may I add that the cladding may have not been the cause of deaths, the amount of PE core seems to me insufficient, and the PIR (polyisocyanurate foam) may be.

 

often patience is really a virtue.

 

I'm sure that will be a great comfort to those affected.

 

I find it odd that you should give so much attention to these technical aspects as above but not one word....not a scooby...regarding the political context, the warnings given by the Fire Brigade to Ministers, the protests of the action group and this despite the articles linked which have clearly shown this. You are at liberty to ignore all of the above of course though one is liable to suspect that such selective blindness is a symptom of political bias. There are some things which are above politics, and when an apparent injustice on this scale has occurred I would suggest that this is one of them.

I do of course have a political opinion, I post regularly on the brexit thread. I am a centrist and in this tragedy, we all owe to the victim to do something to ensure that this cannot happen again, not in the 21st century.

Jumping to conclusions is not the right thing.

I do of course have a political opinion, I post regularly on the brexit thread. I am a centrist and in this tragedy, we all owe to the victim to do something to ensure that this cannot happen again, not in the 21st century.

Jumping to conclusions is not the right thing.

 

Even centrists may be allowed to think when presented with facts such as the Tory policy of denigrating and degrading H&S regulations. Even Centrists are allowed to ponder why appeals made by the Fire Brigade regarding the safety of Tower blocks were disregarded as were the legitimate concerns of the Action group. Did these things not happen do you think or are you just refusing to acknowledge them?

Don't worry.....the right-wing apologists have already started to shift blame to the EU and "Green regulation.

 

georgew, I don't support the tories. Quite the opposite.

You would have known this from the brexit thread.

georgew, I don't support the tories. Quite the opposite.

You would have known this from the brexit thread.

 

You may not do but even a superficial reading of your contributions to this thread show that your attitude towards this tragedy is skewed to an extraordinary degree.

 

I do believe that if you were to interrupt a Cannibal at dinner you would complain only about his table manners.

But the effective IRA violence had to come first in order to trigger negotiations that brought results.

 

This is why the Palestinians have achieved nothing, deprived of the arms and access necessary to really hurt Israel, there's no need for the latter to negotiate any advantage for the Palestinians. They can just carry on taking land and property at will in a form of slow motion genocide.

.

I don't want to be hijacking this thread, but

I cannot agree with your first point, . Both England and Ireland were joining the EEC, I have always been convinced that the activities of the then NI establishment would have been exposed, for the corrupt practices they were. The official unionist party would have more in common with your Torry party than say the DUP, which is a populist party .,But that is in the realms of if only. The cycles of violence, repression , recruiting, getting creation etc, only served to delay and a settlement harder to achieve.

The same has been happening for years with the London Ambulance Service, constant reductions and fiddling with the operational side to save money. By fiddling the figures they can still claim that 60 to 75% of calls meet the response time target of 8 minutes, but the reality is very different.

 

Crews are regularly despatched on genuine emergencies but then diverted half way when something considered even more urgent crops up. They can even get diverted yet again, leaving the earlier callers stuck for up to an hour or more, simply because there are not enough ambulances any more.

.

 

I am also told that if a patient is found by a police officer or fire fighter, they are then classed as being in the care of the emergency services. This counts as "response provided" as far as ambulance arrival targets are concerned. That patient then goes down the priority list.

 

The air ambulance in my region suffers misuse and inappropriate tasking in an effort to fudge response times. They are regularly despatched to minor injury type incidents which the conventional meat waggon should be attending.

I don't want to be hijacking this thread, but

I cannot agree with your first point, . Both England and Ireland were joining the EEC, I have always been convinced that the activities of the then NI establishment would have been exposed, for the corrupt practices they were. The official unionist party would have more in common with your Torry party than say the DUP, which is a populist party .,But that is in the realms of if only. The cycles of violence, repression , recruiting, getting creation etc, only served to delay and a settlement harder to achieve.

 

We'll probably never agree on this. Regardless of European influence, I don't think the Unionists would ever have conceded anything without the joint violence of the IRA, Unionist and British forces bringing chaos to the country first.

 

As Ian Paisley was fond of shouting, "Never, never, never."

.

I am also told that if a patient is found by a police officer or fire fighter, they are then classed as being in the care of the emergency services. This counts as "response provided" as far as ambulance arrival targets are concerned.

 

The equivalent dodge in London is fast response motorcycle and car based paramedics. When they arrive it's counted as ambulance has attended, even though an ambulance is usually still necessary.

