Harold MacMillan was right. In politics a great deal comes down to 'events'. These are the unexpected moments when moods change. I hate to describe Grenfell Tower as an event, but it is. It is and will remain a personal tragedy and trauma for many. I hope those scars will heal and lessen with time. But I hope too that Grenfell Tower will not be forgotten.
The anger over Grenfell Tower is real, raw and appropriate. This was not an accident. It has all the appearance of being a systemic failure. From the design with only one stairwell, to the refurbishment without sprinklers, to the cost cutting on the cladding; each decision was indicative not of particular failing alone (although some may be that) but of something much more significant. They are signs of a culture that did not care. And, as significantly, of a culture that thought that the state and those who relied upon it were a burden that had to be minimised.
The spend on Grenfell Tower was minimised. People have paid for that with their lives.
And people are angry. Theresa May is the focus of that anger, and rightly so. Watch Newsnight last night. See the report from John Sweeney, a man I have worked with and respect, talking about the anger. And then sense that anger in Emily Maitlis' interview with the prime minister. You can sense Maitlis' anger that Theresa May will not apologise, which she repeatedly refused to do.
The same failure was apparent in David Gauke's interview with Cathy Newman, where he too refused to answer questions.
There is good reason why they duck the issues now. In my book The Courageous State I described the coalition government of 2010-15 as a perfect example of cowardly politics. As I put it in the introduction:
Cameron and Osborne, with their allies Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander ….have become the apotheosis of something that has been thirty years in the making: they are the personification of what I call the cowardly state. The cowardly state in the UK is the creation of Margaret Thatcher, although its US version is of course the creation of Ronald Reagan. It was these two politicians who swept neoliberalism into the political arena in 1979 and 1980 respectively. Since then its progress has been continual: now it forms the consensus of thinking across the political divide within the UK, Europe and the US.
The economic crisis we are now facing is the legacy of Thatcher and Reagan because they introduced into government the neoliberal idea that whatever a politician does, however well-intentioned that action might be, they will always make matters worse in the economy. This is because government is never able, according to neoliberal thinking, to outperform the market, which will always, it says, allocate resources better and so increase human well-being more than government can.
That thinking is the reason why we have ended up with cowardly government. That is why in August 2011, when we had riots on streets of London we also had Conservative politicians on holiday, reluctant to return because they were quite sure that nothing they could do and no action they could take would make any difference to the outcome of the situation. What began as an economic idea has now swept across government as a whole: we have got a class of politicians who think that the only useful function for the power that they hold is to dismantle the state they have been elected to govern while transferring as many of its functions as possible to unelected businesses that have bankrolled their path to power.
Of course May and Gauke could not apologise. They were part of that government. They live by that creed. They accept no responsibility because they have devolved their own duty of care to the market.
But the market does not care. It's not paid to. And as the complex web of contractors who worked on Grenfell Towet showed, none is anyway given that task.
And so people are angry. And rightly so. They want politicians who care. They want people to accept responsibility. They want a government that steps up to the mark and it is apparent that we have not got that.
In this sense Grenfell Tower is an event. It should mark the time when the cowardly politicians of the neoliberal era were consigned to history. It should be mark when responsibility was resumed. It should mark when the state began to care again.
I say should. I have to live in hope.
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It is possible that we are in the midst of a political sea change, I hope so. It could be a long, hot, dangerous summer.
The tory machine appears to have lost all its deft handling of ‘circumstances beyond ists control’. What would normally be just an ‘a***e covering exercise’ is now just stepping deeper and deep into very dangerous territory. I suspect resignation is beyond their comfort zone but they could yet be driven out by public fury. Winding up a ‘mob’ never helps a situation.
People are rightly livid about government policies which allowed this awful tragedy to happen. People are incredulous at the spineless response of the Tories, denying the linkages between austerity and events; power and responsibility. This same policy is at the root of our crumbling NHS; impoverished schools and rip-off privatised railways. Enough is enough!!!
I disagree. Real government spending per head for the period 2010-2015 was the highest of any 5 year Parliament in our history. That’s after adjusting for inflation, and has been confirmed by yourself in a paper with Prof Palan. You can argue that that amount was still insufficiently high, or that a lot of it was spent on people who didn’t deserve it and so theirs should have been cut and the funds reallocated, but you cannot escape the fact that aggregate spending was the highest it has ever been.
