. It will lead when the free money stops to discontent and a real opportunity for the rise of a popular movement based on taking this wealth back any way it can. Not that the rich ever see it coming.
It does not matter who paid for the wallpaper and the tacky gear but it is the cost that is important. Millions of working and middle class families are up against it unless they have been lucky to have state jobs or stayed in work. It tells me that people Like Johnson and Carrie have no idea of our lives. No conception of how millions of us struggle. A wise ruler would have never done what they have done. But Johnson is clearly unwise and unfit for his job in such difficult times.
We have had the biggest drop on GDP in our history and the burden is as usual on the working and lower middle self employed class. When these classes have had enough watch out. Johnson and his girlfriend have just made this more certain by their greedy stupidity.
Nicholas Rynn
3 years ago
In high rise flats ordinary hard working people were, until recently, the natural constituency of the Labour Party. The problem for Labour is their natural constituency has been deserted by the likes of Corbyn and Starmer, both of whom live in £million houses, for the intellectual metropolitans. Hartlepool will prove the point.
As for Boris’ curtains they talk about nothing else in the Northern Working Men’s Clubs.
Boring boring. Most people just don’t give a monkey’s about Boris and his wallpaper. Maybe some of the “Elite” could think of something better to worry about. Maybe where our Aid money goes to fund some presidents palace.
Peter Scott
3 years ago
A certain type of politician succeeds against great odds in his earlier days, including the odds of his own unusual personality.
He breaks rules galore but talks apparently straight in a way that other politicos don’t, he seems to utter and champion ordinary people’s concerns more directly and vigorously than his career-peers, he is a buffoon but espouses popular causes, he does one or two things with flair; and ends up apparently unassailably popular for ever; or at any rate, for life.
At this stage he thinks he can walk on water and never drown.
But the discrepancies between what he professes and what he does mount and mount. The real nature of his career – obsession with personal or family dominance – becomes ever clearer with the sheer passage of time revealing it.
Then he falls.
It seems absurd to compare Napoleon or Adolf Hitler with Bumbling (quondam ‘loveable’) Boris; but really we can note the same career trajectory.
In those first two cases, inspired monsters doing horrific slaughter, in Boris’s instance a risible twit missing every opportunity to be a successful populist achiever.
In both the UK and the USA maverick charlatans with a flair for public discourse have ridden the populist wave but failed enormously to achieve anything that matters; because their intentions, their hearts, were not really at one with populist concerns. They were busy with another agendum: in Boris’s case, appeasing Carrie-Antoinette, in Donald Trump’s case, advancing the careers of his daughter Ivanka and her egregious husband Jared Kushner.
Perhaps this is an inevitable intermediate stage between having politicians who utterly sell out their countries (as over the course of the past 30 years throughout the western world) and gaining leadership which actually cares about what happens to nations like ours and defends their best traditions.
In the next act of this drama we hope to see political leaders emerge who actually give effect to the wishes of the ever-growing populist populace in such lands as our own.
We all know she’ll be kicked out for a new filly when the time comes.
Andrew Raiment
3 years ago
I’m not convinced about the last line (sadly) but the rest of the article is spot on.
George Glashan
3 years ago
The way all politicians are paid is completely backwards. These people think they are worth £1million , so pay it to them, but link it to constituency satisfaction, 50% satisfaction you get 50% of the pay, no more no less thats what they get. No expenses scandals, no gold wallpaper problems, no shilling for corporate donors.
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Another article with too much emphasis on the PM’s partner and not the PM.
The Tories voted to support their natural constituents on cladding, not those with leaseholds on properties but those who hold the freeholds. They are still the party of the rentier classes.
The trouble is so are the Labour party these days: London property millionaires, buy-to-letters with enough time on their hands to fiddle and falsify their expense claims.
Maybe one day there will be a political party whose “natural constituents” are people who live in rented flats, but no such party exists now.
boroka
3 years ago
Cease using Marie Antoinette for partisan gibes.History, true history, tell us that she was nowhere near as insipid as the UK’s 21st-century “heroes.”
