Posts by Russell Brown
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The Financial Times gets blunt:
Some of the remedies can only be determined once the investigation is complete. But there must be immediate action to help those who are now homeless and ensure the safety of the many thousands living in similar buildings. Ministers must fulfil the promise they have made to rehouse people in the local area. Any backsliding will provoke a fierce backlash from a community that already suspects the authorities would like to clear the way for gentrification. Inspections of social housing must be matched by action to enforce standards in the private rental sector. And there must be a way for residents to make their voices heard, in a system where layers of management committees and contractors can make it hard for them to extract a response.
Finally, this should serve as a warning to anyone in government who still believes in deregulation, measured on an absurd “one in three out” numerical basis, as an ideological goal.
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Hard News: Grenfell: a signal moment, in reply to Bevan Shortridge,
Here is a long form, eloquent interview with Joe Delaney, one of the residents from the Grenfell building.
This is extraordinary and I'm enraged and saddened all over again.
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Further to Andrew Schmidt's 1981 history: Simon Grigg's account of the Screaming Blamatics Tour – smack in the middle of the Springbok Tour controversy.
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Oh, here we go … The Times identified the company that subcontracted to do the cladding part of the refurbishment for Rydon, worth £2.6m of the £8.6m job. The story is paywalled below the first couple of paragraphs, but these two grabs suggest it was dodgy as hell.
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Hard News: Grenfell: a signal moment, in reply to Michael Meyers,
It's obviously early in the process so unclear what caused the fire
The early indication (leaving aside how it spread so rapidly) is that the fire began when a fridge "exploded" on the fourth floor. The Lakanal fire was eventually determined to have been started when a faulty TV caught fire.
But the Grenfell Action Group published this in 2013:
We believe that the power surges at Grenfell Tower posed a major fire risk to many residents but this is not highlighted in the Committee report. Residents witnessed smoke coming out of light fittings and other electrical appliances, some of which literally exploded. Despite the fact that these dangerous and highly alarming incidents were reported to the TMO on 11th May no serious action was taken until the problems escalated out of control on 29th May 2013.
The group complained that the council identified arcing in a mains supply cable as the cause of the surges – which went on for two weeks! – but made no attempt to find out why the arcing had happened.
The same post also notes that the company that installed new wiring was also the company that got the contract to do safety assurance on the wiring.
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Sorry folks, those two Twitter videos don't seem to be embedding in Safari. Works fine in Chrome.
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Meanwhile, someone's done the vote split for London. Holy heck.
LAB 54.5%
CON 33.2%
LD 8.8%
GRN 1.8%
UKIP 1.3% -
Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to BenWilson,
The world’s looking at it like a drunk having a moment of clarity, not some shining beacon of wisdom and guidance.
You, sir, are on fire.
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And one more: John Oliver on how royally fucked Britain is going into Brexit negotiations.
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We've (okay, I have) been talking a lot about numbers, but I watched a couple of The Guardian's regional vox pop video series Anywhere But Westminster shot either side of (and on) election day and I really appreciated the way they put faces to the various voters. It kind of made the way the vote split more real. Some vivid stuff from Corbyn rallies too.
