Fire at Grenfell Tower, London. Not looking good.

[Eddie_George]

7 hours ago, dgul said:

I think London is due some serious rioting.  It just needs the right spark.

Usually some hot weather sets it off.....

Oooops.

 

[longgone]

32 minutes ago, LC1 said:

Sickening, isn't it?

And that £10 million facelift - taxpayer money presumbly? A kickback to builder/developer chums who kindly donated to the cause perchance? 

yep 10 million rydons got and subbed it out for 2.5m for cladding and new windows. 

That in itself is a disgrace. 

[reddog]

To me it feels like Corbyn et al. are stirring it for maximum effect.

 

Having said that, as a non property owner in the UK, it won't both me if the the Tories tried to quieten thinks down by putting in some really severe rules for landlords.

 

Most potential black swans we discuss are not really black swans, but maybe this could be the trigger to a real black swan event.

[t1234]

Can't stand people who say shouldn't politicise these events. Boo hoo we should all lower our heads in multiple one minute silences.

No we should recognise a disaster like this is the result of political decisions which must be challenged now, when the blood is up. Before the pay offs can happen and the media concentrates on the next disaster.

I'd love to hear how the free market would have prevented these deaths. I am sure someone soon can tell me how the free market would have solved it, and how Hitler was a socialist.

Flippin nonsense. All the regulation that exists was born out of these tragedies anyone who talks of deregulation means profit at the expense of a regulation that was put in for a good reason.

[Orsino]

As a resident of Corbyn's constituency in Islington, I think he's got a damn nerve lecturing Kensington about inequality, unaffordable housing and property speculators. A one-bed flat will cost in excess of £550k - totally unaffordable even to the 'rich' who Corbyn thinks are going to pay for everything. What's he going to do about it? I mean, he's only been the local MP for 35 years!

[A17]

13 hours ago, casual_squash said:

This is London we are talking about, where space is at a premium. 

If people are prepared to share a four bed house with 30 other people, then I dare not think how many people squeezed themselves into this residential block. 

Being incredibly blunt, the evidence will be how many unidentified bodies they find.  People with no dental records available, or any address records in the government system.  I would imagine most people died in the flat they were living in.

[Odakyu-sen]

Cladding can be inflammable. Check this out: 

 

[crashmonitor]

11 hours ago, knock out johnny said:

I heard same on the radio

That would goose the london property market for foreign investors if they say property rights being inpinged 

I quite liked Corbyn til now but he is starting to look like an opportunist. The fact is this cladding has been used on luxury apartments and hotels in Dubai.

It's not so much these people being left without support more about wrong decisions being made....cladding over sprinklers. The 80k refurb per unit is an extraordinary investment in each household, some people do not get that amount of support from the State in their entire lives.

Far from this being a class war issue which the left is trying to turn into a riot, instead it is about well intentioned money being spent unwisely on incredibly expensive but dangerous modifications principally to insulate.

The blame must lie in building control and health and safety professionals.

[chicker]

1 hour ago, crashmonitor said:

I quite liked Corbyn til now but he is starting to look like an opportunist. The fact is this cladding has been used on luxury apartments and hotels in Dubai.

It's not so much these people being left without support more about wrong decisions being made....cladding over sprinklers. The 80k refurb per unit is an extraordinary investment in each household, some people do not get that amount of support from the State in their entire lives.

Far from this being a class war issue which the left is trying to turn into a riot, instead it is about well intentioned money being spent unwisely on incredibly expensive but dangerous modifications principally to insulate.

The blame must lie in building control and health and safety professionals.

Sorry but I can't agree about the well intentioned money . The recent governments have let fundamental housing standards slip (room sizes, fire safety, affordability, density ) . Policies seem to be "all fur coat and no knickers"  .  Simply built, practical properties with basic amenities are what's required but unfortunately thats not the priority . 

[stormymonday_2011]

16 hours ago, Orsino said:

As a resident of Corbyn's constituency in Islington, I think he's got a damn nerve lecturing Kensington about inequality, unaffordable housing and property speculators. A one-bed flat will cost in excess of £550k - totally unaffordable even to the 'rich' who Corbyn thinks are going to pay for everything. What's he going to do about it? I mean, he's only been the local MP for 35 years!

Ah yes Islington that Socialist paradise.

My sister in law used to live on the notorious Marquess Estate in the borough from the time it was opened in 1977 until she was essentially evicted from her home by the Labour run council so it could be 'regenerated' with large parts being sold off to private developers 

http://wikimapia.org/15246084/The-Marquess-Estate

The quote at the bottom of the attached link from a former resident is worth a read 

[stormymonday_2011]

1 hour ago, crashmonitor said:

I quite liked Corbyn til now but he is starting to look like an opportunist. The fact is this cladding has been used on luxury apartments and hotels in Dubai.

