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Yes. At any time we are all liable to 'cancel culture' & the throwing of the Marxist teddy out of the Marxist pram.
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The Blame Game
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...the fact that we currently face a chronic shortage of social housing – in 2021, 29,000 social homes were sold or demolished in England, while fewer than 7,000 were built. England has 1.4 million fewer households in social housing than in 1980. Thatcher’s housing policies glorified the idea that social homeowners should aim to buy their property instead of renting it, and that owning should be the ultimate goal... However, this isn’t within everyone’s reach.
Today, the government’s stance on social housing hasn’t really changed. In England, people living in council houses can still buy their property through the archaic “right to buy” scheme”. This summer, Boris Johnson declared that “no generation should be locked out of home ownership because of when they were born” and announced plans to extend Thatcher’s right to buy scheme to housing association tenants – though there’s been no further information about this plan.
More than a million people are on waiting lists for social housing while only a few thousand social homes are built annually. This means a million – if not more – people left without affordable housing during the cost-of-living crisis. This, to me, is a continuing scandal.
Today, the government’s stance on social housing hasn’t really changed. In England, people living in council houses can still buy their property through the archaic “right to buy” scheme”. This summer, Boris Johnson declared that “no generation should be locked out of home ownership because of when they were born” and announced plans to extend Thatcher’s right to buy scheme to housing association tenants – though there’s been no further information about this plan.
More than a million people are on waiting lists for social housing while only a few thousand social homes are built annually. This means a million – if not more – people left without affordable housing during the cost-of-living crisis. This, to me, is a continuing scandal.
...for a completely different reason. It forms a cup around the structural timber which, over time, can fill with water from condensation. Also any minor leaks won't be apparent and will also collect within it. Wood + water = soggy rotten mush = complete rebuild.
Amazingly this stuff is still being applied to this day. It seems to be popular in the USA, almost routine, perhaps their lessy soggy climate makes its advantages outweigh its issues there. But there are lots of companies offering it in the UK too.
Much better to insulate (lots) on top of the ceiling and let everything above stay cold and ventilated, basically outdoor air minus the rain.
At long last...
Michael Gove has admitted that “faulty and ambiguous” government guidance was partly responsible for the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The UK housing secretary said lax regulation allowed cladding firms to “put people in danger in order to make a profit”.
He also said he wanted to abolish the “outdated, feudal” leasehold system of home ownership by the end of this parliament. And he said developers would on Monday be given a six-week deadline to sign a legally binding contract committing them to fixing unsafe tower blocks or be banned from building new homes...[and] the contract “should end” the policy of leaseholders having to pay to fix unsafe cladding. He said: “The people responsible for erecting buildings which we now know are unsafe have to pay the costs of making sure those buildings are safe.”
It is expected to cost developers around £5bn to remove and repair fire-risk cladding on the homes of an estimated 700,000 people. Only 7% of dangerous flats have been fixed since the Grenfell disaster on 14 June 2017.
Gove said he expected the Grenfell Tower inquiry, which is due to report its findings later this year, to attribute some blame on the government for housing regulations that allowed homes to be clad in dangerous materials.
@theGrauniad
Michael Gove has admitted that “faulty and ambiguous” government guidance was partly responsible for the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The UK housing secretary said lax regulation allowed cladding firms to “put people in danger in order to make a profit”.
He also said he wanted to abolish the “outdated, feudal” leasehold system of home ownership by the end of this parliament. And he said developers would on Monday be given a six-week deadline to sign a legally binding contract committing them to fixing unsafe tower blocks or be banned from building new homes...[and] the contract “should end” the policy of leaseholders having to pay to fix unsafe cladding. He said: “The people responsible for erecting buildings which we now know are unsafe have to pay the costs of making sure those buildings are safe.”
It is expected to cost developers around £5bn to remove and repair fire-risk cladding on the homes of an estimated 700,000 people. Only 7% of dangerous flats have been fixed since the Grenfell disaster on 14 June 2017.
Gove said he expected the Grenfell Tower inquiry, which is due to report its findings later this year, to attribute some blame on the government for housing regulations that allowed homes to be clad in dangerous materials.
@theGrauniad
Michael Gove says faulty and ambiguous guidance from government contributed to the fire in Grenfell Towers.
The word "faulty" seems to be a generic excuse for every disaster the government is involved in.
Tony Blair used the term "faulty intelligence" to evade responsibility for the Iraq disaster, David Cameron used the same "faulty intelligence" excuse to justify the bombing of Libya.
The word "faulty" seems to be a generic excuse for every disaster the government is involved in.
