Thank you for this timely reminder.
Isn’t this just a classic case of ‘Britain Today’? This tragedy occurred FIVE years ago! longer than the Great War! And still the ‘enquiry’ moves on at the speed of a Sloth. I can just hear an oily Mandarin saying “kick into it into the long grass and leave it there”.
The London Fire Brigade Commissioner, one Danny Cotton (Ms), whose conduct was particularly controversial, was even permitted to retire at 50, on what many might regard as a colossal pension. What sort of message does that send to the Demos? Is it any wonder that people turn to Socialism or even worse?
As the Westway is on my line of march, I visited the site 48 hours after the event. The acrid stench still hung in the air and cinder debris was all too evident, as were the piteous notices and photographs pinned to various ‘message’ boards. My initial reaction was this ‘Holocaust’ would be buried by Officialdom, and so it has proved to be.
More tea Vicar?
From my reading of the complaints on the Nextdoor app for my neighbourhood, I don’t think life under Labour local authorities is any better. If you depend on the State for housing and other life essentials, you are a person to whom things are done in this country, and not very well done to boot.
Those responsible for running the flats were predominantly Labour, and one of those on the board was then elected as the MP at the following General Election.
R Wright
1 year ago
A more interesting story is the numerous sub-sub-tenants in the building, most of whom were illegal immigrants that were rewarded by the post-fire furore leading to them being given special immigration status, as if they were Afghan translators or Gurkha veterans.
I remember wondering at the time why, in a city with apparently an acute housing shortage, so many of the tenants were not native Londoners (of all ethnicities) but recent immigrants.
I was woken at 3am one morning in my flat in Camden by a Brazilian girl looking for the guy who lived with the woman upstairs from me. She’d lost her key.
Both of these neighbours were elderly and had council flats, but they found that life was just so much more comfortable if they rented out one of the flats and lived together in the other one. My rent at the time was £1200 pcm.
A fairly common story. And councils seem not to care one bit.
Damian O'Connor
1 year ago
If Mansfield is involved, you can bet your bottom dollar that there is no serious case to answer. He is an activist lawyer with a whole string of dubious cases to his name.
Absolutely right. He can spot a band waggon a mile off. As to “The narrative of poverty-stricken deprivation in a tower block ghetto, a stone’s throw from one of the richest parts of London, persisted throughout the media in the weeks after the disaster” I spent about 15 years living and working in London renting rooms in other peoples houses and generally living at the margins while I worked every hour. It would have been like winning the lottery to had I been offered a flat in Grenfell, but for reasons I have no need to elucidate I was never going to be eligible. If makes me furious to watch this ongoing “community” grift
The article wasn’t arguing that the tower actually was an island of ‘poverty-stricken desperation’, but that residents who raised substantive safety (and many other) issues were treated with contempt by council, tenants’ ‘management organisation’ and contractors alike, however well argued and evidenced they were. Not everyone living in that building was an angel, or even was entitled to live there, but the issue of its intrinsic safety surely should apply whether the flats are luxury, owner-occupied, rented (or for that matter sub-rented, though the latter might not be allowed).
Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Fisher
Simon Webb
1 year ago
The panels were known about for years, 2 firefighters were killed in the Sun Valley Poultry factory in the 90’s. Blair government hated the fire service and took away input into building regulations as part of his regulatory reform. Carried out by Prescott and Pickles and handed to private inspectors – the scene was set for a disaster. A single staircase high rise involving flammable cladding is a death trap, any competent fire safety officer knows that. Politics killed those people and the culprits were not exposed until the end of the inquiry when memories have faded. The emasculation of the fire service also fanned the flames – literally.
Edward De Beukelaer
1 year ago
…. this is the same as the covid episode: it reflects our society and how it works: top down, power and money first, only hearing what one want to hear to maintain one’s stifled view of the world…..
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago
The easiest way to become rich is to get your hands on public money, whether through contacts in national government or local government. Labour will pretend that this was the case with K&C only because it was a Conservative council. However, it is true throughout the country.
We need a radical reform of how we are governed.
Steve Kerr
1 year ago
This article read a little bit like a standard shocked and appalled at the evilness of the tories Guardian article, just with the more overt anti-conservative bits removed.
Local government in the housing and planning sectors, by all parties, has long been the last refuge of petty but damaging corruption in this country. It is mostly power corruption rather than direct money corruption (over cosy relationships on many levels). Grenfell was as far as I can see the combination of those corrupt practices in a range of institutions, with a range of other factors mentioned by other commenters, right down to inflexible Fire Brigade standing procedures. All of which together, contributed to the tragedy. The key issue appears to be the general decline in administrative competence and standards, rather than any specifically party political issue. Am I completely insane to see it this way?
Jorge Espinha
1 year ago
Wouldn’t mandatory insurance solve some of these problems? Insurance companies don’t like to pay premiums. If a building such a Grenfel was force to be insured against fires and accidents such as the one that happened the insurance company would make sure everything was “up to code”. No?
