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Don’t worry Dawn Foster’s on the case

This matters. Currently, 4,000 tower blocks have the same building regulations applied to them as Lakanal House. Sometimes, it appears, the risks are heightened by the very attempt to make the blocks more liveable. Architect Sam Webb, who has long campaigned for greater fire and blast safety in tower blocks, told the Fire Risk Management Journal of his fear that there is a trade-off between fire safety and the materials used to construct more energy efficient buildings. “The materials are not fire-resistant and in some cases they’re flammable.”

We depend on a collection of officials and experts to keep us safe. We cannot know at this stage how they performed with relation to maintenance and safety at Grenfell House. But we do know that lives cannot be protected without money and there is bound to be renewed discussion about the extent to which financial pressures have affected those who protect the public up and down the country.

Apparently making buildings green kills people but it’s austerity to blame.

16 thoughts on “Don’t worry Dawn Foster’s on the case”

  1. One things I read and I don’t know if it is true or not, is that UK building regulations since the 70s and hence the buildings themselves are, or at least were, much tougher than those in the US. The twin towers method of and materials used in construction would not have been permitted here as I understand it.

    Happy to be proved wrong, just read it.

  2. his fear that there is a trade-off between fire safety and the materials used to construct more energy efficient buildings. “The materials are not fire-resistant and in some cases they’re flammable.”

    Expect this to be ferociously denounced in the next few days. When you come up against both vested economic interest and political dogma you cannot expect rational analysis.

    And I like the touching bit about experts and ‘standards’. All such ‘standards’ mandated by Law are political decisions. We might like to think that they follow from the best dispassionate expert opinion on how to save lives but in reality are perfectly malleable to Green Bollocks about “Saving the Planet” in a hundred years time. To abandon that comfort blanket is a scary thing.

  3. “perfectly malleable to Green Bollocks about “Saving the Planet” in a hundred years time”

    Is there perhaps a Wickerman role for Caroline Lucas at the scene of the disaster?

  4. But I thought when Michael Gove said that it wasn’t wise to take the word of experts as though it had been handed down from on high on tablets of stone, this meant he was a moron?

    Yours, confused.

  5. Whats the bet that if it had been insulated with asbestos based cladding the building wouldn’t have gone up like a torch?

  6. The twin towers method of and materials used in construction would not have been permitted here as I understand it.

    There was nothing wrong with either. Not sure if the UK regs would have allowed them, or even been applicable: nothing anywhere near that size had been built in the UK until the Shard. The problem with the Twin Towers is they were not designed to be struck by airliners carrying large fuel loads. Few buildings are.

  7. his fear that there is a trade-off between fire safety and the materials used to construct more energy efficient buildings.

    There isn’t, but you’ll have to pay more for a material that is both. On oil and gas installations we use rockwool for hot insulation, foam glass for cold service (mainly LNG).

  8. “Michael Gove said that it wasn’t wise to take the word of experts as though it had been handed down from on high on tablets of stone”: I assume that he was referring to purported experts – economists and such – rather than actual experts – engineers and such.

  9. The lefties are having a collective wank fest.

    Speculation in the absence of facts and weaponising human misery. Lovely.

    And the arsehole Corbyn, demanding “answers” (as if he has any more right than those affected) but deciding to blame “austerity” without waiting for them.

  10. @dearieme

    The full Gove quote: “the people of this country have had enough of experts from organizations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.” However, interviewer Faisal Islam interrupted Gove after the word “experts”, causing some sources to report that he had made a general statement that “the people… have had enough of experts”.

    from WikiP

  11. Is it heartless to wonder how much the push for ‘affordable’ (ie price-controlled) housing, and resistance to gentrification contributes to horrible blocks like this still being around?

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