Tony Blair used the term "faulty intelligence" to evade responsibility for the Iraq disaster, David Cameron used the same "faulty intelligence" excuse to justify the bombing of Libya.
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Cladding and insulation manufacturers whose products were involved in the Grenfell Tower fire face calls for sanctions after failing to pay into multibillion-pound funding schemes to fix the country’s unsafe residential blocks.
The building supply firms Saint-Gobain and Kingspan have reported more than £7.5bn in global profits since the fire in June 2017 in west London which killed 72 people, corporate filings reveal. Combustible insulation products manufactured by both firms were installed on the tower.
The Construction Products Association in the UK, of which the two firms are members, has failed to agree with the government a voluntary funding scheme to strip buildings in England of combustible products.
Saint-Gobain, a multinational corporation based in France, owns the Celotex brand of insulation which was used on Grenfell. It reported record revenues in the first half of 2022 and since the Grenfell fire has reported more than £5.8bn in profits.
The Ireland-based Kingspan group has reported more than £2bn in profits since the fire. The company manufactured K15, another insulation product which was used on Grenfell Tower and described in one fire test in 2007 as a “raging inferno”.
@theGrauniad
The building supply firms Saint-Gobain and Kingspan have reported more than £7.5bn in global profits since the fire in June 2017 in west London which killed 72 people, corporate filings reveal. Combustible insulation products manufactured by both firms were installed on the tower.
The Construction Products Association in the UK, of which the two firms are members, has failed to agree with the government a voluntary funding scheme to strip buildings in England of combustible products.
Saint-Gobain, a multinational corporation based in France, owns the Celotex brand of insulation which was used on Grenfell. It reported record revenues in the first half of 2022 and since the Grenfell fire has reported more than £5.8bn in profits.
The Ireland-based Kingspan group has reported more than £2bn in profits since the fire. The company manufactured K15, another insulation product which was used on Grenfell Tower and described in one fire test in 2007 as a “raging inferno”.
@theGrauniad
The Oscar-winning film director Steve McQueen is to finally show his unflinching film of the burnt-out ruin of Grenfell Tower, which he hopes will help the push for justice before the sixth anniversary of the disaster.
The 24-minute film, Grenfell, was shot from a helicopter in December 2017, shortly before the charred tower in west London was wrapped in white plastic. Without words or music, McQueen’s camera relentlessly circles the council block, often at close quarters, allowing viewers to see into rooms where people died and white-suited forensic investigators sifting evidence.
McQueen grew up in his early years on the nearby White City estate and said he felt compelled to make the film as soon as he heard that officials planned to wrap the tower in the months after the 14 June 2017 blaze.
“It was almost like a race against time,” he said. “Once things are covered up, they are forgotten about, or it can be more convenient for people who want it to be forgotten about.”
McQueen is certain of the causes of the Grenfell disaster.
“It was deliberate neglect,” he said. “It was no accident. There were so many people, so many companies, so many factors … It was all a deliberate act of neglect and, to a certain extent, greed.”
The film comes as negotiations continue about what to do with the tower. Parts of the community are keen to keep at least some of the building as a reminder of the disaster and because it is effectively a burial ground. Others would prefer it to be demolished and replaced with a memorial such as a garden or museum. The film may prompt fresh appraisals of that dilemma.
“... Justice gives me energy. Truth gives me energy … It needs to be shouted from the highest rooftops.”
The 24-minute film, Grenfell, was shot from a helicopter in December 2017, shortly before the charred tower in west London was wrapped in white plastic. Without words or music, McQueen’s camera relentlessly circles the council block, often at close quarters, allowing viewers to see into rooms where people died and white-suited forensic investigators sifting evidence.
McQueen grew up in his early years on the nearby White City estate and said he felt compelled to make the film as soon as he heard that officials planned to wrap the tower in the months after the 14 June 2017 blaze.
“It was almost like a race against time,” he said. “Once things are covered up, they are forgotten about, or it can be more convenient for people who want it to be forgotten about.”
McQueen is certain of the causes of the Grenfell disaster.
“It was deliberate neglect,” he said. “It was no accident. There were so many people, so many companies, so many factors … It was all a deliberate act of neglect and, to a certain extent, greed.”
The film comes as negotiations continue about what to do with the tower. Parts of the community are keen to keep at least some of the building as a reminder of the disaster and because it is effectively a burial ground. Others would prefer it to be demolished and replaced with a memorial such as a garden or museum. The film may prompt fresh appraisals of that dilemma.
“... Justice gives me energy. Truth gives me energy … It needs to be shouted from the highest rooftops.”
Survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster expect the public inquiry’s final report next week to finally halt a “carousel of blame-pointing” and damn the conduct of government, construction firms and multinational material manufacturers. There is muted confidence among many in the community that the report, expected to run to 1,700 pages and released to the wider public a day later, will finally set out the truth about serious failings and potentially criminal acts and omissions that led to 72 deaths, but which have been widely denied by many of the professionals, officials, companies and politicians who gave evidence.
Politicians facing possible criticism range from David Cameron, who presided over a pre-Grenfell cutting of red tape, to the former housing secretary Eric Pickles, who outraged survivors during cross-examination by mixing up the number of deceased with those from the Hillsborough disaster and tetchily urging the inquiry’s lead counsel not to waste his time. Pickles also declined to tighten fire regulations after being recommended to do so by a coroner after a 2009 council block fire that killed six people.
Moore-Bick’s final report will be released to the wider public at 11am on Wednesday. Among the companies braced for adverse conclusions is the US firm Arconic whose French subsidiary sold the highly combustible cladding panels despite evidence showing the company knew two years before the disaster they were, according to one internal email: “DANGEROUS on facades”. The plastic foam insulation manufacturers Celotex, owned by the multinational Saint Gobain, and Kingspan, based in Ireland, are also very likely to meet fierce criticism in the report.
The Guardian
Politicians facing possible criticism range from David Cameron, who presided over a pre-Grenfell cutting of red tape, to the former housing secretary Eric Pickles, who outraged survivors during cross-examination by mixing up the number of deceased with those from the Hillsborough disaster and tetchily urging the inquiry’s lead counsel not to waste his time. Pickles also declined to tighten fire regulations after being recommended to do so by a coroner after a 2009 council block fire that killed six people.
Moore-Bick’s final report will be released to the wider public at 11am on Wednesday. Among the companies braced for adverse conclusions is the US firm Arconic whose French subsidiary sold the highly combustible cladding panels despite evidence showing the company knew two years before the disaster they were, according to one internal email: “DANGEROUS on facades”. The plastic foam insulation manufacturers Celotex, owned by the multinational Saint Gobain, and Kingspan, based in Ireland, are also very likely to meet fierce criticism in the report.
The Guardian
In 2008, Philip Heath, a technical manager for the insulation manufacturers Kingspan, circulated an email about some contractors who had questioned the safety of their product. They, he said to a friend, “are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic]”. In 2017, Kingspan’s insulation panels contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, in which 72 people died. Heath’s misspelt sneer could serve as the unofficial motto of the many companies, institutions and individuals whose shared culture of contempt – for people, facts and due process – helped to bring about the disaster.
It is a culture that goes beyond Grenfell. You can see it in water companies’ dumping of sewage into rivers, in the flawed responses to Covid, in the Post Office Horizon scandal. It is evident in the continued failure to deal with the unsafe cladding that, seven years after Grenfell demonstrated its dangers, it is a prime suspect in last week’s gutting of a block of flats in Dagenham, east London. If this culture doesn’t change, there will continue to be catastrophes in contexts – home, work, travel – where the public should feel safe...
...it will be hard to eradicate the culture of contempt. It’s not encouraging that the new transport minister, Peter Hendy, in his former job as chair of Network Rail, effectively had an engineer sacked for raising safety concerns about overcrowding at Euston station. But if Labour wants to show that it does in fact give a damn, especially about the disadvantaged people who were most of the victims of Grenfell, it should start by doing what its predecessors did not, and honour the outcomes of the inquiry with swift actions.
Rowan Moore@the Guardian
It is a culture that goes beyond Grenfell. You can see it in water companies’ dumping of sewage into rivers, in the flawed responses to Covid, in the Post Office Horizon scandal. It is evident in the continued failure to deal with the unsafe cladding that, seven years after Grenfell demonstrated its dangers, it is a prime suspect in last week’s gutting of a block of flats in Dagenham, east London. If this culture doesn’t change, there will continue to be catastrophes in contexts – home, work, travel – where the public should feel safe...
...it will be hard to eradicate the culture of contempt. It’s not encouraging that the new transport minister, Peter Hendy, in his former job as chair of Network Rail, effectively had an engineer sacked for raising safety concerns about overcrowding at Euston station. But if Labour wants to show that it does in fact give a damn, especially about the disadvantaged people who were most of the victims of Grenfell, it should start by doing what its predecessors did not, and honour the outcomes of the inquiry with swift actions.
Rowan Moore@the Guardian
I have always blamed the DCLG for producing such awful open to interpretation building regulations for the UK
Right to Acquire: buying your housing association home
Buy your housing association home - including how to apply, who is eligible, discounts available and where to get help and advice.
Deregulation is one of the severe effects according to the Tower report. Introduced by Con/Lab. Lock all of those up.
