Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Too little too late.
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Grenfell Tower fire in North Kensington - news and discussion
- Thread starter JTG
- Start date
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
its taken this long for them to realise brazening it out isn't going to work. Never ceases to amaze me, that complete arrogance. If it were me I'd have been cap in hand resignation the minute I saw the tower burning. But not these people.
Yeah, but you're not an arrogant, fucking scumbag.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I think that there has been a mode of thought that has grown in (particularly the more corporate aspect of) the political caste - that they really are somewhat untouchable. It seems inconceivable to us that people like Paget-Brown, May, even people like Sadiq Khan, can make what seem to us like unutterably crass statements or decisions, and not realise how they're going to be received. So up go the barriers, down come the victim-blaming and self-protective denials, and we sit there aghast at the total insensitivity of it all.
Part of it is maybe an excessive emphasis on media training - perhaps they truly believe that by "handling" people, their PR tech will enable them to move past the untutored expectations of the grubby proles - but when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We (most of us) don't have that hammer, so when we hypothesise about how we'd deal with it, we look for other solutions - like compassion, honesty, openness, admitting our fallibility, that kind of thing. And then we sit there open-mouthed when these supposed professionals just don't realise what people want.
Good. Perhaps the pendulum will begin to swing the other way.
What does amaze me is that these PR strategies don't seem to include the "just go out there, give it 100% sincerity, and say sorry" option. Maybe they don't think their principals are even capable of faking sincerity. I can see why.
It also helps if you don't completely despise people who aren't the same as you. Especially those you purport to represent.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
One out - all out
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
They hang as well as anyone else and better than mostwhat will happen to their assumed knighthoods??won't no one think of the senior tories?!
Treacle Toes
Time
gawkrodger
Well-Known Member
But we weren't raised in posh private schools
Just heard part of Paget-Brown's resignation statement. Due to 'perceived failings' by the council. No acceptance that the council has done anything wrong.
Even if you wait for the results of the enquiry, it's clear they fucked up their response and have treated those affected with contempt. FFS.
Even if you wait for the results of the enquiry, it's clear they fucked up their response and have treated those affected with contempt. FFS.
It's less to do with the 'extent and ferocity'. The population of those affected in that block cause massive complications for those accounting for the dead. There's the testimony of the survivors about their neighbours, concerns that health and electoral data don't reflect actual occupancy, etc. On top of that, horrifically, many of the remaining bodies will have been cremated, there will be literally ash left of the bodies. In many cases this will have been disturbed in the fire-fighting and incident investigation procedures. We will eventually have a minimum value, I doubt that we ever have a final, complete figure.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Sadiq Khan calls on PM to appoint commissioners:
Grenfell Tower fire: Sadiq Khan calls on PM to appoint commissioners - BBC News
Grenfell Tower fire: Sadiq Khan calls on PM to appoint commissioners - BBC News
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Very likely, within the paradigm, system goals and rules they thought they were supposed to be following, they weren't doing anything particularly wrong.
The problem was the paradigm, system goals and rules themselves.
Specifically, neo-liberalism as implemented in the UK.
So its no surprise people in their position are struggling with a bit of cognitive dissonance right now.
Lurdan
old wave
Grenfell cladding boss is a government adviser - Times (Paywalled)
Sean O’Neill, Chief Reporter
July 1 2017, 12:01am, The Times
A senior executive from the company that made the insulation boards fitted to Grenfell Tower is an adviser to the government on building regulations.
Mark Allen, technical director of Saint Gobain UK, which makes Celotex insulation, is on the Building Regulations Advisory Committee (BRAC), which advises Sajid Javid, the communities and local government secretary.
Scotland Yard said last week that its investigation into the fire, which claimed at least 80 lives, had found that the Celotex RS 5000 insulation boards fitted in a large refurbishment project had proved highly flammable. Although classified as “low risk” in terms of fire, police said “the insulation samples collected from Grenfell Tower combusted soon after the test started”.
The product has been withdrawn from use on high-rise buildings but Mr Allen remains on the committee that met last week to discuss Grenfell.
BRAC members are appointed by the secretary of state. It meets three times a year but does not publish minutes.
Fire safety experts complain that the committee is “heavily weighted towards the building industry” and has proved “difficult to engage with”.
There is concern that regulations have failed to keep pace with changes in construction techniques and the development of new types of materials, including the kind of external cladding used in the £8.6 million Grenfell refit.
Cladding materials have been fitted to thousands of buildings and the continuing 100 per cent failure rate in tests on samples from blocks of flats drew criticism of the process yesterday.
Panels on 149 buildings from 45 local authority areas are described as having failed the tests, which are narrowly focused on the core material in cladding.
Sample panels are taken from buildings to fire-testing houses where they are taken apart and small fragments of the core material removed. This is then burned in pure oxygen to find if they are flammable, fire retardant and therefore burn slowly, or non-combustible.
Lord Porter of Spalding, chairman of the Local Government Association, said the tests were flawed as they were not examining panels in their entirety and not looking at insulation boards which, as in Grenfell, are fixed behind the cladding.
