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    It's OK though, because they're "minded" to make combustible cladding illegal.

    Fuckers.

    Comment


      Spent an hour and a half reading the LRB’s Grenfell special (available online) tonight.

      I am only a quarter of the way through.

      Comment


        Still waiting for my copy to arrive

        This doesn't look good, though.

        https://twitter.com/DawnHFoster/status/1001968109908037632

        She also references this long thread from Luke Barrett the housing journalist who has covered Grenfell most

        https://twitter.com/DawnHFoster/status/1001784716234805249
        Last edited by Nefertiti2; 31-05-2018, 08:58.

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          Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigade Union responds to O'Hagan's attack

          Comment


            I've read the Andrew O'Hagan piece now, which can be summarised thus:

            1) The Fire service and emergency services messed up massively by sticking with the 'stay put' advice long (at least an hour) after it should have been obvious they would not be able to prevent the whole tower from burning

            2) The main aggravating factor of the fire was (unsurprisingly) the cladding, and neither the Council nor the Tenants Management Authority (TMO /KCTMO) had any responsibility for this, as the cladding was apparently deemed to be safe and cost effective, and who are they to quibble with the rules

            3) The council did their very best and most everything they could have been expected to do, and this is overlooked in the rush to find a scapegoat, not least from central government itself

            4) The tenants of the building had been warning about maintenance problems and fire risks for years, but nothing they were warning about had much relationship to the blaze itself, and when asked to provide evidence for the Council or the Tenants Management Authority's negiligence, they are not able to

            5) he talks to the the fire inspector, but doesn't seem to spend long on him, and more or less absolves him of any blame

            6) Kensington and Chelsea, far from being a venal, ruthless council, are sketched (roughly speaking) as being benignly paternalistic, who actually provided more social housing and better services than most councils (possible because of their wealth)

            I read the whole thing with the feeling of "well, this is incredible, if true", but it seems likely a fair amount of it was not true, with some potentially rather shoddy journalism being pointed to in the aftermath of this piece – people misquoted or misled about the article.

            Really, it's such an enormously complex subject letting one interested amateur write it (even with researchers) now looks like the wrong decision. The fire standards alone are an incredibly complex area where only an expert can really offer much headway. I recommend Luke Barratt of Inside Housing's Twitter thread (should be easily findable) if you want this.

            In light of this, (1) sounds likely to be true, as is the idea that the council was used as a political football for politicians for their own ends. There's maybe a grain of truth in (4), in that many fire hazards discussed with connection with Grenfell were not decisive in the tower burning down, but the problems with fire doors and smoke extraction units uncovered by the inquiry almost certainly did seriously aggravate the smoke (one of the main causes of people being stranded). Also, it sounds like housing action blog for the tower did question why aluminium rather than zinc coated cladding panels were used

            I'm really would like to see his working for (3), when in the recent BBC documentary lots of people, including several church people who would seem to be very moderate and cautious commentators, say there was very little help on the ground. And you would think it would be very possible, a little like Hillsborough, to look at TV footage and identify council people, and I certainly haven't seen many such pics.

            (2) seems likely to be a complex matter, with no pat answer of the kind O'Hagan seems to want, with the fire inspectors, regulatory bodies, deregulation-crazed governments and TMOs all likely to share some part of the blame.

            That BBC programme on Grenfell is very good and required watching. The only quibble I'd say is that the council side was mainly critiqued by a Labour councillor (I think his role was) – although to be fair they talked to two current senior members of Kensington & Chelsea and they came across as reasonably sincere albeit with a long struggle ahead of them
            Last edited by diggedy derek; 12-06-2018, 09:05.

            Comment


              Architects for Social housing has a long critical and forensic takedown of o'Hagan's piece

              They were interviewed but not quoted

              "...O’Hagan’s article is written not as the ‘investigation’ into the Grenfell Tower fire the LRB described it as, but as a tragic novella, with its powerful and manipulative villains (the government), its fateful protagonists (the London Fire Brigade), its troublemaking outsiders (the activists), its blameless victims (the residents), and – and this is the selling point of his novella – its unjustly vilified heroes (the council). Rather like Jane Austen’s equally fictitious Mr. Darcy, these latter are possibly arrogant and undoubtedly socially awkward members of the ruling class rather bamboozled by the mores of our times, but noble in character and deed, as Mr. O’Hagan’s novella (published soon by Faber and Faber) will reveal. Indeed, in Chapter VI of his roman numeral-numbered novella, when he writes his own romantic description of the ‘rebellious’ history of North Kensington, O’Hagan doesn’t draw on social histories and economic records of the area but on the novels of Martin Amis, Muriel Spark, Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens. "