The affaire du collier de la reine was pretty much embarrassing for all involved though.
Tim Duckworth
3 years ago
Yes, yes and yes! I have been writing the same in The Times this morning but there are those who are saying ‘it’s all the same’ It is not all the same; many deaths and financial ruins against a wallpaper makeover is not remotely an equivalence of outcome. What do our MPs actually believe that they exist for?
eugene power
3 years ago
You ever tried to park your van in Whitehall ? Any job in Downing street will cost 50 times a normal cash job. : .security, diversity , equalitery ,elfn safety before getting out a pasting brush.
A stanley knife will get you shot .
then you gotta put up with that rabble of pols and journos.
Eff that for a ga,me of soldiers
Karen Jemmett
3 years ago
Creative souls always need an outlet… so if you’ll forgive me I’m off to paint stencilled flowers to spruce up the bin area. After all, half the Nation have been indulging themselves with such fanciful distractions throughout the Lockdown. Some people have even painted the BT network boxes all the colours of the rainbow and attracted widespread public acclaim in the process. It’s been one hell of a year, can’t we find something else to bicker over?
Clive France
3 years ago
Almost every article I read on UnHerd (and I’m not picky) is like a history lesson. I love reading (and learning) about history but am starting to think that this site has run out of ideas on how to put forward its ideas. Even the recent Tom Chivers’ science piece on current Covid deaths spent much of its time describing events in the 17th century.
Simon Baseley
3 years ago
Dress it up how you like, but it’s clear you don’t like Boris and you especially don’t like his other half. To this end the travails of the unfortunate property owners seem to have been recruited to camouflage the spite.
If I have any problem with Carrie Symonds, it is that she is reported to be sticking her nose into policy. If she wants to get involved in that she should stand for election, otherwise button it.
I do feel very sorry for the property owners with homes affected by the faulty cladding and Boris may believe he can get away with things simply because he is Boris (and for some people that is exactly the case) but even he doesn’t believe he rules by divine right. What a fatuous comparison that was.
simon taylor
3 years ago
Such a non story, 60K is not an exorbitant sum for a refurb, especially in London, and he is our PM. He has also got us out of the EU, managed an amazing vax program – while suffering from covid himself- all in less than 18 months, he is for me, and I for him.
Waldo Warbler
3 years ago
What a tawdry piece.
Disapprove of Johnson’s choice to spend his money on interior decor, by all means; this seems to be the current favourite for a certain tier of scribbler. The desperate attempt to link to Grenfell is worse than distasteful.
matthewspring
3 years ago
Whenever I turn on BBC news (which is becoming less and less often), I see everything through one prism: which will these liberal-left journos do this week, to try to fan Labour’s efforts to discredit the government?
Personally, I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the decoration of Downing Street. On the other hand, being a history teacher, I am very aware of the success that cynical radicals had in France in the 1770s-90s, in using the most disgusting lies about Marie Antoinette to fatally damage the French monarchy.
The Achilles heel of the Tory Party is its relationship with / attitudes to ‘ordinary’ people. It is ridiculously easy for the Left to portray the Tories as moneygrubbing toffs. The Blue Wall won’t stay blue for very long, if stories like Downing Street’s gold wallpaper get the traction for which the Left and their allies in the media are working so hard.
Malcolm Webb
3 years ago
Ugh. How droll piece this tries to be. For one awful moment I thought I was reading the Grauniad. What is all this pettifogging nonsense really about? Furthermore “ let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.
Unherd surely has a host of much more important matters than this to tempt its readers with. Unworthy of you I am afraid.
So true! And worryingly, only a very stupid person would spend so much money on decorating a flat they may only live in for 4 more years, and this man runs the country
Wouldn’t it be more balanced to tell us about the EU directive which enforced the cladding and why it wasn’t scrutinised? Why hasn’t the EU been billed for the damages? Not that the EU can bring back all that lost life, just as it cannot repair the damage it did by inflicting diesel on us. The cladding put on the Grenfell Tower when it was built in 1974 was super safe, done according to British Standards. Those were the days, when fire safety was paramount, not carbon dioxide.