It’s true that the last Chancellor wanted to reduce the size of the State, and considered that it should be in the mid 30s as a % of national income. You can make those points too.
But the claim that ‘the state and those who relied upon it were a burden that had to be minimised.’ does not stack up against the facts. Based on the Rahn curve and other analysis the minimum size of a well functioning state is in the mid to low 20s as a % of national income and no-one suggested we should get to that point.
And do not forget that today over half of children are being raised by parents on means-tested benefits ( not including child benefit ) – that means if you are raising children without benefits you are in a minority, and if you have children then being benefit-dependent is still the default position.
Imv, the Grenfell tower fire is a tragedy and should be investigated accordingly and the victims given appropriate support. It is not a starting point for smashing the system.
I funderstand it quite hard to believe you wrote this.
I find it hard to believe you so willingly misunderstood my own work – and ignored the fact that the percentage of GDP test is so flawed when government so wilfully crashed gdp.
I find it very hard to accept your claim that this was ‘just an accident’.
I’ll be candid, I think that callous.
And yes that is why I very definitely want an end to your system that treats people with such indifference.
Warren your post can be shredded in several ways but, sadly, I doubt I could restore your humanity, that needs to come from within.
WH wrote:
“You can argue that that amount was still insufficiently high, or that a lot of it was spent on people who didn’t deserve it and so theirs should have been cut and the funds reallocated, but you cannot escape the fact that aggregate spending was the highest it has ever been.”
So overall the point you make is that Osborne failed spectacularly even on his own terms. It is a vivid demonstration of the naive idea that aggressively cutting – austerity – will lead to a more ‘efficient’ state. For the naive it is common sense, but only because they do not understand the bigger and far more complex picture. To manage large, complex, nonlinear, multi-factor systems the strategies need to be much more sophisticated and may well seem to be counter-intuitive. The fact is that states which reduce inequality and have an effective means of taking good care of the population are also more productive and wealthier.
Sadly, austerity ranks alongside the medieval use of leeches as a cure-all treatment; a treatment that often had the unfortunate side-effect of killing the patient.
Warren-what you are saying is ideological gibberish portraying itself as ‘objective.’ First of all you make utterly fundamntal errors based on the usual one dimension thinking (if it can be called that) by neo-liberal ‘rentiers’:
1. That nominal amounts tell the story on their own.
2. That you can isolate factors without looking at the whole picture.
Your use of that old canard the Rahn Curve has two main objections that are well known and have been summed up well:
‘Firstly, it implies that the only variable that matters in determining economic growth is the quantity of government spending, and not what the money is spent on, or other factors within the economy such as levels of investment (public and private), education, consumer demand or inequality.
Secondly, it implies that there exists a single unique value for the ratio of government spending to GDP that is optimal for all countries irrespective of their size, their stage of economic development or their range of economic diversity. ‘ (see: http://cantab83.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-big-lie-2-part-2-small-govt-higher.html).
You also (deliberate, I’m sure) do NOT mention the level of private debt which is soaring year in year out and is considered by intelligent economists as THE issue yet it is invisible to you.
You also ignore asset bubbles which play into private debt levels and which are bound to increase benefit levels yet for you their is no connection! Presumably you are happy to see people extracting wealth in the most destructive manner possible yet embark on a moral tirade against those in benefits as if THEY are responsible for the vacuuming of wealth that has left them impoverished.
The system is already smashed and if you can’t see it then I suggest that your posterior is functioning somewhat like Plat’s cave where the inhabitants regarded the darkness as light.
Thanks for posting ‘Warren’s’ ‘offering’ as it is further evidence of the depth of ignorance out there -in Warren’s case he’s touching magma.
Warren Harding – I used to be swayed by arguments like yours but I’ve taken the time to learn about economics and history and now I see through them.
The neoliberal project has distorted the economy to grossly favour the owners at the top. You talk of “real government spending per head” being the highest ever from 2010-2015. Saying per head makes it sound like that spending was fairly apportioned across the population to help us all and make the economy work for all. That’s bull.
This huge spend was largely on measures to prop up a failing neoliberal system. Even the payments to families that you mention are in effect a subsidy to businesses that don’t pay a wage high enough for people to live on. Don’t even get me started on PFI service payments and the rest, you won’t win that argument.
