How many tower blocks will be condemned?

[Darby Ram]

2 hours ago, flb said:

You can't do that. The SJW brigade would damn you in a split second. Something something social cleansing something inclusive society something something, you f* tories etc etc something else, Corbyn4PM etc.

It's bizarre that, on a forum where the connecting thread is that house prices are irrationally high, it can be seen as good that losing your job, getting sick etc means having to move hundreds of miles away - yet saying "this is bad, what if land costs came back into line with local wages?" makes you a SJW.

Somehow that's seen as an insult but, actually, maybe what we want is social justice, rather than ragging on the poorest of the poor as a distraction from the actual problem?

[knock out johnny]

3 minutes ago, Darby Ram said:

It's bizarre that, on a forum where the connecting thread is that house prices are irrationally high, it can be seen as good that losing your job, getting sick etc means having to move hundreds of miles away - yet saying "this is bad, what if land costs came back into line with local wages?" makes you a SJW.

Somehow that's seen as an insult but, actually, maybe what we want is social justice, rather than ragging on the poorest of the poor as a distraction from the actual problem?

I see you're a relative newby with 122 posts - word of advice; don't expect to find anything resembling logical consistency on this site. Because you won't

[stormymonday_2011]

 

3 hours ago, pig said:

Do you really think the biggest threat to the hpi land bubble cult now is the 'SJW brigade' ?

"What ? Been burnt out of your home and lost half your family ? Well you can feck off to Leeds. We have a house bubble economy to run. We need to get this into a developers land bank pronto for a future buy to leave portfolio - helps with the housing stats and voting patterns you see. And helps fund facade improvements on existing stock."

How would that go down in the current context ?

London councils have been trying to  ship people out to the provinces for years. When the Marquess Estate in Islington  London was redeveloped in the late 1990s 468 households got evicted so the land could be redeveloped, including my sister in law and her family . The local Labour Council tried to persuade her to try life in the provinces. She refused to go.

Edited June 18, 2017 by stormymonday_2011

[pig]

2 hours ago, iamnumerate said:

Was Ronan point also neoliberal 1 percenters?   Were the smogs?  The idea that one style of Government causes deaths and others don't would be laughable - if so many people weren't dead.

Entirely fair points and a really difficult to unpack succinctly - I'll give it further thought.

All I can say at this point is the obvious - locking us into a vicious debt fuelled cycle of inflating prices and deteriorating quality for the general population is unsustainable.

Prosecuting this 'style of government' - whatever you wish to call it -  as a territorial means of winning votes is a gobsmacking perversion of both capitalism and democracy.

Its not something simply 'inflicted' on voters - clearly its a pact between a certain constituencies and politicians.

What we have here is likely to simply be an almighty screwup but a screwup that points at the overall sickness of this 'ecology'.

[stormymonday_2011]

30 minutes ago, hotairmail said:

I hate that word "provinces". Who do you think you are?

No one outside London uses that term, mainly that apart from Northern Ireland it has no legal substance and never has.

Quite.

I used the word quite deliberately (should have put quotes around it)  because it was the actual term used by the housing officer to my sister in law.

When I worked for the Inland Revenue years ago it was even used as the official title for the tax offices based outside London that dealt with the tax affairs of people in the capital. Examples were HMIT London Provincial 20 in Glasgow or HMIT London Provincial 25 in Edinburgh.There were others in Leeds, Bradford, etc. So legal status or not it was embedded in the way government thinks.

The imperial mind set of London runs deep.

BTW my sister in law lives in London I don't and never have done.

Edited June 18, 2017 by stormymonday_2011

[stormymonday_2011]

10 minutes ago, hotairmail said:

I should have known the term wasn't used in anger. And I thought it was out of keeping. Sorry.

Strangely, I think the 'province' they had in mind was somewhere like Bognor.