As for wallpapergate, the latest smear is that the PM’s number can be rung by us all. This, after a week and more of smearing him for having a number we couldn’t all ring. Of course the civil servants don’t want us to ring him, or anyone to ring him. They want total control and for him to be in the dark.
The EU Directive was about ensuring refurbished blocks met standards of insulation to reduce energy consumption. The rules on fire safety and building materials are and were national rules, not EU.
And were diluted and their enforcement privatised by the Cameron and May Governments’ fetish for deregulation, and “self-regulation” by the private sector. The kind of “self-regulation” which led to the cladding manufacturer commissioning tests which showed that polythene-based cladding burned fiercely, then they marketed it as non-flammable.
The problem is not so much, indeed not much at all, the nature of the cladding, but the slipshod and inadequately managed manner in which it was applied. Here high tech solutions have met very low tech management. Our building industry is in many ways 30 years out of date. What ought to happen is that the companies that installed the cladding should be sued by the owners of the flats or blocks, and the directors be prosecuted by local authorities. But the nature of this highly fragmented industry, perpetually passing the buck by warranties and counter warranties, and slipping away by liquidating and refounding their businesses whenever convenient, is that it is almost impossible to make directors and shareholders responsible. There is a great reform Boris could usefully pick up.
Imagine believing any of this
Especially as the next tenants will probably have very different tastes-tartan swags if the rumours are true
This article hits many nails on the head.
Voting against government support for renewing cladding shows an appalling lack of connection with the flat owners by people, many of whom own more than one home!
cam someone please forward this to Boris Johnson? It gives a great insight how he and his fiancee are perceived by the deserving poor.!
“In high-rise flats across the country “ordinary, hard-working people” are being driven to financial desperation”
I think you mean “low-rise” flats. I believe the gov is paying for re-cladding on buildings taller than 18m? Not that this helps people who live in one of the many low-rise buildings. Unless of course, buildings below 18m do not necessairly need to replace their cladding?
It’s hard to get the full facts – that ought to be the job of a reliable journalist? But, as I understand it, lower buildings still need an assessment of their cladding, but different rules apply because fire-service access (i.e. via ladders & hoses etc.) is more reliable, and therefore the risk assessments differ from taller buildings? Are residents being unnecessairly” forced to panic” by the media?
I sincerely would like to read a stripped-down, flame-proof analysis of the fund, grant, replacement requirements; including whether the gov is trying to leverage Industry to fork out more money, and how.
As for No.11 – if Carrie can scam, using the power of her mind (think telekensis here!) Boris out of ridiculous sums of money to nest-build; and if Boris is stupid enough to chuck money into a publicly-owned building (think Forces married Quarter), with no hope of getting it back in 3-years, when he departs, then that’s their business. As long as I’m not paying.
I think we need a +100 button.
For your last paragraph I’d add “and as long as I don’t have to visit and see it” – it sounds ghastly.
The government is paying only for the cost of replacing specific cladding on buildings taller than 18 meters, not for missing compartmentation or any of the other many fire risk defects of shoddily built high rises, that we were bribed with government money to buy into. The fund will also not cover the cost of measures brought in to keep people safe during these endless delays, eg ruinously expensive “waking watch”. And meanwhile the army of surveyors and managing agents and landlords, all owning bits of each other, have had their snouts in the trough of all this government money. We had two small ACM panels that had to be replaced. Total cost from the company that built our building was £2,670. But somehow that became well over £15k when everyone had added in their fees for writing reports etc. No surprise that our managing agent has over 200 buildings with fund applications. It’s the money tree for everyone but us. And then there’s the pusillanimous insurance industry, which covers nothing much any more and is merely a way of transferring money from one set of people – leaseholders – via undisclosed commissions to another set of people – their landlords. Insurance costs on high rise buildings have rocketed this year, unless you have the all important A1 fire safety rating. Our building has young families unable to sell and move house or renew their mortgages because of the lack of the proper EWS1 clearance, and on top of that faced with ruinous service charges they have no means of resisting. There is a human rights case here surely. I am surprised no one has brought one.