We are not restricted, as you suggest, to only arguing that that government spending should have been higher. We can and will argue that it was all being spent on the wrong things. If government wasn’t deliberately tying it’s shoelaces together because of neoliberal dogma then it could spend money into existence on things that would reshape our economy so that it worked much better for all of us and for the ecological systems we depend on fur our survival.
The reason you and other neoliberals don’t want that to happen is because it will necessarily erode your financial power and therefore your political power. You like being top dog and you don’t care if you ruin our lives and the planet as long as you are still on top when it all ends. It’s a supremely pathetic and childish mentality bordering on the pathological.
I see that now and events like the Greek debt crisis, the media’s over-the-top attacks on Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, the selfishness of the Tory referenda on Scotland and Europe, the dismal failure of Theressa May and the obvious suffering of the normal people in this country and abroad epitomised by this awful man-made tragedy at Grenfell.
You can’t make this growing awareness go away with your weasel words so save your breath, you’re going to need it.
there are hose-reels on each floor in low-rise and means of escape bth ends..
in AUstralia there are pressurised stairways to keep smoke out..
If one knows one’s neighbours (monthy meet-up bring and share – and big lunch once a year) in case of needing help, knock on doors, whether to escape or get help to get fire put out without taking too muh risk.
the real basic problem was the fire instructions now seem to be out-dated. Especially in the plastic-covered towers. the contents of this blog should form part of the information for the [3-month long] Inquiry. The plastic covered towers need to be examined (urgently) to prove the presence & continuity of fire-breaks (and potentially protecting of plastic window-frames). and fire alarms put in, perhaps stairays, corridors pressurised to minimise smoke inhalation and fear – so as to get th people out.
before even retro-fit (not sure sprinklers necessary) those instructions need modifying – ALARMS and protected means of escape (see above comment on plastics – [Sprinklers always were activated by molten wax, so individually operated ]
do we need so much plastic in use with its high fire load?. Post clear insructions – e.g. “with an ORDERLY DEPARTIURE this block can be evacuated in 10 minutes”.
Now THATS an indictment of fire chiefs and bosses above them, lack of wide, real, hands-on experience is ENDEMIC, imaGining themselves in a fire, too much forelock pulling, to boses, electricians so-called certified, without good grasp of wider picture, etc. Yet the UK is a example of flexible standards – BS s are Guidance -rightly so, to be interpreted by experienced inspectors as i usally find. it is the desk and digital-bound that i usually find are the problem. Balance site and design, theory and practice..
On the subject of “Austerity” HOW CAN BRITS KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD? i note that it applies to the poorer-paid rent-payers not given the common-sense tips formerly available from grandmas and those in the Great Depression and post WWII frugality – they advise to save harder for the deposit -by spending less (resist the adverts and the temptations#) set up separate bank account, etc.. comments please Richard(?) with THANKS for all the TaxResearch over the years! And view Positive money.org.uk to see Mervyn King’s coment on commercially-created high-street house-price money which could be charged for and managed down to 3-4 times salary for a house purchase (help given for the remainder.
RICHARD, I know you have kindly allowed my comments before on Green Deal type changes to money-issuing including diverting base rate from any new money to the public purse. Will this need “100% registered money” so for example when a house is sold land registry figures consulted and and immediate computation made with a return of part of the interest to the public purse and regulated mark-up of, say 2%, unless it is Eco-Fit money at discounted rate of 1.5% total. If for example previous house sale price was £50k old price, __ _ years later new price (today) £100k – then £50k “growth” could be targeted, the fresh money to the banks immediately attracting interest at the prevailing rate which could be 5% total to help keep inflation down. Bill Powell now of Cambridge suggests Credit Money Creation Charge would b a useful term “many of the features of a land tax”. est
Ian
In the time I have available I found this very difficult to follow, including your last point
If you are to comment I, at least, have to be able to follow your flow
Richard
How wrong you are you really don’t get it for seven long years we have had the so called Austerity it has done nothing but cause hardship and pain while them at the top benefit , You can’t neglect people in the way this Government have done for so long people were angry before his tragic event now they are really really angry , When we elect a Government we elect them on trust they should protect every body not just them at the top , Were has all the money they have taken from benefits and cuts to public services gone I ask that question because we as a country are on our knees public services are almost gone people are dying it’s got so bad and they have spent more in 7 years than any other government since 1923 , It’s a scandal and now time for them to be stopped the weak are getting stronger and they will fight for justice this Government should be ashamed of it’s self and if I was a Tory M.P WITH A CONSENCE,,, yes I think their are a few I would be leaving that party so fast it wouldn’t know what hit it, How anyone can justify what they have done is beyond me time for them to go and the sooner the better before we see more loss of life .
