'A number of fatalities' confirmed as huge blaze 'sparked by a faulty FRIDGE' engulfs 27-storey buil

a reply to: TrueBrit

This was an accident. There is an enquiry into what happened and once complete we will know more. At this stage blaming the govt of the day or even the management company is premature.

a reply to: UKTruth

Not really.

The building should not have gone up like a house of cards doused in white spirit, regardless of what caused the fire, and would not have gone up the way it did, if it had proper fire breaks, or was clad correctly.

It simply would not have happened that way, and there would not be a charred, smoking ruin full of charred flesh and heat cracked bones standing where a huge number of people used to have homes, if things had been done right throughout.

But forget it UKTruth. I am sure you have some innocent pensioners, or a person with a chronic health complaint to enjoy the misery of. Better things to do, clearly, than engage with the full weight of whats gone on here.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: UKTruth

Not really.

The building should not have gone up like a house of cards doused in white spirit, regardless of what caused the fire, and would not have gone up the way it did, if it had proper fire breaks, or was clad correctly.

It simply would not have happened that way, and there would not be a charred, smoking ruin full of charred flesh and heat cracked bones standing where a huge number of people used to have homes, if things had been done right throughout.

But forget it UKTruth. I am sure you have some innocent pensioners, or a person with a chronic health complaint to enjoy the misery of. Better things to do, clearly, than engage with the full weight of whats gone on here.

Yes really.

Waiting for the investigation seems sensible, as opposed to trying to score political points off a terrible accident.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I understand perfectly well what you are saying. You are saying you are not trying to score points......and then saying it is all because of the nasty Tories - whilst ignoring Labour failings. You say the Tories had the last 7 years - you are correct. That completely ignores the 10 years prior that Labour had but i guess that doesn't fit your narrative does it?

The truth is, as i pointed out, everyone failed. And that led to this tragedy. Trying to say otherwise is simply ignoring the facts for whatever reason. And i will repeat that trying to gain political brownie points out of any tragedy is a low trick anyway, regardless of the situation. To be honest though, i am no longer suprised.......

a reply to: TrueBrit

Righto. The management company does not pay for fireproofing the building or for the £10 million refurbishment works. The building is owned by the Council. I suspect that the Council also pays these people's salaries.

Please don't type in capitals. It gives me a headache.

a reply to: Flavian

Its not a matter of ignoring it. There are two things to consider.

First: New Labour has nothing much to do with the Labour Party as it stands today, because it has been wrested from the grasp of the Blairite scum, and placed back into the caring hands of the socialist left, not the right biased centrism of the previous occupiers.

Second: The Conservatives are the ones who presided over this horror, the Conservative Ministers for Housing and for Police and Fire are the ones who hid the report and were amongst those 72 Landlords who are Conservative MPs and voted against better standards. Along with those 72 landlords, near enough the whole of the rest of the Conservative Party also voted that law down...If they had passed it instead, this incident would never have occurred.

a reply to: TrueBrit

OK. You got me. I have to go now, I'm busy.

I have to go and close down a hospital or send some orphans up chimneys and stuff.

a reply to: UKTruth

That is not what this is.

There have been too many instances lately, of the government failing the people without any excuse to do so, despite having the funding present to make changes and simply not doing it, despite having the ability to pass law and to make adjustments to the run off things in this country, to ensure that we have all our companies paying every last penny of tax, that no large company no matter where it banks can get away with avoiding or evading tax here. The idea that there is no money around is an absolute fabrication and cannot be tolerated any longer.

This is not about points scoring, this is about immediately and constantly reminding EVERYONE what is at stake, and that failure of government, its ministers, its authorities, and apparently the private companies they employ to do their jobs for them (for no good reason what so ever), has real and mortal consequences. The security services fail to arrest terrorists. They blow themselves up, or drive into and then stab several people, and no one really bats an eye, more interested in Trumps comments to the Mayor of London than they ever are in realising that the police knew the culprits names and where to find them, and just did nothing, because they are underfunded at the front line.

The Police and Fire minister along with the entire actual governing party in Parliament votes down a law which would have prevented serious fires, as does the Housing Minister, both of whom are landlords, and one of whom buried a report into fire safety in buildings government owned, and for which a private firm are legally responsible. A fire happens, people die, and the building, rather predictably fails to resist the fire in any regard whatsoever.

Its the same failure, in different departments.

"Could not be bothered, did not want to spend the money, austerity, we are not rich enough yet, oh our poor pockets".

a reply to: TrueBrit


Right, children's ward closed down along with a couple of libraries so I'm back.

Re : "we are not rich enough" etc - this building was not rented out by private landlords. It was owned by the Council and rented out to Council tenants whose rent does not go into any fat cat pockets.

But don't let that fact stop you from hurling bile and venom at rich people and pushing your anti Tory agenda.