[Funn3r]

1 hour ago, hotairmail said:

I hate that word "provinces"

Radio 4 used to be called the "Home Service" when I was a kid and I always wondered why. Still no idea but have a feeling its target audience was "not the provinces".

[Snugglybear]

6 hours ago, Funn3r said:

Radio 4 used to be called the "Home Service" when I was a kid and I always wondered why. Still no idea but have a feeling its target audience was "not the provinces".

It was "Home" meaning for the UK internally, as in "Home Office".

Everywhere else was served by the "Empire Service", renamed some six years after its establishment the "Overseas Service", and in 1965 renamed once again the "World Service".

[crashmonitor]

10 hours ago, iamnumerate said:

Was Ronan point also neoliberal 1 percenters?   Were the smogs?  The idea that one style of Government causes deaths and others don't would be laughable - if so many people weren't dead.

Even had Labour been in power unbroken since 1997 events like Grenfell would still occurr because errors of judgement will always occurr. I'm sickened by this anarchist blame game. 

[cock-eyed octopus]

One point I would make is that, had the cladding not been installed, the death toll would not have got into double figures. How installing this stuff ever got past regulations is beyond my comprehension.

 

[iamnumerate]

55 minutes ago, crashmonitor said:

Even had Labour been in power unbroken since 1997 events like Grenfell would still occurr because errors of judgement will always occurr. I'm sickened by this anarchist blame game. 

I agree a fire expert was quoted in the express

http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/817447/London-Fire-expert-slams-Home-Office-Grenfell-Tower-cladding-This-Morning-ITV

Quote

Flames engulfed London’s Grenfell Tower at a rapid rate, which Tarling blamed solely on the use of cladding materials.

“The fire would have happened in the flat, but it wouldn't have got out and it wouldn't have spread to any other flats,” he said. 

However, both Labour and The Conservatives were told time and time of the dangers of using the flammable resource.

“All our warnings fell on deaf ears,” fumed Tarling. “We predicted a catastrophe was inevitable and it was only a matter of time.” 

In the Guardian and the Telegraph he was also quoted but they missed out the bit about Labour and the Conservatives.

[iamnumerate]

9 hours ago, stormymonday_2011 said:

 

London councils have been trying to  ship people out to the provinces for years. When the Marquess Estate in Islington  London was redeveloped in the late 1990s 468 households got evicted so the land could be redeveloped, including my sister in law and her family . The local Labour Council tried to persuade her to try life in the provinces. She refused to go.

Ironically at the same time Islington was giving flats to people who were straight off a plane.

Personally I think if you don't work in London, you shouldn't be paid to live there.

[iamnumerate]

10 minutes ago, hotairmail said:

If the pay doesn't pay your rent, you should move out.

It is all these subsidies for various groups that makes London what it is and the size it is.

Very true, no subsidies and London would be a lot cheaper.

[BorrowToLeech]

12 hours ago, iamnumerate said:

Was Ronan point also neoliberal 1 percenters?   Were the smogs?  The idea that one style of Government causes deaths and others don't would be laughable - if so many people weren't dead.

Straw man.

Nobody suggests that every problem throughout history has been caused by neoliberalism, just our problems now.

This is because we have had unbroken neoliberal governments since 1979.

2 hours ago, crashmonitor said:

Even had Labour been in power unbroken since 1997 events like Grenfell would still occurr because errors of judgement will always occurr. I'm sickened by this anarchist blame game. 

And yet the economic crisis is definitely and without doubt the fault of the UK Labour Party.

How do you decide when an error of judgement is incompetence?  

Never mind, I think I've figured it out...

 

 

 

Edited June 19, 2017 by DrBuyToLeech

[iamnumerate]

Just now, DrBuyToLeech said:

Straw man.

Nobody suggests that every problem throughout history has been caused by neoliberalism, just our problems now.

This is because we have had unbroken neoliberal governments since 1979.

And yet the economic crisis is definitely and without doubt the fault of the UK Labour Party.

How do you decide when an error of judgement is incompetence?  

