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Refurbishment that is more about putting in a cladding to make a tower block visually acceptable to Notth Kensington makes a lot less sense than making it safe. If the cladding is flammable (and according to those interviewed on Radio 4 last night the requirements are lax) then the prettification is wholly unacceptable.

The cladding was part of your Green New Deal you fool.

48 thoughts on “Grr”

  1. As I wrote on the other thread, the misinformation campaign has already begun. The kulaks have been identified and denounced. The Green Rip Off must continue at any cost.

  2. You don’t get it. It is ALWAYS the state that has to step on from the money grubbing capitalists who don’t care if people die. It is all about emoting not about thinking. If you don’t emote then you are clearly a brute.

    The facts don’t matter only that more state intervention is required. At last that is what I now understand. If the state is never at fault then more state is always a good thing.

    The fact that the co2 thing is a nonissue that caused the state to make a promise to reduce co2 which caused the state to mandate energy efficiency subsidies that caused the state to put cladding on the outside of a building that the state built and owned and maintained and rented out and the cladding turned out to be flammable and the building burned and lots of people died is irrelevant.

    Root cause analysis is lost on these people. Instead we will get contradictory policies. Use rock wool at great expense to save us from the great climate disaster that will cost us less in mitigation than the prevention measures even now before we out the prevention measure price up five fold.

  3. I got a spray from the great man when telling him about the Australian experience with the insulation schemes – house fires, including deaths, with the ex-pop star minister sacked.

    It was one of his more bizarre encounters. Goes from ‘Australian experience is a great success’ to ‘we’re learning from mistakes you’re not’ in less than 3 hours.

    http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/08/26/shovel-ready/

  4. Also: this organisation (the one that looks after the block), is run by tenants of the organisation.

    If they decided to cover the whole thing in tinsel and petrol, it’s their own choice.

  5. Council owned block, run by tenants. Couldn’t be more to the WGCE’s tastes, but meh, neoliberalism.

  6. Adrian

    That is just nonsense

    Yours day here are done

    Please don’t waste my time again

    Lol. It has been said many, many times but it is astonishing what an utter cunt this man is. Really, really deeply unpleasant, thin skinned and ignorant.

  7. Rob

    He is certainly one of the most unpleasant people ever to have got access to a computer terminal. Odious

  8. “Council owned block, run by tenants.” I read something saying that the company board consisted of tenants (the majority), council reps, and independent members. I guess that the latter might have been co-opted. Were any chosen on grounds of expertise in safety, structural engineering, building trades or whatever?

    How were the council people chosen? How about the tenants: right-on activists?

  9. > How were the council people chosen? How about the tenants: right-on activists?

    The usual kind of people who like to sit on committees for fun. I’m sure they spent hours wrangling over the colour of the bike shed, while the flammable cladding was signed off in minutes.

    To be fair, short of having a structural engineer on the committee, most people wouldn’t have spotted the problem.

  10. Meanwhile, in an alternative universe – journalists contact retired accountant in Ely in preference to surveyors etc. RM will soon solve the issue.

    Richard Murphy says:
    June 15 2017 at 10:52 am

    I can assure you the MSM is looking at the cladding – I have been involved in investigations on it this morning

  11. Bloke in North Dorset

    “More importantly, is the cladding being taxed properly?”

    He must be creaming himself thinking about all those taxes that will be paid to do the rebuild and then there’s the increase in GDP caused by Govt spending on building new housing.

    “To be fair, short of having a structural engineer on the committee, most people wouldn’t have spotted the problem.”

    Which is why any half competent person hires consulting engineers to do the job. When I had responsibility for the building of mobile phone sites being a telecoms engineer the first thing I did was hire someone who understood CDM and told them it was their job to watch my back and keep me out of jail. I backed him 100%, much to the annoyance of a number of people not least the CEO until I pointed out that he would probably join me in jail and on a longer sentence if anyone got killed either during construction or because of poor design.

  12. The regulation culture must take some of the blame. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that because something is not banned then it must be OK.

