[Archived] London fire and reporting/coverage

[Baz]

The Tories complaints about non-politicising the issue are all about trying to stop the discussion. They lost credibility with Mays 4 point terrorism plan on the steps of Downing Street whilst suspending general election campaigning.

 

If a Tory is going to say on BBC TV that the PM didn't speak to residents due to security concerns,  then they need to prove that in my opinion. 

[Baz]

Boris has been defending his time as mayor, saying fire related deaths where reduced in his time in office.

A - is that not politics?

B - the terms of a fire related death where changed, so that if the person made it to hospital before dying, that was no longer recorded as a fire related death.

[JBiz]

It just makes me so angry that they ignored the concerns of the people living there. That's impossible not to criticise, and falls at the feet of those charged with the responsibility.

4000 tower blocks (would need to cite that) from my recollection in Great Britain, they shouldn't need to fight to have a safe place to live.

Sickened.

[jim mk2]

Found this little gem on t'internet

Theresa May has, at last, made a passionate public statement:

"What is needed is strong and stable sprinkler systems, systems that are truly global so that we can take back control of fires. Sprinklers means sprinklers. I will build a shared society with strong and stable cladding - cladding that's inflammable not flammable."

[47er]

13 hours ago, den said:

She refuses to do TV debates, refuses to do open electioneering and now refuses to meet the families of a terrible disaster - and I thought Corbyn wasn't a leader. At least he's human.

seriously, she's doing so much harm to the Tories.

And long may it continue!

[47er]

15 hours ago, AllRoverAsia said:

Scotland Yard have opened a criminal investigation into the tragedy.

 

That's merely to discover if the fire was started deliberately, which I assume it wasn't. That criminal investigation won't go into who was to blame over the longer term.

The inquests and the Public Enquiry will do that, depending who they pick to run it of course.

[AllRoverAsia]

5 hours ago, 47er said:

That's merely to discover if the fire was started deliberately, which I assume it wasn't. That criminal investigation won't go into who was to blame over the longer term.

The inquests and the Public Enquiry will do that, depending who they pick to run it of course.

Will the criminal investigation not look at the recent renovation, its contracts and parties involved? Or probably those areas are for the other inquiries.

There is no way this disaster can be covered up.

[Batman.]

6 hours ago, 47er said:

That's merely to discover if the fire was started deliberately, which I assume it wasn't. That criminal investigation won't go into who was to blame over the longer term.

The inquests and the Public Enquiry will do that, depending who they pick to run it of course.

I expect it's also to cover if all legal requirements were met during the building/ renovation of the buildings. A block of flats shouldn't be made of "extremely flammable" materials.

[47er]

11 minutes ago, Batman. said:

I expect it's also to cover if all legal requirements were met during the building/ renovation of the buildings. A block of flats shouldn't be made of "extremely flammable" materials.

That's about "neglect",not a criminal act in itself. Someone will undoubtedly have to make a decision on whether it amounts to "criminal neglect" but it won't be until after the inquests and the Public Enquiry have given their decisions. Prosecutors will need their input in making their decision.

There will be a time lag there.

[Batman.]

Just now, 47er said:

That's about "neglect",not a criminal act in itself. Someone will undoubtedly have to make a decision on whether it amounts to "criminal neglect" but it won't be until after the inquests and the Public Enquiry have given their decisions. Prosecutors will need their input in making their decision.

There will be a time lag there.

Yeah I can see this being a 5-10 year job to be honest.

[cn174]

The enquiry and subsequent inquest will take a long time. In 2009 there was a similar fire in London but not as big https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakanal_House_fire and it was only resolved this year. 

17 hours ago, Baz said:

B - the terms of a fire related death where changed, so that if the person made it to hospital before dying, that was no longer recorded as a fire related death.

That isn't true, if someone dies in hospital after an incident they are still recorded as a fire death until the coroner deems otherwise.

In the past 10 years, the number of fires have pretty much halved, but the number of fire deaths has largely remained the same, maybe decreased slightly, they do fluctuate but overall not much. However standardised by population they will have gone down, particularly in big urban areas like London. This will have been Boris's justification for closing stations - can make the numbers justify anything.
London FB is very well resourced and they could not have responded any better/stronger/faster to this incident. But a wider impact of the cuts are that prevention and protection activities for fire, prohibition notices, health and well being, concern for welfare for police, breaking and entry for ambulance, and anything else the fire service ends up doing on other peoples behalf nowadays, falls away. 
London get off very lightly in terms of cuts to their service, had this fire been somewhere in most of the the rest of the country the speed and weight of attack would not have been anywhere near as big. Can only hope that this incident highlights you can only keep cutting things so much and hoping things will be ok, things can only be spread so thinly, but I doubt after a bit of outcry nothing much will change. 