It's not so much these people being left without support more about wrong decisions being made....cladding over sprinklers. The 80k refurb per unit is an extraordinary investment in each household, some people do not get that amount of support from the State in their entire lives.

Far from this being a class war issue which the left is trying to turn into a riot, instead it is about well intentioned money being spent unwisely on incredibly expensive but dangerous modifications principally to insulate.

The blame must lie in building control and health and safety professionals.

Right on the money.

This tower block did not burn down due to neglect but because it was the subject of too much of the wrong sort of regeneration usually undertaken without any consultation of the locals. Similar things have happened all over London and the UK during the past 20 years. Moreover, as mentioned in my previous post about the Marquess Estate in Islington much of this attempt to makeover or socially engineer communities on council estates has come from the Labour Party and its Councils not from the Tories 

[Oh Well :(]

Most of the dead are reported as immigrants. Why the hell are we housing them in squalor in the most expensive part of London? It is reported that this block was refurbished at a cost of £80000 ped flat. This surely is enough evidence to show that the state is totally profigate and should not be trusted with our money. Not musch evidence of austerity here. Just corruption and waste. 

Vote UKIP

[crashmonitor]

2 hours ago, Oh Well said:

Most of the dead are reported as immigrants. Why the hell are we housing them in squalor in the most expensive part of London? It is reported that this block was refurbished at a cost of £80000 ped flat. This surely is enough evidence to show that the state is totally profigate and should not be trusted with our money. Not musch evidence of austerity here. Just corruption and waste. 

Vote UKIP

The problem with this sort of investment is it is so short termist. The buildings were unecomomic in the first place and it's  ridicuous if you have to spend 80k per unit on insulation and disguising its brutalist architecture.

Meanwhile how can the folk living in these ever repay the State's ''investment'' in them in tax. No doubt the place would have required another 10 million refurb in ten years time.

The house I live in was built in 1969, five years before this. My idea of a refurb is buying a pot of paint for the original timber windows for a tenner. My dual fuel is £500 pa, probably less than your average highly insulated flat.

It all fits in nicely with the global warming agenda but not at that cost.

[casual_squash]

24 minutes ago, crashmonitor said:

The problem with this sort of investment is it is so short termist. The buildings were unecomomic in the first place and it's  ridicuous if you have to spend 80k per unit on insulation and disguising its brutalist architecture.

Meanwhile how can the folk living in these ever repay the State's ''investment'' in them in tax. No doubt the place would have required another 10 million refurb in ten years time.

The house I live in was built in 1969, five years before this. My idea of a refurb is buying a pot of paint for the original timber windows for a tenner. My dual fuel is £500 pa, probably less than your average highly insulated flat.

It all fits in nicely with the global warming agenda but not at that cost.

The thing is I'm happy to live in a country that can and will pay for affordable, safe accommodation but it's got to be at a sustainable level. 

As I said prior, when you intentionally operate a country by layering people on top of each other it adds to the toxic mix and the need to cut corners. The labour party as it stands doesn't care about these people, they just want to farm them. 

In truth these towers were well past their use by date but when your faced with a critical housing shortage the councils we're faced with the dilemma of where to house a residential block full of poor people. All of whom would have probably objected to pulling it down and would have had Lily Allen and Corbyn popping down for a photo-shoot, accusing the Tories of gentrifying the area.

 

  

 

 

 

 

[Errol]

4 hours ago, crashmonitor said:

I quite liked Corbyn til now but he is starting to look like an opportunist. The fact is this cladding has been used on luxury apartments and hotels in Dubai.

Agree. The use of such cladding has nothing particularly to do with poverty, poor people or bad housing. Plenty of buildings for the rich and elite have this stuff on the sides as well.

So to link it to the treatment of the poor is just fallacious.

[Errol]

2 hours ago, Oh Well said:

Most of the dead are reported as immigrants. Why the hell are we housing them in squalor in the most expensive part of London? It is reported that this block was refurbished at a cost of £80000 ped flat. This surely is enough evidence to show that the state is totally profigate and should not be trusted with our money. Not musch evidence of austerity here. Just corruption and waste. 

Vote UKIP

Agree. I'm waiting for people to start asking this question.

Why is there a building full of immigrants in the middle of one of the richest areas in the country? An area where most native British can't even afford to live (if they wanted to).

Why are the immigrants here? Who allowed them in? When are the borders going to be shut etc etc.

All perfectly valid questions. Can be dealt with at a later date, obviously, after the investigation and any guilty parties are punished.

[Orsino]

3 hours ago, chicker said:

Sorry but I can't agree about the well intentioned money . The recent governments have let fundamental housing standards slip (room sizes, fire safety, affordability, density ) . Policies seem to be "all fur coat and no knickers"  .  Simply built, practical properties with basic amenities are what's required but unfortunately thats not the priority . 