  13. I have heard that most residents’ associations in the UK and Australia are God-awful messes which get captured by vested interests and the remaining residents have one hell of a time wresting control away from them. Certainly, the one I am part of in Thailand made up of Americans, Aussies, and Brits is pretty awful.

    By contrast, the ones in France run pretty well. They’re far more used to living in shared blocks, and as such are more considerate and cooperative.

  14. His latest brainfart even argues the the Green New Deal needs extending to prop up the economy, before the bodies are even cold.

    The way Labour are seeking to politicise this is disgusting and disgusting, even for the left. And people seem to be biting.

  15. Here’s something which was mentioned in the news, but perhaps deserves a bit more attention: the cause of the fire. According to one of the residents, somebody’s fridge ‘exploded’, which then set fire to the apartment. Quite a few fridges are now filled with isobutane as a replacement for R-22 on the grounds of reducing ozone depletion and greenhouse gases. Unlike R-22 though, isobutane is highly flammable and there have been several cases of fridges literally exploding when the gas leaks out and finds an ignition source.

    So perhaps we can chalk up two ‘green’ technologies (driven by environmental regulation) which have contributed to both the ignition and subsequent burning of this tower block. It’ll be interesting to read the report when it comes out.

  16. Corbyn’s not letting Murphy get away with ‘biggest cunt talking about the fire’.

    Jeremy Corbyn has taken to the floor during the House of Commons briefing on Grenfell Tower.

    The Labour leader says Kensington is “a tale of two cities” – with full tower blocks and empty luxury flats.”

    See, inequality caused the fire.

  17. PeteC

    Given the Toaries are constantly referred to as baby-killers etc, from what we know so far on this, would we now be entitled to call Caroline Lucas a serial killer?

  18. The cladding was flammable?

    Srsly?

    Not believable until a reference or link is provided.

  19. @PeteC
    It is quite hard to think of anything more hazardous than hot butane in a thin wall tube. Auto ignition point’s only 400C.

  20. Bravefart

    Certainly you would be well within your rights to call her that – the fact that Murphy cites her as ‘a genuine hero’ tells you all you need to know. A very nasty piece of work.

  21. “Quite a few fridges are now filled with isobutane”: Jesus, we are advancing backwards at speed. What are all those elf-and-safety people for?

  22. Tim N,

    Small residents’ associations work fine; it’s the big ones that are dysfunctional. Looking at the K&C TMO’s management chart, it strikes me that they’re much larger than they need to be. There should only be one TMO per building, not one for the entire local authority. Residents should be able to vote to leave one TMO and join another.

    Reading the blog of the bloke who has been complaining about the fire risk for years, the simple problem is that most residents aren’t sufficiently bothered about who their TMO is. I don’t know how you’d fix disengaged voters.

  23. perhaps people who live in these tower blocks might consider purchasing http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Escape-Hood-Smoke-Mask-Survival-Tool-Home-Safety-Work-Car-First-Aid-Kit-EMS-EMT-/181302330308?hash=item2a367603c4:g:Z28AAOSwfVpYq8Kn . might be a wise investment. or would people think the govt should provide. If i can purchase multiple smoke alarms and a fire extinguisher for my terrace house can’t others think ahead ? i know what a bastard – personal responsibility etc.

  24. Slightly o/t, but why are the foreigners to whom we owe nothing being put up in Kensington?

    I mean, obvs, this was awful for anyone. But what were they doing there in the first place? Granted Brits who can’t afford to live in Kensington shouldn’t be put up there, either.

  25. I see moonbat has joined in on the guardian. Moaning about lack of sprinklers which werent fitting because people (presumably residents) kept on setting them off

  26. Sprinklers which would have made kak all difference as the building was burning from the outside in.

  27. Peter MacFarlane said: “The cladding was flammable?

    Srsly?

    Not believable until a reference or link is provided.”

    Probably not flammable but perhaps fire retardant insulation expected to do more than it could.

    I’ve watched a few youtube videos so I am now an expert. Assuming the insulation was a fire retardant one, there seems to be two different types of fire retardant foam – foam that does not burn if you take away a flame source and foam that continues to burn slowly. This was with samples on a horizontal plane. Your guess is as good as mine as to how the second type would perform on a vertical plane inside cladding which could have helped create an updraft.