Thanks, that’s interesting; depressing, but interesting. I can see a 20-year struggle ahead, with an eventual decision in favour of residents – too little, too late, and no compensation for the stress!
This should be an answer on its own and be at the top of this article as most voted.
It’s an absolute disgrace how leaseholders are being treated when all of this is very obviously, at source, the result of fatally (literally) flawed penny pinching legislation by previous expedient, venal national UK governments.
Legislation exploited to the max by those in a position to do so for profit and at the expense and safety of others much less able to resist, never mind taxpayers more generally.
In the USA the top 1% added $4Trillion to their wealth in 2020. There is no reason to doubt that it is the same sort of increases here. That is a recipe for disaster. It cannot be defended. It will lead when the free money stops to discontent and a real opportunity for the rise of a popular movement based on taking this wealth back any way it can. Not that the rich ever see it coming.
It does not matter who paid for the wallpaper and the tacky gear but it is the cost that is important. Millions of working and middle class families are up against it unless they have been lucky to have state jobs or stayed in work. It tells me that people Like Johnson and Carrie have no idea of our lives. No conception of how millions of us struggle. A wise ruler would have never done what they have done. But Johnson is clearly unwise and unfit for his job in such difficult times.
We have had the biggest drop on GDP in our history and the burden is as usual on the working and lower middle self employed class. When these classes have had enough watch out. Johnson and his girlfriend have just made this more certain by their greedy stupidity.
In high rise flats ordinary hard working people were, until recently, the natural constituency of the Labour Party. The problem for Labour is their natural constituency has been deserted by the likes of Corbyn and Starmer, both of whom live in £million houses, for the intellectual metropolitans. Hartlepool will prove the point.
As for Boris’ curtains they talk about nothing else in the Northern Working Men’s Clubs.
This has clearly touched a nerve.
Boring boring. Most people just don’t give a monkey’s about Boris and his wallpaper. Maybe some of the “Elite” could think of something better to worry about. Maybe where our Aid money goes to fund some presidents palace.
A certain type of politician succeeds against great odds in his earlier days, including the odds of his own unusual personality.
He breaks rules galore but talks apparently straight in a way that other politicos don’t, he seems to utter and champion ordinary people’s concerns more directly and vigorously than his career-peers, he is a buffoon but espouses popular causes, he does one or two things with flair; and ends up apparently unassailably popular for ever; or at any rate, for life.
At this stage he thinks he can walk on water and never drown.
But the discrepancies between what he professes and what he does mount and mount. The real nature of his career – obsession with personal or family dominance – becomes ever clearer with the sheer passage of time revealing it.
Then he falls.
It seems absurd to compare Napoleon or Adolf Hitler with Bumbling (quondam ‘loveable’) Boris; but really we can note the same career trajectory.
In those first two cases, inspired monsters doing horrific slaughter, in Boris’s instance a risible twit missing every opportunity to be a successful populist achiever.
In both the UK and the USA maverick charlatans with a flair for public discourse have ridden the populist wave but failed enormously to achieve anything that matters; because their intentions, their hearts, were not really at one with populist concerns. They were busy with another agendum: in Boris’s case, appeasing Carrie-Antoinette, in Donald Trump’s case, advancing the careers of his daughter Ivanka and her egregious husband Jared Kushner.
Perhaps this is an inevitable intermediate stage between having politicians who utterly sell out their countries (as over the course of the past 30 years throughout the western world) and gaining leadership which actually cares about what happens to nations like ours and defends their best traditions.
In the next act of this drama we hope to see political leaders emerge who actually give effect to the wishes of the ever-growing populist populace in such lands as our own.
As Blackadder would say a wonderful plan with just one small problem.
The Civil Service.
Make that two small problems by adding – The Establishment.
I don’t know, having a wife/girlfriend with out of control ambitions in home decoration is something a lot of us can relate to.
She wouldn’t have been able to indulge her ambitions if Boris had better control of his trouser zippers.
We all know she’ll be kicked out for a new filly when the time comes.
I’m not convinced about the last line (sadly) but the rest of the article is spot on.
