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Towerblock on Fire in West London


Chaldanya

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She handled it about as badly as you could imagine. On the other hand it's sad that we judge our leaders so heavily on what is nothing more than a heavily managed photo opportunity. 

In general I'm far more interested in how well a prime minister does their job and runs the country than whether they can fake a hug and a sad face in times of tragedy. Unfortunately May can't do either very well but that's another topic.

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This was an avoidable tragedy, the fact that corners were cut and no one took the residents concerns seriously is appalling, I live in the same borough give or take a mile away and we've been to donate clothes, food and water, to lose loved ones, your home and everything else must be unimaginable and I hope the people affected get the answers they deserve.

 

Personally I think Mays, Corbyns and Sadiq Kahns presence, wether for political reasons or not was unhelpful.

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1 hour ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

She handled it about as badly as you could imagine. On the other hand it's sad that we judge our leaders so heavily on what is nothing more than a heavily managed photo opportunity. 

In general I'm far more interested in how well a prime minister does their job and runs the country than whether they can fake a hug and a sad face in times of tragedy. Unfortunately May can't do either very well but that's another topic.

Yeah, funny thing though, people often appreciate the support shown by elected officials and criticize ones who don't show up as cowardly, unfeeling  bastards.

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Lots of stories like this circulating at the moment. Despite a lot of talk from government, there's startlingly little presence on the ground from council or national government representatives. People don't really know what's going on and the charities have been coordinating the response between them, because of a lack of government leadership.

For example, no-one set up a facility for family members to find one another or an information flow so people could locate one another or discover if people were listed as missing or not. That's all been done in a very ad hoc method.

The official death toll remains at 30 confirmed dead, but 58 in total dead and missing. The BBC has been told that the minimum ballpark figure they are looking at is 70+ but even this might be on the low end of things. One of the problems is that officials have still not worked out who was in the tower and who was not, so still don't have a master list of who they should be looking for.

The response to this has been awesome from the emergency services, but the actual government response has been shocking.

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I just can't help being suspicious this just exploits Ealing and makes it clear Chelsea and Kensington are going to do fuck all for these people. Does it mean they will be re-housed in the labour controlled council area? Which I presume is a less rich area? Ealing may have taken control but how can they use Chelsea and Kensington's assets? It seems like one little protest and they say that's it then, we're closing the town hall and its all too hard. I think the displaced people should stay in the Kensington hotels they are in and demand a flat i Kensington.

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Yup, they should be rehoused in the same borough, which is going to be difficult as the social housing stock is pretty low.

Forcing these people to move to other boroughs, or out of the city, really will be a recipe for further protests and riots.

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21 hours ago, Werthead said:

Further to the last, Ealing Council are now taking over operational responsibility for the response to the fire, basically because Kensington are too incompetent.

That's quite remarkable.

 

That's....shocking, yes. And speaks to how poorly functional the local council must be. To not go into a crisis organisation and request aid from government authorities until several days have passed is baffling to me. As far as I know, that's standard procedure and every local council has a crisis organisation pre-organised and a crisis plan, which in case of emergencies can be put immediately into action. Generally these things are tested and practice run every year or every other year, to make sure everything is in place when needed.

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I saw today that those who now refuse to be relocated to outside London are going to be declared 'intentionally homeless' so they can just be denied basically any assistance at all. Can't see how that could possible inflame things at all.

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1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I saw today that those who now refuse to be relocated to outside London are going to be declared 'intentionally homeless' so they can just be denied basically any assistance at all. Can't see how that could possible inflame things at all.

I can't believe they have the hide to do that. I mean I assume that's a standard policy but you think someone would step in and make some kind of exception. Its not as if they seem to apply strict standards for fire safety, contracting for work tarting up council blocks, or anything like that.

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The whole thing is one gigantic clusterfuck now.