  28. I’ve been away on holiday and have only just picked up on this. Adrian’s recounting of his exchange with Richard Molotov Murphy is quite chilling, as is this appalling thought: “I can assure you the MSM is looking at the cladding – I have been involved in investigations on it this morning”.
    The phrase”he’s has no shame” is used so often, but this is so disposable it defies words.

    Richard Murphy has no tax qualification or economics authority at all, so his self-description as tax expert and economist is hilarious. But 100 people burnt to crisp the other night as a result of green technologies. Those in the upper floors had time to ponder their approaching hell. Richard Murphy, Carol one Lucas and the other Green New Deal bastards have blood kn their hands. To them though the dead are a pitical opportunity

    Richard Murphy and Jeremy Corbyn are not human.

  29. Sprinklers which would have made kak all difference as the building was burning from the outside in.

    A fucking massive thunderstorm for two hours might have put that out, but sprinklers? Not a chance. Wouldn’t even touch it.

    Still, grist to George’s mill, who knows all about this from his lonely farm in mid-Wales.

  30. Corbyn is seems to be increasing both his repulsiveness and his electability at the same time, and in various ways.

    Yikes.

    I have a horrible feeling that the moment the Remainiacs work out that Corbyn is pro-Brexit will be the same moment that Brexit starts looking to be a success.

  31. So, on the rather sweeping assumption that the early speculation has some merit, the problem seems to come down to three different waves of leftism.

    First, the fashionable marxist architects of the 60s and 70s wanted to build tower blocks: people who opposed them were dismissed a reactionaries. Then belief in power-to-the-community ends up with a non-profit company controlled by the tenants being in charge of serious stuff. Then Greenery instals cladding that was a danger in itself.

    Brilliant. Well done, the Left.

  32. dearime–You left out dangerous gases in the refrigerator caused by save-the-ozone-layer greenwanks getting rid of safe Freon.

  33. Peter MacFarlane said: “The cladding was flammable?

    It’s quite possible, yes (but not as far as I know confirmed). There was a similar (but no loss of life) incident in Melbourne a few years ago. The cladding was determined to be a non-conforming product, and yes, very flammable. There are more fire resistant types, but they’re significantly more expensive and substitution happens.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-15/cladding-on-grenfell-tower-similar-to-2014-melbourne-fire/8619522

  34. Dearieme, TMO’s were introduced in 1994 under Major’s government, and I wouldn’t necessarily put him down as s mung-bean munching lefty.

  35. @bis
    It is quite hard to think of anything more hazardous than hot butane in a thin wall tube. Auto ignition point’s only 400C.

    Chlorine trifluoride at any temperature!

    I was very interested in the statement of the woman that saw the burning kitchen…
    Q. Did her neighbour close the window of the kitchen?
    Q. Did he close his flat door?

    Also,
    Q How inflammable were the curtains hung up by residents?

  36. I find myself wondering what the fire insurer had to say about the place when it was last inspected, and what the council/TMO said or did in response.

  37. “TMO’s were introduced in 1994 under Major’s government, and I wouldn’t necessarily put him down as s mung-bean munching lefty.” Just another case of the Tories being in office but not in power.

  38. “dearime–You left out dangerous gases in the refrigerator caused by save-the-ozone-layer greenwanks getting rid of safe Freon.” I decided, Ecks, that the refrigerator story was even more of a guess than the cladding story. But you’re quite right; if that was the source of ignition, make it four lefty notions.

  39. “Dearieme: or even of Tories not being conservative.” Too true.

    If you’re not clever enough to do useful critical thinking – and that’s probably the case for many politicians – it’s best just to be conservative. If you are good at critical thinking you might still conclude that it’s best to be conservative most of the time.

    We’d gain if there were some thinking liberals around (liberals in the British and Continental sense) but they seem to have vanished too.

    Our politicians now seem to lie along a spectrum between Blair and Corbyn. And boy do they lie.

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