Never mind, I think I've figure it out...

 

 

 

So are you saying "although this problem was caused by neoliberalism, disasters could still happen under an alternate form of Government"?

[iamnumerate]

4 minutes ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

And yet the economic crisis is definitely and without doubt the fault of the UK Labour Party.

 

 

 

I have said before that I think that the economic crisis is caused by Osbrown economics - I hope that makes it clear who I blame.

Edited June 19, 2017 by iamnumerate

[copydude]

1 hour ago, iamnumerate said:

Ironically at the same time Islington was giving flats to people who were straight off a plane.

To be fair, the UK is required to take its quota by the EU and has to put them somewhere. There were many Syrians in Grenfell.

The EU is taking legal action against the countries which did not take in their planeloads.

Quote

 

The European Commission has launched legal proceedings against three European Union member states who refused to take in refugees.  

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have been accused of not fulfilling their obligations outlined in a 2015 plan to relocate migrants from Italy and Greece, to help ease their burden. The Polish and Hungarian governments refused to take anyone in, while the Czech Republic initially accepted 12 people but has since said it would not welcome more.

 

 

[iamnumerate]

2 minutes ago, copydude said:

To be fair, the UK is required to take its quota by the EU and has to put them somewhere. There were many Syrians in Grenfell.

The EU is taking legal action against the countries which did not take in their planeloads.

 

I thought that only Schengen countries were obliged to.

[Riedquat]

2 hours ago, crashmonitor said:

Even had Labour been in power unbroken since 1997 events like Grenfell would still occurr because errors of judgement will always occurr. I'm sickened by this anarchist blame game. 

Amen to that. Part of life is that sh1t happens. That's not the same as saying no heads should roll for this (metaphorically speaking), but they type of world you'd have to build to be really certain that it doesn't happen, ever would be awful to live in. It's gone too far that way already. And even then something would still occasionally slip through the cracks.

[Riedquat]

1 hour ago, ****-eyed octopus said:

One point I would make is that, had the cladding not been installed, the death toll would not have got into double figures. How installing this stuff ever got past regulations is beyond my comprehension.

It's sounding more like it doesn't pass regulations but got put up anyway.

[copydude]

16 minutes ago, iamnumerate said:

I thought that only Schengen countries were obliged to.

Well . . . not exactly. Britain opted out of the official EU scheme but still has its own relocation scheme for Syrians. 

[iamnumerate]

Just now, copydude said:

Well . . . not exactly. Britain opted out of the official EU scheme but still has its own relocation scheme for Syrians. 

Thanks for that, but did we have a choice?  If we did, then we can't blame the EU.

[BorrowToLeech]

1 hour ago, iamnumerate said:

So are you saying "although this problem was caused by neoliberalism, disasters could still happen under an alternate form of Government"?

Actually I'm reserving judgement on the fire. We don't know yet. 

I was speaking more generally. The problems of our society are, by and large, the failures of neoliberalism  

Other belief systems have different problems.

There's no point treating a cancer patient with antibiotics (I am not a doctor, this is not advice!)

[BorrowToLeech]

1 hour ago, iamnumerate said:

I have said before that I think that the economic crisis is caused by Osbrown economics - I hope that makes it clear who I blame.

It does, and I disagree.  Not that Osbrown weren't to blame, but this ignores the 20 year build up that preceded it and without which the crisis would not have happened. 

[iamnumerate]

5 minutes ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

Actually I'm reserving judgement on the fire. We don't know yet. 

I was speaking more generally. The problems of our society are, by and large, the failures of neoliberalism  

Other belief systems have different problems.

There's no point treating a cancer patient with antibiotics (I am not a doctor, this is not advice!)

I am sorry are you saying that things like this fire would not happen under a different form of Government or not?

Some things - expensive house prices - are caused by the type of Goverment we have.  Others come from the fact that no Government is perfect - I think the fire is the later - please explain why not bearing in mind Ronan Point etc.