After the comments, the expert panel set up by Mr Javid after the fire said that the tests would not always mean cladding had to be removed from buildings. The panel said its approach was to conduct “screening tests” to determine what was in panels so measures could be taken to ensure residents were safe.
The Fire Protection Association had to conduct a postcard lobbying campaign to secure a meeting with the BRAC as it sought tighter fire-safety measures on building regulations.
It is concerned that the regulations have not been fully reviewed for more than ten years and are “not fit for the prescription of new building and refurbishment methods and materials”.
The government said the BRAC was made up of volunteers chosen by ministers for their experience and expertise. A Celotex spokesman declined to comment on Mr Allen’s committee position.
July 1 2017, 12:01am, The Times
A senior executive from the company that made the insulation boards fitted to Grenfell Tower is an adviser to the government on building regulations.
Mark Allen, technical director of Saint Gobain UK, which makes Celotex insulation, is on the Building Regulations Advisory Committee (BRAC), which advises Sajid Javid, the communities and local government secretary.
Scotland Yard said last week that its investigation into the fire, which claimed at least 80 lives, had found that the Celotex RS 5000 insulation boards fitted in a large refurbishment project had proved highly flammable. Although classified as “low risk” in terms of fire, police said “the insulation samples collected from Grenfell Tower combusted soon after the test started”.
The product has been withdrawn from use on high-rise buildings but Mr Allen remains on the committee that met last week to discuss Grenfell.
BRAC members are appointed by the secretary of state. It meets three times a year but does not publish minutes.
Fire safety experts complain that the committee is “heavily weighted towards the building industry” and has proved “difficult to engage with”.
There is concern that regulations have failed to keep pace with changes in construction techniques and the development of new types of materials, including the kind of external cladding used in the £8.6 million Grenfell refit.
Cladding materials have been fitted to thousands of buildings and the continuing 100 per cent failure rate in tests on samples from blocks of flats drew criticism of the process yesterday.
Panels on 149 buildings from 45 local authority areas are described as having failed the tests, which are narrowly focused on the core material in cladding.
Sample panels are taken from buildings to fire-testing houses where they are taken apart and small fragments of the core material removed. This is then burned in pure oxygen to find if they are flammable, fire retardant and therefore burn slowly, or non-combustible.
Lord Porter of Spalding, chairman of the Local Government Association, said the tests were flawed as they were not examining panels in their entirety and not looking at insulation boards which, as in Grenfell, are fixed behind the cladding.
After the comments, the expert panel set up by Mr Javid after the fire said that the tests would not always mean cladding had to be removed from buildings. The panel said its approach was to conduct “screening tests” to determine what was in panels so measures could be taken to ensure residents were safe.
The Fire Protection Association had to conduct a postcard lobbying campaign to secure a meeting with the BRAC as it sought tighter fire-safety measures on building regulations.
It is concerned that the regulations have not been fully reviewed for more than ten years and are “not fit for the prescription of new building and refurbishment methods and materials”.
The government said the BRAC was made up of volunteers chosen by ministers for their experience and expertise. A Celotex spokesman declined to comment on Mr Allen’s committee position.
(...)
As it happens, she does draw attention to the council's 'outstanding' rating during the interview
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Both what she said and how she said it: she'll be on her way shortly, like paget-brown and fielding-melon
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
She is actually cross that her pain, her sacrifice and her achievement aren't being recognised. What's more she sounds like she actually believes it. It just goes to show how different events can look depending on where you're observing them from.
Her fundamental problem and that of Paget-Brown et al. is that they cannot conceive that they should be looking at this from the viewpoint of the burnt out, the bereaved, the injured and the frightened, the displaced, the distressed and traumatised, the angry and the saddened.
As Yvette Williams said in her contribution, the people of north Kensington ran the response to the fire, and showed that they are quite capable of running their own affairs.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
teuchter
je suis teuchter
No, that's the celotex boss. Celotex did not make the cladding.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
aye
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
I think in their world they feel afflicted by bad luck, and you can kind of see the logic: it turns out loads of other councils have also clad their blocks in flammable cladding because the system allowed it, so it is 'bad luck' that it happened in North Kensington rather than anywhere else. And a lot of the regulatory systems are set up at national level rather than local, so why should they take the blame? And which council is ready to respond to a catastrophic fire that was meant to be impossible?
What they don't understand - because why would they want to? - is that everyone sees there have been massive systemic failures, and therefore everyone with any power in those systems has to be held responsible to some extent. It's fine for the lowly building control surveyor to hold up their hands and say the system was wrong and they had no power, but it just ain't going to work if you headed the council and so were responsible for overseeing a lot of the systems.
I think one particular thing the council leaders are failing to take responsibility for is the shittiness and lack of accountability of the TMO - some great stuff in Private Eye about it right now. This was an issue where they had real power, even if they can say the building control stuff was out of their hands. But they're still stuck on 'everyone else did it too', and they can't see that people won't accept that.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
andysays
Love and solidarity
Whereas council attempts to prevent oversight of meeting were work of stupid cunt...
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