"A law that would have prevented serious fires". Really? What, no need for fire brigades, pass a law, simple as that? All opposed by evil Tories, you say?

No one has batted an eye about the Manchester bombing or the London Bridge attack?

You sure about that? Blimey, you would have thought there would have been something about all that on the telly, eh?

a reply to: oldcarpy

Fine.

Ignore the building managers, the four people on six figure salaries to fail to do their job. Ignore their political affiliations, and their motivations, which certainly have not traditionally been the safety and security of their tenants, in any of their properties.

Ignore the very real problem of allowing landlords to vote on law which affects them, a vote from which they should rightly have abstained, and DID, without any doubt what so ever, affect the putting off of the work that needed doing on these premises, and countless others throughout the country.

Ignore the burial of reports which could easily have lead to a solution which prevented this mess.

Ignore all the evidence that backs up what I am saying, and sit in the barren field in which you keep the basis for your argument. I care not.

Edit to add:

And about the Manchester and London attacks, no... be specific, like I was. No one batted an eye at the fact that these attacks should have been prevented, and when I say bat an eye, there are not legions of people standing outside Parliament, and the offices of the intelligence services, demanding Theresa May take responsibility for the cuts she permitted as Home Secretary, despite being warned not to by people who knew better, and continuing to bugger up the police and security services after gaining the Prime Ministers position.

Nothing should have been getting done since the Manchester attack, you should not be able to move for the permanent protest, such a large one that the police could never contain it.

And yet? No one batted a bloody eye. They just kept eating the lies in the paper and doing nothing to educate themselves.

So... what is the situation in YOUR city?

Combustible aluminium cladding is 'widely used' in Canberra

Flammable aluminium composite panels fitted to the outside of the building are widely suspected to have contributed to the inferno.

A similar type of panel has been blamed for a fire that devastated the Lacrosse apartment block in Melbourne's docklands in 2014.

London fire cladding: Fears for dozens of Melbourne buildings

SIX buildings with flammable cladding are on a watch list by Melbourne authorities.

The revelation comes as a peak engineers body says a building loophole is allowing highly combustible material to be used unchecked.

Engineers Australia estimates more than 100 Melbourne buildings have the same cladding believed to have been used to cover London’s Grenfell Tower.

Cladding hit to local property prices

Australian Society of Building Consultants NSW president Chris Dyce said the “nightmare” scale of the London inferno had driven home the danger of plastic-based aluminium composite cladding and it would affect the Australian property market. “This is going to extend beyond an issue of personal safety and affect the whole property market,” Mr Dyce told The Weekend Australian. “For ­example, to scaffold a 24-storey tower, take off the panels and reclad it ... you are talking serious money.”

There are up to 2700 buildings in Sydney that use this type of cladding for energy ­efficiency and aesthetics. Half of those built in Melbourne in the past decade are non-compliant on the issue.

In Australian cases where remediation has been required — there have been two in Melbourne — unit owners have had to bear the brunt of the expenses of rectification work, even where they were not involved in the building or development process.

A 2014 apartment fire fuelled by aluminium composite panel cladding used on the Melbourne Lacrosse building triggered a flurry of regulatory interest in the matter but, almost three years later, little has changed.

In Melbourne alone, 13 apartment buildings are still the subject of “compliance” work after being linked to the builder of Harvest Apartments in South Melbourne in a secondary audit by the Victorian Building Authority.

I won't pretend to know a ton about British politics so I'm not trying to be a smartass here, I'm legitimately asking. If people are angry that this building was allowed to remain in such a dangerous condition due to weak fire codes, isn't that the legislature's fault? Or city officials? What does the Prime Minister have to do with it?

a reply to: face23785

After a similar, but not so enormous, tower block fire in 2009, the Government commissioned a report on fire safety standards in high-rise buildings. The new Government (the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition of 2010-15) then not only kept that report secret, but did more or less exactly nothing that the report recommended. The Housing Minister who was responsible for this is now Theresa May's chief of staff, having lost his parliamentary seat 10 days ago and been appointed to a non-ministerial role almost immediately.

a reply to: audubon

Thank you. I had heard something to that effect, although it wasn't explained as well as you did. So my next question is, does the Housing Minister have the authority to outlaw certain building materials or does that have to be done by Parliament?

a reply to: face23785

The Housing Minister can't introduce a law on his/her own, it would have to be put through both chambers of Parliament. There are bits of secondary legislation that come afterward, that the minister might think up - these are basically 'tweaks' to existing laws, and can be rubber-stamped without going through Parliament all over again.

This is complicated by the fact that a lot of EU legislation affects the UK too, without ever having been passed into English/Scots law. This is one of the big problems with Brexit - how we pull out of Europe without totally unravelling 40 years of accumulated and well-established law.