 

These fast responders are often based at strategic points on the streets or other official locations, rather than ambulance stations, to enable the nearest to reach the scene quickly and achieve target times.

.

Attempts to view this as a tragic event, but one limited to mistakes made in the refurbishment of the Tower Block seem unlikely to succeed. Protests that the incident should not be politicised and that this amounts to "bad taste" appear to have been ignored.

 

"The extent to which government ministers failed to act on expert warnings about inadequate fire safety rules before the Grenfell Tower disaster in London can be revealed by the Observer.

As public outrage mounted and political pressure grew on Theresa May over the tragedy, former chief fire officer Ronnie King – who is secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on fire safety – said urgent requests for meetings with ministers and action to tighten rules were stonewalled.

 

King also revealed that ministers had failed to insist that life-saving sprinkler systems were mandatory in the design of new schools in England, despite clear recommendations in reports commissioned by the government itself, which advocated their use."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/17/tower-block-fire-warnings-grenfell-victims

George, does not all the utterances you have made argue strongly for a judicial court of inquiry, where these allegations, quotes etc can be repeated under oath and their veracity confirmed. There has been much stated about the partisan nature of specific newspapers running a Tory agenda, with semitruths and innuendo, why might papers from the opposite viewpoint not also be suspect.

Woosh has been consistent in making the point that facts are needed, I he not correct.

I am reminded that for every problem there is a simple solution , but it's often wrong.

George, does not all the utterances you have made argue strongly for a judicial court of inquiry, where these allegations, quotes etc can be repeated under oath and their veracity confirmed. There has been much stated about the partisan nature of specific newspapers running a Tory agenda, with semitruths and innuendo, why might papers from the opposite viewpoint not also be suspect.

Woosh has been consistent in making the point that facts are needed, I he not correct.

I am reminded that for every problem there is a simple solution , but it's often wrong.

 

Of course one would argue for a Court of Inquiry but then the power of the Establishment, such as it is... may ensure that justice may still be denied...going by experience.

 

As to woosh's insistence upon facts I'll say this....when one is commenting upon a tragedy in which Mothers have been throwing their babies from a Tower block, and when that person has been given a positive cornucopia of evidence of Government degrading H&S regs, the ignoring of risk reports from the Fire authorities, the ignoring of residents' real concerns and of their refusal to approve sprinklers......and yet that person ignores all of these but chooses instead to close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears and repeats over and over again " but was it the fridge" "...did a bomb blow up the fridge" and the like....then one is entitled to question whether they are arguing in bad faith and have a secret agenda of some sort.

and of their refusal to approve sprinklers

 

apparently, the KCTMO did not discuss sprinklers in the refurbishment of Grenfell. I suppose questions will be asked at the inquest.

georgew, I don't support the tories. Quite the opposite.

You would have known this from the brexit thread.

 

Really! Well, I'm dumbstruck to read that as I had you figured as the most prolific apologist for right-wing extremism in the thread. Obviously I don't count trolls!

 

Tom

Really! Well, I'm dumbstruck to read that as I had you figured as the most prolific apologist for right-wing extremism in the thread. Obviously I don't count trolls!

 

Tom

 

Woosh

Not sure if that makes you worse than me or not, you right wing apologist...

Good old Tom. What apilock.

Not sure if that makes you worse than me or not, you right wing apologist...

 

I am not too worried about oldtom's opinion of me.

he is usually one sided.

Each household will receive at least £500 in cash and £5,000 paid into an account as part of a £5m emergency fund first announced on Friday.

 

fkn joke that is so where is the rest of the cash going? i bet its the admin cost pmsl

Does anyone know how these less than vast sums of taxpayers' money earmarked for the victims of Grenfell Tower will be distributed? I am troubled by the fact that there is a likelihood that some families will have been completely wiped out when the recovery operation is finally completed.

 

I understand the slow, steady progress being made towards that end and I'm aware that a revised victim tally is likely to be announced tomorrow but I can't help coming back to the question of survivors - those now homeless and in need of aid. It seems to me that there aren't all that many or am I missing something? Unless there are lots more survivors than I have heard about, there must be an awful lot of body bags being prepared for the remainder of the recovery effort.

 

I really shudder to think about a final victim tally.

 

Tom

if you are on benefits and you got over 6k in savings ect the amount you get goes down thus why it is £5500.

 

if you got over 16k you are not entitled to anything!

 

plus no one will rent to anyone on universal credit as can be up to 10-15 weeks to get housing benefit paid so buy that time you will have evictions papers in the letter box or go in to debt as they dont back date it thus why they wont rent to them in the first place.