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
– H. L. Mencken
Warren
1 George shrunk the economy & not the deficit. I think there has been quite a lot of explanation of why public spending reached record levels under George.
2 I’m sure youre right that over half of children are being raised by parents on means-tested benefits. I was never a big fan of Gordon’s Working Family Tax Crdits. They were his bright idea to address the uniquely British problem that a man can go out to work for 40-50 hours a week & be left completely unable to feed, clothe & shelter himself & his family. A toxic combination of 2 Thatcherite reforms: the destruction of the unions & the abolition of social housing. I can remember trying to explain WFTCs to a German friend who was utterly baffled. “But why would you make the wages so low & the rent so high? If a man works full time why does he need Government help? This will never happen in Germany”.
There are many good comments explaining why this is the wrong way of looking at things, Warren, and I will add one more.
The use of private contractors in the WCA assessments has cost the Government £1.4 billion to make a saving of £400 million. And what that spending figure doesn’t include is the additional cost of “externalities” such as health deterioration, court costs to protect the WCA process and emergency housing costs for social tenants evicted due to sanctions. So how many £billions with the actual cost be to save £400 million?
This is why spending per capita is increasing, and why we are quite right to point out that the spending is the wrong kind of spending, which a cowardly state will always think is the right kind of spending!
The silence of May and Gauke is the Tory equivalent of Jim Callaghan’s alleged comment on returning to the UK from a conference on the Caribbean: “Crisis? What crisis?”
Callaghan didn’t actually say this, but the point is that people felt he could have. Feelings and perceptions are important in politics, especially when, even if incorrectly framed, they derive from a deep instinctual understanding of the way things are going.
And there’s little doubt that this is true of the anger over Grenfell Tower. In a word, Dorothy has pulled back the green curtain, to show that the nighty Wizard of Oz is actually a bumbling old ditherer.
Of course there is a difference: Dorothy’s wizard was actually quite a kindly old buffer; by contrast, the genie revealed by Grenfell Tower is at best mendacious, at worst callous and indifferent, but certainly incompetent, especially in its latest embodiment – Mrs Maybe/Mayhem, who more than lives up to her two nicknames.
You make a good point about the public perception of politicians. We’ve become so used to being lied to,mistreated and treated like moronic cattle that we can very easily believe that our government would create a crisis or manage it for their own gains. We were promised we’d all benefit from the trickle down effect of giving the rich and powerful even more wealth and power but look at what happened…banks bankrupt and we have to bail them out whilst people go hungry,become homeless and even kill themselves when they lose their disability benefits! Austerity was an experiment in social engineering that was entirely politically motivated,the rich politicians knew it wasn’t going to negatively affect anyone they cared about or even knew!
Sadly,the lack of any effective opposition to Toryism over the past decades is the reason people don’t/didn’t vote….what’s a vote worth when you get no choice?
The aftermath of the Grenfell Towers tragedy is a visible sign that people believe their own govt are capable of anything to protect themselves, their powerful friends and their profits! The fact that it crossed my mind that the fire could have been a cover (that badly backfired) to distract from May’s jumping into bed with the DUP is indicative of my willingness to believe the absolute worst of my own govt!!
It has been a 40 year ‘wait’ (if we consider that Monetarism began with Healey in 1976) for the narrative of ‘supply-side’ economics to collapse. I thought it would collapse around 2013 when absurd austerity nonsense of ‘surpluses’ and ‘sanctions’ seemed to be so obviously mad that the public , I thought, would not take it -they did (for the time being).
I think we have to be clear that it was ONLY when the ‘event’ of Corbyn came along that the one party economic ideology was thrown into question and that throwing into question included a period of time when the ‘thrower’ was seen as a sort of ‘holy fool.’