Well said. The entire housing system is broken, in both the public and private sector, and nowhere is this more obvious in London. If you do a Rightmove search you can still find 2-bed flat to rent in Grenfell Tower for £2145 a month. In 2011 a sixth-floor, 1-bedroom flat in Grenfell Tower was on the market for £180,000. What would it have been marketed for last week after a £10m refurb? A cheeky £350,000? Many of us have spent a decade on this site highlighting the many causes of this insanity. ALL mainstream parties have been in government during that time and the situation has only got worse, to the extent that last week if you'd wanted to buy a flat in a death-trap block now described as squalor, stuffed full of refugees in one of the poorest and most deprived parts of the country you would have needed a third of a million pounds.

[copydude]

3 hours ago, Oh Well said:

Most of the dead are reported as immigrants.

Obviously why no one's too bothered about a precise head count.

 

Quote

 

"Was anyone hurt?"

"No one, I am thankful to say," said Mrs Beaver.

 "Except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass roof into the paved court.

- Evelyn Waugh,'A handful of dust'

 

 

[dances with sheeple]

10 hours ago, Orsino said:

As a resident of Corbyn's constituency in Islington, I think he's got a damn nerve lecturing Kensington about inequality, unaffordable housing and property speculators. A one-bed flat will cost in excess of £550k - totally unaffordable even to the 'rich' who Corbyn thinks are going to pay for everything. What's he going to do about it? I mean, he's only been the local MP for 35 years!

Yes, they are all clowns, jumping on the photo shoot ops like gulls on a dead whale, the "I`m the London mayor innit, dropping aitches all over the manor" guy boils my blood, he is so contrived, might as well take up knitting his fake patter is so rehearsed " Drop one, pick one, miss three, London innit, global city innit, got my vowels down like a proper chavo innit". F*uck off.

[debtlessmanc]

One of the reports said that these towers were identified as fire risks (one stairwell, kind of obvious) in 1997. The councils response at the times was that they "have nowhere else to house people", also of course the local (new) labour MP won't be keen on his voters being moved out of the constituency. The whole things reeks, labour politicians have become the modern equivalent of the priesthood who actively encourage ignorance and poverty to keep people faithful to the cause.

edit to add:

If it ever looks as though the population are getting wise they just import a few million more igorant uneducated victims to put in these places.

[copydude]

1 hour ago, crashmonitor said:

My idea of a refurb is buying a pot of paint for the original timber windows for a tenner.

Make that man a local councillor!

Here in the post-Soviet East, we have painted most of the grim, old concrete commie apartment blocs in pretty pastels. Pink and beige is favourite. Where a little largesse has been available, the windows have been changed for melamine. A tin of paint really does work wonders. 

Cladding at 80,000 per flat would bankrupt every single city East of Berlin. Just looney tunes. Now, which MP's mate made a nice little earner out of this job?

Where flats are tall, the eyesore is often replaced with stunning murals. The street art in Gdansk is well worth a visit.

 

[MancTom]

2 hours ago, Errol said:

Agree. The use of such cladding has nothing particularly to do with poverty, poor people or bad housing. Plenty of buildings for the rich and elite have this stuff on the sides as well.

So to link it to the treatment of the poor is just fallacious.

That depends - there is more than one type. The more expensive type is fire resistant, and that was apparently not used here. What is used for the buildings for rich people?

Really though it comes down to regulations - if the cheaper non-fire-resistant type can cause what we have just seen, why is it legal to use it?

[Senny Pijama]

This post originally contained a linked Twitter post saying that a riot was planned at Westway at 5pm today. It appears that tweet has now been deleted.

[crashmonitor]

1 hour ago, MancTom said:

That depends - there is more than one type. The more expensive type is fire resistant, and that was apparently not used here. What is used for the buildings for rich people?

Really though it comes down to regulations - if the cheaper non-fire-resistant type can cause what we have just seen, why is it legal to use it?

If every housing unit was given an 80k make over by the State that would more than double the National debt and cost two trillion pounds, the country would be bankrupt, there would be no NHS and millions of refugees would be trying to reach Europe in boats because it would be game over.

It's not about which cladding was used, it's asking why we build buildings that cost 80k per unit just to insulate and why the money was not better used in the first place...like fire safety inside.

Meanwhile the principal criminals here are the social engineers of the 1970s that created these uneconomic monstrosities.

[knock out johnny]

3 minutes ago, fru-gal said:

Lots of Labour MPs are also rentiers. David Lammy (who has called for the requisitioning of houses along with Corbyn) is a landlord and was claiming expenses for a second home. I imagine the majority of MPs (of all parties) have second homes in one form or another, if not under their names, then that of their wives, children or held by a company. 

Oh I know but did he vote against the fit for human habitation bill?

Seeing as it was a labour amendment I think not