Thank you for this timely reminder.
Isn’t this just a classic case of ‘Britain Today’? This tragedy occurred FIVE years ago! longer than the Great War! And still the ‘enquiry’ moves on at the speed of a Sloth. I can just hear an oily Mandarin saying “kick into it into the long grass and leave it there”.
The London Fire Brigade Commissioner, one Danny Cotton (Ms), whose conduct was particularly controversial, was even permitted to retire at 50, on what many might regard as a colossal pension. What sort of message does that send to the Demos? Is it any wonder that people turn to Socialism or even worse?
As the Westway is on my line of march, I visited the site 48 hours after the event. The acrid stench still hung in the air and cinder debris was all too evident, as were the piteous notices and photographs pinned to various ‘message’ boards. My initial reaction was this ‘Holocaust’ would be buried by Officialdom, and so it has proved to be.
More tea Vicar?
From my reading of the complaints on the Nextdoor app for my neighbourhood, I don’t think life under Labour local authorities is any better. If you depend on the State for housing and other life essentials, you are a person to whom things are done in this country, and not very well done to boot.
Precisely, they are ‘all as rotten as each other’. Great!
Those responsible for running the flats were predominantly Labour, and one of those on the board was then elected as the MP at the following General Election.
A more interesting story is the numerous sub-sub-tenants in the building, most of whom were illegal immigrants that were rewarded by the post-fire furore leading to them being given special immigration status, as if they were Afghan translators or Gurkha veterans.
I remember wondering at the time why, in a city with apparently an acute housing shortage, so many of the tenants were not native Londoners (of all ethnicities) but recent immigrants.
I was woken at 3am one morning in my flat in Camden by a Brazilian girl looking for the guy who lived with the woman upstairs from me. She’d lost her key.
Both of these neighbours were elderly and had council flats, but they found that life was just so much more comfortable if they rented out one of the flats and lived together in the other one. My rent at the time was £1200 pcm.
A fairly common story. And councils seem not to care one bit.
If Mansfield is involved, you can bet your bottom dollar that there is no serious case to answer. He is an activist lawyer with a whole string of dubious cases to his name.
Absolutely right. He can spot a band waggon a mile off.
As to “The narrative of poverty-stricken deprivation in a tower block ghetto, a stone’s throw from one of the richest parts of London, persisted throughout the media in the weeks after the disaster”
I spent about 15 years living and working in London renting rooms in other peoples houses and generally living at the margins while I worked every hour.
It would have been like winning the lottery to had I been offered a flat in Grenfell, but for reasons I have no need to elucidate I was never going to be eligible.
If makes me furious to watch this ongoing “community” grift
The article wasn’t arguing that the tower actually was an island of ‘poverty-stricken desperation’, but that residents who raised substantive safety (and many other) issues were treated with contempt by council, tenants’ ‘management organisation’ and contractors alike, however well argued and evidenced they were. Not everyone living in that building was an angel, or even was entitled to live there, but the issue of its intrinsic safety surely should apply whether the flats are luxury, owner-occupied, rented (or for that matter sub-rented, though the latter might not be allowed).
The panels were known about for years, 2 firefighters were killed in the Sun Valley Poultry factory in the 90’s. Blair government hated the fire service and took away input into building regulations as part of his regulatory reform. Carried out by Prescott and Pickles and handed to private inspectors – the scene was set for a disaster. A single staircase high rise involving flammable cladding is a death trap, any competent fire safety officer knows that. Politics killed those people and the culprits were not exposed until the end of the inquiry when memories have faded. The emasculation of the fire service also fanned the flames – literally.
…. this is the same as the covid episode: it reflects our society and how it works: top down, power and money first, only hearing what one want to hear to maintain one’s stifled view of the world…..
The easiest way to become rich is to get your hands on public money, whether through contacts in national government or local government. Labour will pretend that this was the case with K&C only because it was a Conservative council. However, it is true throughout the country.
We need a radical reform of how we are governed.
This article read a little bit like a standard shocked and appalled at the evilness of the tories Guardian article, just with the more overt anti-conservative bits removed.
Local government in the housing and planning sectors, by all parties, has long been the last refuge of petty but damaging corruption in this country. It is mostly power corruption rather than direct money corruption (over cosy relationships on many levels). Grenfell was as far as I can see the combination of those corrupt practices in a range of institutions, with a range of other factors mentioned by other commenters, right down to inflexible Fire Brigade standing procedures. All of which together, contributed to the tragedy. The key issue appears to be the general decline in administrative competence and standards, rather than any specifically party political issue. Am I completely insane to see it this way?
Wouldn’t mandatory insurance solve some of these problems? Insurance companies don’t like to pay premiums. If a building such a Grenfel was force to be insured against fires and accidents such as the one that happened the insurance company would make sure everything was “up to code”. No?