The way all politicians are paid is completely backwards. These people think they are worth £1million , so pay it to them, but link it to constituency satisfaction, 50% satisfaction you get 50% of the pay, no more no less thats what they get. No expenses scandals, no gold wallpaper problems, no shilling for corporate donors.
Another article with too much emphasis on the PM’s partner and not the PM.
The Tories voted to support their natural constituents on cladding, not those with leaseholds on properties but those who hold the freeholds. They are still the party of the rentier classes.
The trouble is so are the Labour party these days: London property millionaires, buy-to-letters with enough time on their hands to fiddle and falsify their expense claims.
Maybe one day there will be a political party whose “natural constituents” are people who live in rented flats, but no such party exists now.
Cease using Marie Antoinette for partisan gibes.History, true history, tell us that she was nowhere near as insipid as the UK’s 21st-century “heroes.”
The affaire du collier de la reine was pretty much embarrassing for all involved though.
Yes, yes and yes! I have been writing the same in The Times this morning but there are those who are saying ‘it’s all the same’ It is not all the same; many deaths and financial ruins against a wallpaper makeover is not remotely an equivalence of outcome. What do our MPs actually believe that they exist for?
You ever tried to park your van in Whitehall ? Any job in Downing street will cost 50 times a normal cash job. : .security, diversity , equalitery ,elfn safety before getting out a pasting brush.
A stanley knife will get you shot .
then you gotta put up with that rabble of pols and journos.
Eff that for a ga,me of soldiers
Creative souls always need an outlet… so if you’ll forgive me I’m off to paint stencilled flowers to spruce up the bin area. After all, half the Nation have been indulging themselves with such fanciful distractions throughout the Lockdown. Some people have even painted the BT network boxes all the colours of the rainbow and attracted widespread public acclaim in the process. It’s been one hell of a year, can’t we find something else to bicker over?
Almost every article I read on UnHerd (and I’m not picky) is like a history lesson. I love reading (and learning) about history but am starting to think that this site has run out of ideas on how to put forward its ideas. Even the recent Tom Chivers’ science piece on current Covid deaths spent much of its time describing events in the 17th century.
Dress it up how you like, but it’s clear you don’t like Boris and you especially don’t like his other half. To this end the travails of the unfortunate property owners seem to have been recruited to camouflage the spite.
If I have any problem with Carrie Symonds, it is that she is reported to be sticking her nose into policy. If she wants to get involved in that she should stand for election, otherwise button it.
I do feel very sorry for the property owners with homes affected by the faulty cladding and Boris may believe he can get away with things simply because he is Boris (and for some people that is exactly the case) but even he doesn’t believe he rules by divine right. What a fatuous comparison that was.
Such a non story, 60K is not an exorbitant sum for a refurb, especially in London, and he is our PM. He has also got us out of the EU, managed an amazing vax program – while suffering from covid himself- all in less than 18 months, he is for me, and I for him.
What a tawdry piece.
Disapprove of Johnson’s choice to spend his money on interior decor, by all means; this seems to be the current favourite for a certain tier of scribbler. The desperate attempt to link to Grenfell is worse than distasteful.
Whenever I turn on BBC news (which is becoming less and less often), I see everything through one prism: which will these liberal-left journos do this week, to try to fan Labour’s efforts to discredit the government?
Personally, I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the decoration of Downing Street. On the other hand, being a history teacher, I am very aware of the success that cynical radicals had in France in the 1770s-90s, in using the most disgusting lies about Marie Antoinette to fatally damage the French monarchy.
The Achilles heel of the Tory Party is its relationship with / attitudes to ‘ordinary’ people. It is ridiculously easy for the Left to portray the Tories as moneygrubbing toffs. The Blue Wall won’t stay blue for very long, if stories like Downing Street’s gold wallpaper get the traction for which the Left and their allies in the media are working so hard.
Ugh. How droll piece this tries to be. For one awful moment I thought I was reading the Grauniad. What is all this pettifogging nonsense really about? Furthermore “ let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.
Unherd surely has a host of much more important matters than this to tempt its readers with. Unworthy of you I am afraid.