 

as ever that 5 million will go in hotel costs 5x the cost of council rent a week.

Each household will receive at least £500 in cash and £5,000 paid into an account as part of a £5m emergency fund first announced on Friday.

 

fkn joke that is so where is the rest of the cash going? i bet its the admin cost pmsl

 

You deliberately look for an imaginary downside, those are only initial payments, the rest of the allocated money is to replace their stuff when they get a new home, not for hotel costs which are being covered..

 

And as I forecast previously, the government is in addition going to cover all funeral and medical costs, contrary to what you said before.

 

Governments aren't stupid, they know there are people like yourself only too willing try to find fault at every opportunity. So in a high profile event like this they'll cover all the bases, emergency pocket cash, bank balance top-up, replacement of possessions, medical and funeral expenses and anything else that might crop up.

 

There is a vast difference in the way they treat national welfare, which applying to everyone is hugely expensive, and a high profile one-off like this which is peanuts to fund properly.

 

You are getting the two mixed up, they won't, since their reputation depends on it.

.

Edited June 19, 20178 yr by flecc

Almost certainly, most of the readership of these pages are too young to have any memory of this wonderful socialist. He was a major part of the post-war Attlee government which I consider to be the best government the country has ever had.

 

Clearly, even now in this second decade of the 21st century, there is another shortage of decent homes, particularly for the underprivileged. Nye Bevan was in no doubt back in 1946 about where the responsibility lay for Britain's then housing crisis. The very same political party which permitted such a disgraceful state of affairs to exist, particularly in the years following WW1, has presided over a similar, shameful repetition since 1979.

 

Jeremy Corbyn is every bit as decent a man as Clement Attlee or Aneurin Bevan and this country needs someone of such calibre right now. The sooner this corrupt bunch of lying, cheating, inbred scum is removed from office, the better. We need to rebuild the UK.

 

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1480622151958916

 

Tom

Latest news is the fire brigade attended the fridge fire on the fourth floor and extinguished it.

 

Later other fire fighters saw the flames outside the block, spreading upwards.

 

There's further details on a special Panorama program on BBC1 at 8.30 this evening.

.

Old tom, what the f*ck has that last post got to do with the fire trajedy?

 

I don't think trying to score points on which party is more virtuous has any merit. I think you will find there are as many clad towers in labour authorities as tory ones.

 

It's like zero hour contracts, the labour party is against them but try and find a labour council which doesn't have any.

Further to post #117, There remains a fault in the arithmetic of the fatality numbers at Grenfell Tower.

 

The word on the street is that there will be about 300 dead so the drip-fed figures issued so far must be way out. If there were hundreds more survivors than we have been given to understand five days after the event, where are they?

 

It is unlikely that several hundred residents all happened to go on foreign holidays at the same time so, as they have not appeared anywhere to confirm they are alive and well, I'll speculate and say they are still inside that shell of a building.

 

Now, I'd like to think that somehow, there must be another reason for the apparent absence of survivors but I cannot understand why the collator of casualty figures cannot, by now, at least give an approximation of the likely total fatalities. I say that because even if the approximation should be off the mark, it won't be any further off than the present misleading figure.

 

Tom

Old tom, what the f*ck has that last post got to do with the fire trajedy?

 

I understand your point, 'the_killjoy', and I confess it could be construed as being a little tenuous in the context of the thread.

 

Perhaps I allowed myself to get a little carried away by the fact that yet again in our modern history, we have a tory government which has singularly failed to build enough homes for a burgeoning population, just like their predecessors.

 

Clearly, they have never given any regard to the squalid conditions in which the underprivileged must live and when one looks at the speculation, (for the moment) surrounding the Grenfell Tower blaze, it serves to demonstrate a lack of regard by governments of a capitalist bent which have had ample opportunity to right things during their unbroken time in office dating back to 1979.

 

The situation has many features which should resonate with anyone sufficiently well-versed in modern history and politics to recognise how socialism in 1946 transformed Britain, particularly in the area of housebuilding and maintenance.

 

The matter has many facets to it but politics played a huge role in this disaster and there will be a reckoning before long where that will be demonstrated to have contributed greatly in this disaster.

 

Tom

Edited June 20, 20178 yr by oldtom

apparently, the London fire brigade puts out on average 3 domestic fires every day in high rise buildings. The difference is the buildings are intrinsically low risk, the fires are usually contained within the units. As flecc reminded us, the LFB did put out the fridge fire before the fire took hold of the cladding. It seems that cladding turned a safe building into an unsafe one.