Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report

I’ve just read DC’s Wikipedia entry. Anyone who wants to criticise her pension should read that and then come back on here and tell us exactly why she hadn’t earned it.

And I think bringing in Aberfan to this discussion is cheap and tawdry apart from being totally and utterly irrelevant.

People were killed because warnings were ignored , to compare such disasters is cheap and tawdry and utterly irrelevant !

Of course it is political.
Conservative politics is for low taxation and low regulation. Good Conservatives truly believe that is the best way to run a country or a neighborhood.
The council with responsibility for Grenfell Tower outsourced the refurbishment of the tower because that was less expensive than keeping that sort of expertise in house, thus doing what they thought was in the best interests of their Council Tax payers. They trusted the contractors to do a good job and to comply with regulations as the contractor thought fit, again to save money, and because they had no in house expertise.
They took these decisions because they believed them go be the correct way to do their best for their Council Tax payers.
I am sure that no one at that council thought for a minute that people would die because of their decisions.
This was not deliberate or malicious, but it WAS political.

I am working in our office at present, but quickly for those who are looking for a political aspect in regard to the Grenfell tragedy, many working in industrial safety believe the base conditions of that tragedy lay in the implementation of changes in relation to breaches of health and safety which where included in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2012.

That act very much reduced the liability on commercial organisations brought about by failures in products and processes they produced or employed. The act was passed by the House of Commons with Liberal Democrat support being they were the conservative parties coalition partners at that time.

Prime Minister David Cameron stated on the commencement of 2014 Conservative party election campaign, that it was his new year's resolution was to "kill off the health and safety culture in British industry for good". He stated further that Health and safety legislation has become an "albatross around the neck of British businesses", costing them billions of pounds a year and leaving entrepreneurs in fear of speculative claims.

Of course, Cameron left Downing Street thankfully before he could carry out the above resolution, but there have been legislative changes since the introduction of the above act that it is believed combined to impact so as to create the conditions that brought about the Grenfell tragedy.

However, I would not wish to anticipate the possible conclusions of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, and for that we will have to wait at least another year.

yes, and yet - make us all very wary of Johnson's promises to cut 'red tape' - even more drastically.

annie yes that’s right.

Having seen the Daily Mail's spin on the first Grenfell report, I'm disgusted.

Firstly, the paper blames Dany Cotton, then it accuses Labour of being "tone deaf" for making it political.

Why don't we just have lynch mobs?

Of course the survivors and relatives are upset, angry and emotional, but to encourage a blame and retribution culture without considering all the facts is despicable.

ilove I think you are being overly generous to K and C who always have one of the lowest council taxes in the country and keep it that way in their own best interests ie to be more electable. You only have to look at some of the things they found money to support to see how they acted party politically as in what won votes.

susiewoozy I agree with you. The reason I put it that way was because I wanted to make it clear that this IS political, and I thought that if I criticised the council I would be accused of just wanting to criticise the Conservatives. I thought I could make the point more clearly by remaining fairly neutral.

But we don’t know all the facts growstuff this is only the first part of the enquiry.

Isn't that what growstuff was saying?

All blame is laid upon a Tory council , and Tory government

Enquiry over

Let us hope that the second part of the enquiry will delve into the cladding issues; the decisions behind it being installed and the policies that led to its installation.

The design of the building, if I understand it aright, was based on "compartmentalisation" in the event of a serious fire, so the initial advice to the residents to stay put was in theory correct.

However, when the fire overrode these safeguards by shooting up the outside of the building, then alternative advice should have been speedily available to the residents. If I understand it this is what the report criticises the fire brigade for: not changing their advice quickly enough. This may be fair comment.

Like many people, I've seen the video of Johnson telling the London Assembly member, who raised concerns about fire service funding, to "get stuffed".

I have no idea whether the fire service would have bought the equipment which would have enabled rescues from high rise buildings or paid for training which could have prevented so many people dying or paid for inspections, but Johnson gave the impression of flippancy and not caring.

I also don't understand enough about building regs and cladding to know whether dangers could have been foreseen or prevented.

For the above reasons, I haven't "blamed" the Conservative council and government, until the outcome of the next report is published.

What I'm objecting to is the scapegoating and demonization of Dany Cotton and the spin by a populist rag.

No one is doing that annie but you were inferring that DC shouldn’t have her pension and you also brought Aberfan into it. This first report has clearly brought out the issues of the cladding in addition to that of the Fire Service

Spot on growstuff.The general tenor of this thread is very sensible and posters fully aware of how much more there is to be investigated. As you say it’s the scapegoating which is unacceptable and especially of one woman who has 32 years of service with LFS.

How could it have been foreseen?

The fact is that the council bought cladding that was too cheap and UNSAFE.
The council could or should have known about it because they bought it.
No-one told the Fire Service the cladding was so crap.
Then the electric in that building were not working correctly.
I wrote this last night.
That some residents had complained about repair not getting done and that their electric were faulty...
That is most likely the cause of the fire.
Then the cladding meant it spread too fast.

The council are at fault. The council are fault at least in two ways.
They bought the wrong cladding for a tower block and they did not make sure electrical systems in the flats were safe.

I hope the finger gets pointed in their direction.

I only brought Aberfan into it because like Grenfell there were warnings of the dangers and if these warnings had been listened to there would have been no disasters . I know how angry and distressed the survivors of Grenfell feel.

But my doing so was declared cheap and tawdry ,

Best you all get on with your politics .

You said much more than that annie see your very first post on this thread for example which was frankly ridiculous and then your cut and paste Daily Mail post about DCs ‘pension pot’. You don’t even seem to understand that her pension entitlement would hardly be affected ( if at all) by her immediate resignation as she has already over the maximum years of contributions in her THIRTY TWO years of service.

Check the thread , I did not cut and paste anything , if you must control what is posted then do get the facts correct .

I used the phrase ‘cut and paste’ sarcastically because you used the words ‘pension pot’ which was used by the DM and is completely wrong. Where did you get that error from annie? Public sector employees do not have an individual pension pot - they have a pension entitlement based on legislation which is tied to earnings ( used to be final salary and now career average).

Yes, you are so eager to post sarcastically.

Carry on , enjoy .

pinkquartz I know and I do have my own feelings about it, but I'm not going to rush into judge before the results of an official enquiry are known.

It’s not about enjoying, it’s about challenging the scapegoating of and misinformation about a public servants’s pension entitlement. I’ll carry on doing it whenever any poster posts nonsense about that - tbf though to the thread, you do seem to be in a minority of one in implying there’s an issue with her pension.