You have TM on the one hand being utterly incompetent and showing practically zero emotion, avoiding visits and pretty much sticking to some shitty script read speeches on the subject. Honestly, watching her interviews and speeches it's like a talking zombie there, devoid of any emotion. I fully expect her to just sit there one day and say something like "fuck 'em, they are poor we're glad they're dead".

Then you have the council as well showing no intention of actually doing anything. The RICHEST area of the whole UK mind you, and they can't hep out people from one building. Imagine what would have happened if this was one of those 1 million quid flats a few miles away that got set alight, i guess their response would be quite different.
The crazy thing is that the council taxes in that area must be astronomical from some residents and streets, money that should be flowing back into the WHOLE community to improve people's lives, not just tart up some old tower block. £200k on a sprinkler would have been far better than millions on the cladding. How attractive does that tower block look now guys, as you sit in your £1,000,000 apartments eating fancy breakfasts and looking across at a 24 storey funeral pyre????

BUT....on the whole other side of the equation you have the fire service who basically did whatever they needed to do to try and save lives. Read the article by the fire service commander in the Guardian, she decided to ignore protocal and had 100+ guys in that inferno just to save lives. It could have been another 9/11 because they knew they had to try to save people and make a difference. Why the fuck are the council and government not doing the same here?!?!
You don't need a public inquiry to see that money was wasted making it look pretty that should have gone on safety features.

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On ‎6‎/‎16‎/‎2017 at 10:19 PM, Werthead said:

More than a few outlets suggesting this is Theresa May's Katrina, and it will be very, very difficult for her to recover from it. The mishandling of fire safety legislation (under both the Coalition and New Labour), the repeating ignoring of the very loud voices from the tower block and even threatening them with legal action if they didn't shut up, and the decision to spend millions on this deathtrap cladding to make the building look nice for the gentrified neighbouring towers (even though a lot of them are half-empty) and not £200,000 on a sprinkler system, has shown this was a disaster waiting to happen.

There's now the scramble of fire safety people running around the country making sure other dodgy towers aren't in a similar state, with what appears to now be at least 70 (and possibly more) dead. Utterly horrendous.

 

There are some very hard questions that the local council needs to answer.  Kensington & Chelsea Borough is rolling in money.  They could afford to cover the £1.5m loss made by the Holland Park Opera Festival, but not, it seems, the relatively small amount needed for fireproof cladding.

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12 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Ok, the tragedy itself seems to have diverted to a lot of government blaming. So, since I can't recall the finer details about Council flats from my time living in London some years ago, can someone remind me please. Are these flats that people live in for free?

Essentially yes. They are social housing in that they are provided for people less well off who can't afford a property (and in London there are plenty of people in that situation).

The people will pay a certain amount of rental but well below what a private landlord would be charging.

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1 hour ago, Lordsteve666 said:

Essentially yes. They are social housing in that they are provided for people less well off who can't afford a property (and in London there are plenty of people in that situation).

The people will pay a certain amount of rental but well below what a private landlord would be charging.

So, not free. Merely below market rate.

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3 minutes ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

So, not free. Merely below market rate.

Yes.

Essentially it's paid for housing but controlled by the local authority, not private landlords who could just charge what they want.You'll still pay rental but at a rate fixed by the council/government etc.

Generally it's prioritized for people who are homeless, disabled and require financial assistance, or live in properties that are unfit for habitation.Though anyone within certain limits can apply.

This might help explain it more: https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/council_housing_association/priority_for_council_housing

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This story about letters sent to various Tory or Lib Dem ministers regarding them spending years making no progress on a fire safety review does have some eerily specific warnings, particularly this one to the Lib Dem minister:

The group replied to say they "were at a loss to understand, how you had concluded that credible and independent evidence, which had life safety implications, was NOT considered to be urgent".

"As a consequence the group wishes to point out to you that should a major fire tragedy, with loss of life, occur between now and 2017 in, for example, a residential care facility or a purpose built block of flats, where the matters which had been raised here, were found to be contributory to the outcome, then the group would be bound to bring this to others' attention."

 

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