Anyway, let me get to the point here. The answer is: No-one knows if the stuff used at Grenfell was 100 per cent outlawed in the UK. If it wasn't outlawed, it was probably still illegal to use it the way it was used. Our illustrious treasury minister, Phil Hammond - a man who looks like a slightly melted waxwork of a patronising cock-turkey with a bad hangover - has appeared on TV today and stated that the material was in fact banned from use in the UK. No-one has yet substantiated this claim or pinned down how and when it was made illegal.

My suspicion is that it was banned by the EU and that the UK Government is going to look pretty farming stupid at best.

a reply to: audubon

Gotcha, so realistically nothing to do with May. Barely anything to do with someone working for May. That article doesn't make clear what they mean by "sat on it". I'd be interested to know if it sat in the Minister's desk or if members of Parliament had access to it, but it just wasn't available to the general public. Either way, sounds like Parliament dropped the ball. With or without the report, there seems to be enough public information about that 2009 fire that everyone knows the fire codes should've been fixed, and the people who should've done that did nothing.

Sounds to me like people are just using this as a lame excuse to call for May to resign after the election last week.

a reply to: TrueBrit


I just stated some facts, such as that this block is not owned by rich landlords but the Council.

Playing party politics about these tragedies is shameful.

As for their not being legions of people on the streets protesting about Theresa May re the Manchester and London attacks, that might be because not everyone is as rabidly anti Tory as you are and that hardly anyone apart from yourself thinks that she is personally to blame for these terror attacks. Or that everything is always the fault of evil Tories, for that matter.

a reply to: oldcarpy

Well, with respect to your arguments, KCTMO is a private company, one which is designed to take over all responsibilities of management of the properties they control on behalf of the council or councils they operate for. The tenants do NOT refer to the council as their landlords, because the council are not the ones in control of what goes on with or in, the buildings controlled by KCTMO. KCTMO are. Their top brass have been getting very rich, thank you very much, from exploiting the projects they manage, such that the top operatives are taking home six figures. That is inappropriate.

The government never should have employed a management agent for this building or any other. They should be employing people directly, not private companies, but pieces of the government instead, to do this vital work, so that accountability is never in question, so that there is no difference between the landlord of the properties managed, and the people managing them, and so that governments, regardless of which party happens to lead at the time, are the ONLY party which can be taken to task in the event of failure. Simply put, this crap would never have happened, if social housing was not being shovelled off to "non-profits" rather than being managed by a government department directly... and if it HAD of happened anyway, then the matter would be a damned sight easier to have a reckoning over. No grey space, no messing around. Of course, that is the only reason these things got palmed off in the first place, to create a buffer between government, and blame for its stupidity.

And being realistic about what happens and why is not shameful, any more than it is not shameful to point out that the reason that flammable cladding which was added to the building, was only placed there to improve the appearance of the building so as to avoid depressing the rich whose properties surround the place.

And as for your comments regarding the lack of effective and properly sized protest, that, with respect, is utter rot, and I said the same thing about Blair and his cronies, and the Iraq War. We should have been busting into Parliament and taking over THEN, leave alone now!

a reply to: TrueBrit

Outsourcing of all kinds of services is very common for a whole raft of services provided by local authorities beyond the scope/expertise of local authorities. Project managing a £10 million refurbishment is no easy thing and people get paid good money to do this sort of work, particularly due to the responsibilities involved.

But yes, I agree that they should be liable if things were cocked up or deliberately done the wrong way but let's see what the investigation comes up with before we start demanding that heads should roll.

Lynch mob mentality is generally a bad thing.

a reply to: oldcarpy

It normally is, but when the government continues decades of tyrannical overreach in other nations, while refusing to meet the needs, the basic needs of its own citizens, at the expense of their lives no less, there is a rather more urgent need to take control away from those tyrants, and place it in the hands of people who actually bare some moral similarity to those they preside over.

The Tories, even now, are umming and ahhing about sorting out housing for the effected people, saying it could take as long as three weeks... NO! NOW, YESTERDAY, THE HOUR IT STARTED! These people should NEVER have been out on the street, not for one single solitary second. They should all have had clothes and blankets and bedding and shelter within no more than ten hours of their building going up, they should not have had to have spent one single moment sleeping on someones lawn or on common ground. These things need to be sorted and on stream in HOURS, NOT days, weeks or a month!

And for those saying "Its complicated" or "You have to think of where the money comes from" I would put it to you that no, it is very simple, and no, we do NOT need to think about where the money is coming from. In cases like this, and I would argue, when it comes to modification of buildings to prevent tragedy like this from EVER occurring again, we need to spend the damned money, and recoup whatever losses come as a result well after, with no public fanfare or complaint from any side of the house, and no mercenary tactics to sting the poorest over it either.

It just needs doing. You see, THAT is proper disaster management. It happens FAST, unbelievably so.

If the government cannot do these things with the huge amount of money we pay them in tax every year, and get the maths perfectly right every time, then they need kicking out IMMEDIATELY, and replacing with people who can.