              +++

              "Apart from ‘The Tower’, I’ve never read O’Hagan’s fiction, and so I’m not aware of whether the literary device of an unreliable narrator is one he’s experimented with; but his refusal to countenance the unreliability of the testimony of the councillors and council workers he interviews, or to check their protestations of innocence against the huge weight of documentary evidence, suggests he doesn’t. I think there’s a less sophisticated and more cynical use of the novel form to divide his characters into those whose testimony we can unquestioningly trust and those we should, with his help, interrogate. It’s in this clear division, perhaps, that the ideological role of O’Hagan’s novella is most explicit, and which is most clearly revealed in this chapter in a series of statements which, in their relation to reality and their class loyalty, wouldn’t sound out of place in the mouth of George Carman QC recommending Jeremy Thorpe MP to Mr. Justice Cantley at the former’s trial in 1979:

              ‘Paget-Brown isn’t everybody’s cup of tea as a politician. But his dedication to the borough was total.’

              ‘His gentle manners precede him, in the style of a decently prepped, slightly fogeyish man of the 1950s.’

              ‘Self-sustaining decency was a commodity in short supply, and I found I liked Paget-Brown.’

              ‘He has given thirty years of his life as a councillor, and you don’t do that out of a sense of noblesse oblige.’

              ‘Local authorities work every day in Britain, often demonstrating grace under pressure.’

              ‘People with decades of experience in public service, employees who really cared for people in social housing, and worked for them every day.’

              ‘The unluckily posh-seeming leaders of a rich-seeming council, who just happen to have the wrong names at the right time.’

              ‘People required an answer. So we dried their eyes and blamed the council.’

              I’d liked to have heard what the late Peter Cook would have done with such a summary, but perhaps only someone who lives on a council estate can fully appreciate this description of the career politicians, real estate consultants, property developers and lobbyists for the building industry that sit on the cabinets of our local authorities. Clearly that no longer includes O’Hagan. Interestingly, the main contractors for the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, including Rydon Construction, CEP Architectural Facades, Harley Facades and Studio E Architects, have all refused to make a statement at the public inquiry, presumably because, just like Jeremy Thorpe, they fear saying something that will incriminate themselves. Also interestingly, though, when this last line by O’Hagan is quoted on the front cover of the London Review of Books the editors, perhaps sensing the paternal arrogance in that class division between ‘we’ and the ‘people’, changed it to: ‘So we wiped our eyes and blamed the council.’ Better to be politically correct than sorry."

              Comment


                O'Hagan's constant use of 'we' made me throw the thing down on several occasions. You might have done that mate, but don't include me in that. It's such a weasel tactic; sounds big and grown up but is fundamentally lazy, the sociological equivalent of saying 'some stuff happened but I can't be arsed getting under the skin of it'.

                He consistently says that the claim made against the Council was that they actively took decisions that knowingly increased the risks, and then, (obviously) finding no evidence of that ("there was no homocidal intent") concludes that they're put upon, and activists are mad trots.

                It's essentially the problem of getting a novelists to do an investigator's job. If the problem is the cladding, then the story about the fire is the capture of the state by construction interests to the extent that people are putting petrol bombs on the side of social housing because of a massive failure in regulatory policy brought about under neoliberailism. You could link this to the Brexit bonfire of the regulations and say that rathert than being the symptom of the gorss inequality of our times, it's as much a foretaste of things to come.

                But as he's spent so much time on the ground, he's sunk too much cost into the story he has been researching, which turns out to not have the dramatis personae he'd like, so creates them through the device of being in the firing line for the greatest example of corporate homicide in UK history. In so doing, he's at pains to stress how bloody reasonable evewryone at the council was, and by extension, how terribly reasonable he is; he can't accuse the residents themselves so the bad guys turn out to be - in essence - the Corbynite tendency (including Stormzy).

                There's a lovely bit where he has a needless snarky dig at Lily Allen, for saying that communities had lost pubs to make flats and houses for wealthier people. Instead of noting this absolute and demonstrable fact that is worse in London than any other part of the UK, he then says 'for wealthy people like Lily Allen', which makes no sense, and instead can only be read as an injunction that since Allen isn't dirt poor, she should shut her trap. The whole piece has left a sour taste towards something that hitherto was a highlight of my fortnight to receive it.

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                  Agreed. The snobbery directed against Lily Allen, especially ( who has lived there all her life) compared to say Rock Fielding Mellen aristocrat and property developer is just astonishing. Whilst the gratuitous swipe at Stormzy is very odd indeed.
                  Last edited by Nefertiti2; 12-06-2018, 11:03.

                  Comment


                    To give an idea of the extent to which O'Hagan's piece has become, unwittingly or not, a PR exercise for Kensington & Chelsea, the councils' press office has been referring media callers straight to that article when asked for comment. They're hardly talking to anyone else.