The facade of the Tory power-dressed, spun and PR’ed started to be seen as such, it was as if a veil was lifted from the faces of the populace, as if cataracts had been removed and a clearer perception of what market fundamentalism looked like could be perceived. They were seen as snake -oil salespeople in expensive cloths, spivs, oleaginous creeps and slimeballs without any sort of substance behind them. May’s leather pants at £1000 a piece became the symbol of this vacuity; the ‘Empress’ leather Pants.’ Other Tories, like Fallon and Johnson were revealed to be facades similarly, simulacra of humans with nothing behind them except the fluctuations of assets flickering in the background to their lives; there was nothing else; no culture; no empathy; no social skills; no humour; in short, no attributes except that of ego combined with personal wealth machines, the archetypal ‘maximisers of self interest’ which should be rephrased as maxi-misers of self-interest, so miserly were they with real human concern.
But let’s not forget one snivelling, wretched character that, in my view needs to apologise to the nation while he enjoys his revenge moment: the ghastly creep Osborne; a moan without qualities, a grotesque ignoramus; an archetypal public school bully and twerp who, having contributed nothing to society himself felt free to denigrate the poor and vulnerable while HE was the real burden. We must not let this vile oik of the ‘hook.’ The man who talked of the unemployed as ‘those with their blinds drawn;’ as ‘those who don’t get up in the morning;’ as ‘skivers, not strivers.’ This man whose ignorance was so profound, he could talk about a surplus without any idea of the illiteracy of that yet was Chancellor of the Exchequer? let’s not forget this and also observe that the foul wretch is STILL propagating the austerity narrative even NOW. For people like Fallon, Johnson, May et al, life is a game, a joke that is played out while you are in charge of the assets and you watch the populace running around like ants in their debt-slavery while you poke the nest grinning with glee at your own sense of power as the ants scurry in response to your prods.
Is this era over? Maybe not yet. A few mistakes by Labour and the gutter-press will re-assume their original positions (their are hints of that even now)-the Tory House of Cards can be rebuilt very, very quickly.
So very true.
Excellent post @Simon Cohen!
When events like this happen, they should serve to remind us why we need to have regulations at all levels of society – just like the 2008 crash made it glaringly obvious why we needed better financial regulation (and have we got that yet?).
As you say Richard the State’s job is to be curious about what decisions are being made about its citizens who vote for it by markets and intervene were necessary. We need a vigilant State.
Cladding for high rise blocks should just be fire retardant across the board (nothing less) – able to slow the rate of fire spread so that (obviously) people have time to escape from the upper floors. It seems such a simple concept. And the poor souls we’ve lost in London might still be here had the simplicity been grasped.
And we need to think more seriously about sprinklers. These days they can be fitted room by room and only activate in the room where the fire starts so worries about water damage because all the sprinklers in a building are activated by fire are unfounded. Sprinkler systems can have localised activation as the ones my organisation uses on its new build.
I remember something similar happened on the railways. There were very few accidents before privatisation and some years had none. Then I remember articles appearing in Modern Railways magazine questioning if we were over doing safety in signalling and track maintenance for example and that we were spending too much money.
So, changes were made in the name of efficiency and economy (which were really made to make the figures look better for privatisation) and then we all know what happened as a consequence.
Looking back, how stupid could that cost cutting be? We had a raft of new trains that were faster than the generation before, we had increasingly congested railways with new operators competing to run their trains and……….we made cuts to signalling and track maintenance budgets in the name of profit and shareholder value!!!!
Transposing some of that to London (where I have worked in housing there too) we have affordable housing under high demand – we cannot (or will not) provide enough of it and when we do, we do so grudgingly by not spending enough on it to be safe! Also, the way of managing the stock seems to be about asset maximisation and liability reduction by under spending on maintenance and investment. And that is also related to possible future privatisation needs and rent income expectations. It’s as if the whole world is being set to be privatised.
We also had a grant system that encouraged RSLs to compete with each other on ‘VFM’ to obtain social housing grant which meant that cost cutting became the norm.
People may have died because of an obsession with money and a lack of interest in the end user – both in housing and the railways.
Those train accidents and this tower block have exposed the limits of market thinking most cruelly. But do market adherents/fundamentalists get it? Theresa May doesn’t – that’s for sure.