[AllRoverAsia]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/17/grenfell-tower-58-people-missing-presumed-dead-london-fire/

Commander Cundy, Metropolitan Police said "the police investigation into the blaze would look at the building and its refurbishment in 2016 and vowed to prosecute people "if there is evidence"."

[Paul]

I've just watched Emily Maitlis interviewing Theresa May re Grenfell.

You've got to wonder what it will take for May to answer a question directly. If ever there was a moment for a politician to answer questions surely it is now?

As for May? She needs to go immediately. Utterly incompetent and out of depth 

[Batman.]

33 minutes ago, Paul said:

I've just watched Emily Maitlis interviewing Theresa May re Grenfell.

You've got to wonder what it will take for May to answer a question directly. If ever there was a moment for a politician to answer questions surely it is now?

As for May? She needs to go immediately. Utterly incompetent and out of depth 

It is more infuriating than a Steve Kean interview. I've said it before but she is like Nicola Murray from "The Thick of It;" an absolute parody of a politician. 

Wrong and mentally unstable.

[47er]

The richest borough in the world charges among the lowest Council Tax. Even then they don't spend it!. They have reserves of 300M and in 2014 they underspent so much that they refunded 100 quid to everyone who paid the FULL charge i.e. not to people with a concession, just to those who didn't need it!

Cost of cladding the tower in safe material--another 4750 quid! But they chose to save that paltry amount and 100 people, approx, died.

True modern Toryism. 

 

[yoda]

11 hours ago, 47er said:

The richest borough in the world charges among the lowest Council Tax. Even then they don't spend it!. They have reserves of 300M and in 2014 they underspent so much that they refunded 100 quid to everyone who paid the FULL charge i.e. not to people with a concession, just to those who didn't need it!

Cost of cladding the tower in safe material--another 4750 quid! But they chose to save that paltry amount and 100 people, approx, died.

True modern Toryism. 

 

It's a Labour council

[K-Hod]

29 minutes ago, yoda said:

It's a Labour council

It has been for the last couple of weeks, after the most recent election. It had historically been Tory for a long time before that though.....

[47er]

1 hour ago, yoda said:

It's a Labour council

Is this fake news or wishful thinking Yoda? The last elections for Local Government was May 2014 and there's no more till May 2018.

Conservatives won a massive majority in Kensington, as you'd expect,with triple the number of Council seats as Labour--37 to 12 I think it was.

Nicholas Paget-Brown is the Tory leader ands been defending these terrible decisions all weekend.

1 hour ago, K-Hod said:

It has been for the last couple of weeks, after the most recent election. It had historically been Tory for a long time before that though.....

Am I missing something here?

[K-Hod]

Yeah, I'm nigh-on certain that Kensington was one of Labour's Tory gains from the last election tbh. (Even the Daily Mail reported it!)

[Batman.]

Has yoda seriously just suggested it is a "Labour run council?" 

It has been a safe Conservative seat for years. Just how little do you know about the reality of the things you have such strong opinions on?

[Paul]

4 hours ago, K-Hod said:

Yeah, I'm nigh-on certain that Kensington was one of Labour's Tory gains from the last election tbh. (Even the Daily Mail reported it!)

I think you're correct, it was a Labour gain. It was, I think, the last result to be announced in the general election. yoda was suggesting it is a Labour COUNCIL which is incorrect. Wishful thinking. 

[Paul]

4 hours ago, yoda said:

It's a Labour council

Conservative 40

Labour 7

LibDem 3

[jim mk2]

4 hours ago, yoda said:

It's a Labour council

Look what crawled out of the woodwork.

I note that in failing to address the issue of fire safety successive Tory governments were only responding to public pressure, that is to say the Daily Mail, which has been campaigning against Health and Safety "nonsense" for a decade. It would be no surprise if K&C slipped into this new culture of understanding.  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303137/Health-safety-nonsense-revealed-Toothpicks-removed-bubbles-banned-childs-party.html

Death toll has now risen to 79. 

 

[JBiz]

5 hours ago, yoda said:

It's a Labour council

Is this one of Trumps "alternative facts?"  

[47er]

We seem to be confusing local and national elections here! Labour won this seat in the national elections, the last result declared, as K-Hod said.

However to blame the new Labour MP for events that are the responsibility of the local council taken years ago when, in any case, she has only been an MP for less than a fortnight is rather desperate to say the least.

NO! The decisions I referred to above were taken by a Tory Council with a huge majority and are still defended by them.

Acknowledgement you got it completely wrong Yoda?