                    Novellists are never as good as writing about current affairs as they think they are, and as, alas, gullible editors think they are. What an astonishing mis-step by the LRB to commission and publish this.

                    Comment


                      The literal fall-out.

                      Comment


                        Two years on. No arrests. take 5 minutes to watch this.

                        https://twitter.com/bungatuffie/status/1140182119764897792

                        meanwhile this astonishing story has had almost no coverage/

                        It was manslaughter. At the very highest level.


                        https://twitter.com/ben_derbyshire/status/1139212051010576386


                        Comment


                          Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                          I have the feeling that this horrible catastrophe could bring down this not-yet-entirely-formed government. With the MPs who voted against tenants' rights last year (or recently anyway) being mostly Tory slum landlords, with the ex minister for housing being the new Chief of Staff (or whatever his title is - Barwell, is that his name?) who reportedly sat on a report that directly spoke to this danger, and with the precarious nature of the government's current position anyway, this could just about be the thing that breaks them. Two years ago a horrible fire in a nightclub in Bucharest resulted eventually after massive protests in the collapse of the government. I could see the same happening in the UK.
                          How the fuck have they got away with it? a heart shaped logo around the building and ruthless news management.

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                            Two years on. No arrests. take 5 minutes to watch this.

                            https://twitter.com/bungatuffie/status/1140182119764897792

                            meanwhile this astonishing story has had almost no coverage/

                            It was manslaughter. At the very highest level.


                            https://twitter.com/ben_derbyshire/status/1139212051010576386

                            Thanks for sharing this.

                            It is a must watch.

                            I fear the whitewash in the public inquiry. I fear that a UK outside of the EU will see more Grenfells. I fear the future we are about to enter under Johnson. I fear it all.

                            72 people died and nothing has really changed. The taxpayers are now paying for the cladding to be changed. Those companies responsible carry on making profits and getting public sector contracts. They have not had to pay anything for their corporate negligence that caused all of this.

                            Unfortunately I doubt they ever will.

                            Comment


                              thanks for all that stuff above.

                              are developers responsible, you think? the bonfire of regulations made it possible/likely.

                              Comment


                                Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
                                thanks for all that stuff above.

                                are developers responsible, you think? the bonfire of regulations made it possible/likely.
                                If they knew then yes. The council knew so it's likely the developers did too. Imho.

                                Comment


                                  There was a fire at Lakanal house which caused deaths in 2009

                                  Of course they knew,




                                  Gavin Barwell, who was housing minister in 2016 and 2017, received seven letters from the group of MPs responsible for scrutinising fire safety rules between September 2016 and May 2017 – with the last landing just 26 days before the fire at Grenfell Tower.

                                  The letters warned of the risk of a deadly fire and called for a promised review of building regulations and fire safety to be carried out to prevent it.

                                  But Mr Barwell sent just three short replies during this period and became so bad at replying that the group resorted to sending their letters by recorded delivery.

                                  Comment


                                    Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                                    From the link

                                    ​First responders repeatedly urged 999 callers to remain in their flats instead of attempting to flee, based on the theory of compartmentalization, or that the flats would help protect the families while the blaze was contained.​​​​​​
                                    No lessons learnt from this.

                                    Comment


                                      True, but the focus on the fire brigade- which was the first thing the enquiry concentrated on- has become a very convenient way to take the pressure of the government, the manufacturers, RBKC and the rest.

                                      Comment


                                        Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                                        True, but the focus on the fire brigade- which was the first thing the enquiry concentrated on- has become a very convenient way to take the pressure of the government, the manufacturers, RBKC and the rest.
                                        I totally agree Nef. However that advice cost lives. The real issue is how much the council and the companies knew about the cladding and why there was only a single exit with no sprinkler system. The building was a death trap because of these things so in a way staying in a flat made some kind of sense. But it was wrong.

                                        Iirc the advice is still the same.

                                        Comment


                                          https://twitter.com/Faduma_LDN/status/1180398875431129089?s=20

                                          Keep the Faith.
                                          Keep the Story Alive
                                          Grenfell was corporate Manslaughter by Boris Johnson, George Osborne. David Cameron and Theresa May

                                          Don't let anyone forget it

                                          Comment


                                            Elbow's new single was apparently written in response to Garvey's distress following Grenfell.

                                            https://music.mxdwn.com/2019/10/03/n...se-white-heat/

                                            Comment


                                              So, looks like the fire brigade and firefighters are being hung out to dry by the first phase of the inquiry

                                              Comment


                                                The word "cunts" doesn't seem strong enough.

                                                Comment


                                                  A mate of mine was seconded to compile the FBU's evidence and witness statements for the inquiry. It was one hell of a traumatic experience. Meanwhile, the Grenfell residents are bound by confidentiality agreements and can't comment yet.

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