Thanks. Agreed
This reminds me of the cowardly actions and lies of some of the Press, Govt and Police during and after the Hillsborough tragedy. I half believed some of the insults on football fans behaviour then, the enquiry hid the truth of fans action on that day and it took 28 years before the truth came out. What I know and adopt as a guiding principle on the Establishment – ‘They lie’. The public are less likely to believe their deceptions, stymying and out right lies. We have an occasional glimpse directly into the insult on the deprived and poor that has been laid bare and open in this tragedy. They did NOT listen to the experts who said this was dangerous. The poor here had no power, were not listened to and this is a consequence of the [in]actions of Govt and the other parties. I hope something good will be built from awful pain; we can not tolerate systematic avoidance, deception and lies of a brutal Govt anymore. I hope you are right Richard that this is a pivotal moment towards caring rather than demonising people.
“But I hope too that Grenfell Tower will not be forgotten”
A clip yesterday, in which a reporter described Grenfell Tower as a ‘tombstone’ which could take a long time to demolish, got me thinking.
I now genuinely think it should remain in place – as a tombstone, as a memorial, and I pray as a relic of austerity.
I have to say that this thought had also occurred to me
The recent Steve Bell cartoon conveys just that, George:
/www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/jun/15/steve-bell-grenfell-tower-fire-disaster-cartoon
I hope labour will include the re nationalising of the Building Research Establishment which was privatised under Blair. They have had a external cladding burn test facility since 2004 and in my opinion should have pushed for the complete banning of flammable cladding .
=A and banning flammable window frames (UPVC) too which were seen to be alight.
Once alight – thats a pathway to the curtains inside and say good-bye to flat and contents.
does the compensation include those with contents uninsured?
It is clear that £5 million and a few platitudes and crocodile tears from on high are not going to “solve” this problem/event/catastrophe at Grenfell Tower. Apart from the technical issues regarding the cladding, sprinklers (lack of) stairs,fire walls/doors etc the underlying racist and class warfare aspects of this situation is becoming apparent. The almost dismissive or condescending attitudes of the authorities is beyond belief. The immediate shock is the lack of empathy ,humanity and interest in the concerns of local residents by the authorities who have been lobbied and warned about these problems for years and ignored. No wonder people are taking to the streets and storming Kensington & Chelsea town hall in desperation.
I’ve posted this before, I think, Richard…but perhaps today of all days it bears repeating/re-reading.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014
Among other things, the right questions are not being asked, I blogged on this on Friday. More to the point finding out we are being told will take years. When on a General Staff in the Army we had to be able to produce a Situation Report within hours, for obvious reasons.
I agree with you
The PM’s decision to defer to this a judge lead review ducks the issue for longer than she will be in office
Just as she wants
But not as anyone else does
I see no reason why an interim report within two weeks should not be possible and a full one in three months
The move to inquests, and rapidly
In fairness both Corbyn & Khan have stated that the enquiry must be expedited.
In the meantime, how can anyone in a council flat in a high-rise sleep at nights? I would be petrified & to think of your children sleeping, knowing that you could not get them out safely if a fire broke out, is horrible. Until a full safety check is carried out a lot of people are surviving in purgatory.
Even if public spending has in theory increased, because so much spending is for services that are contracted out then you don’t get the same result. You need to organise that contracting out and then in most cases that contracting body will make a profit. This is public spending that is not spent on the public.
The railways are the most glaring example where in spite of being privatised they receieve far more public money even accounting for inflation than they ever did when nationalised.
We have to learn to contract on
And to train people to deliver in that way
CONservatives, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Tories mistake is thinking they are above the law and above reproach…The divine right to do as they please. So they suppress of any kind of truth and deny any accountability to the nation.
Tories ruthlessly cheat to keep power.
The endless propaganda machine by Tory MSM, which cover up so much injustice; serious crime against our children – paedophilia. May has done a hatchet job on the enquiry into this, one can only assume she is covering for her family (questions surround her father) or her Tory buddies or both? This morally bankrupt government have even lobbied to lower the age of consent, some Tories want to lower it to the age of 4 years old!
The Grenfell tragedy tells all that the people are awake now, people have been pushed to the limit, many people have died (pretty sure the MSM have been told to reduce the numbers of deaths) but on the streets people know the truth. If this doesn’t topple May and the Tories, then I dread to think what the future holds.
You have twice said it wasn’t an accident. That is a series allegation as if it was not an accident it must have been a deliberate fire. Who do you think started it?
It wasn’t an accident in the sense that its spread should not have happened as it did
The cause may have been accidental
It seems that its spread was predictable
And that wholly fits with my use of language
There was an accidental fire in one apartment.
In a building whose maintenance and refurb history shows it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Right the way on from the non-operational fire-extinguisher the unfortunate tenant grabbed.
13 June 2017 feels to me like the day when the corruption of neo-liberalism was finally exposed for what it is, just as the resistance from Solidarity in Poland felt to me like the first sign that the people could take no more from the corruption of communism in the 1990s. Just as communism was finally defeated by the people, so too will the barren ideology of neo-liberalism.
For those who lost their lives, those whose first response was humanity and those who did their utmost to save others in the face of extreme personal risk, I believe that 13 June 2017 should be marked and remembered as the day when the majority finally made their voices heard in a way that could no longer be shrugged off as merely the result of “events”.
In the end, people will always win when they say “enough”.
I hope you are right Nick
It’s no compensation for those who have and will suffer
But heaven’s above it is overdue
What beats me is why it took SO long -after the massive rise in inequality in the 80’s, the ‘fat cats’ of the 90’s the crash of the 00’s the austerity drive by the most stupid ignorant and mocking Government in recent history, the decades of failed privatisation, the sanctions, the denigration of the poor and ill by ill-educated public school morons.
Why so long, why so cowed for so long? Why have ‘we’ waited until the nth degree was reached?
It has been like mass bewitchment or a hypnotic trance.
Good comments, it is time for the neoliberal chickens to come to roost, or preferably roast.
Post war so many good things were put in place that allowed society to move forward with increased mobility and opportunity for everyone. The neoliberal years since Thatcher have moved further and further away from that with deregulation of what clearly needed regulating.
I hope that 13//6/2017 really is a turning point, specifically away from the anglo american model of fat gets fatter and stuff everyone else. We need to be building a more equal society as can be found in the better parts of europe where everyone is valued and establish a new social model that is designed for the future and not buried in the past. The future is older populations and more robotisation. It will happen, so a major priority has to be that appropriate healthcare and social care is available for all and that it is seen as a well paid and valued occupation.
[…] cowardly state is all around is. We have no idea what the cost of it will be is yet, but I have little doubt that we have seen the […]
Skwawkbox is reporting this morning that SCO-19 armed police are on the Grenfell estate. It’s almost as if Govt is expecting trouble, and by putting armed police where a trajedy has happened they may well be inciting trouble.
But is the story true?
It originates from this picture on Twitter, captioned “Oliver Pritchard†@journo_oliver Jun 16 Riot police man the streets near Grenfell Tower. Are they expecting trouble?”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCd_ZPmXsAAHLb1.jpg:large
First point: I think much of the anger was stirred up by the media and agitators with ready-made posters etc.On 5 Live nearly every interview had a question: Are you angry? or Aren’t you angry? Almost saying “why are you not angry?” to sorrowful, traumatised, bewildered people. I expected to see the agitators appear in the same way as a corpse draws vultures. I did NOT expect that of 5 Live, the only BBC radio station I now listen to.
Second point: Unless WE bring the government down, like the Arab Spring, nothing will change because of the adaptability of our parliamentary system, i.e. the bias to the establishment.
There will be a great opportunity of July 5th, the NHS birthday, where we can demand that Hunt and Stevens resign and the Reinstatement Bill be brought forward. We have an opportunity to shock this nation out of its somnolence. Put these agitators to good use for a change.
John Carlisle, agitators for what and who?
There is no sea change, just management. They have instructed the media not to release the real number of bodies found. They expect us to believe that 120 flats which were overcrowded yielded 60 or so survivors plus 50 bodies so far, but the fire fighters themselves all privately agree that they’ve found over 100 with more to come. They haven’t even mentioned babies that have been found. It’s very unlikely they haven’t found at least one.
It doesn’t take much arithmetic to work out the cover up that’s going on. It’s apparently being done so that the furore will die down to nothing by tomorrow. I think they have miscalculated. The more they conceal and continue to act as if this was a little administrative difficulty, the more people will get angry.
120 flats with families in, often with 3 or more children. Some families were gathered for the Ramadan meal, so might have been around 6 people. But even if you think it’s just 3 per flat, that’s 360 people. Take away 60 survivors, and that’s 300 dead, and most likely more.
I have to say I think we must wait and see
But I understand all the concerns