'The Tory leader of Kensington and Chelsea council scrapped a cabinet meeting about the Grenfell Tower fire today after just two minutes, after being told he had to allow it to be open to the press.
Leader Nicholas Paget-Brown claimed he had been given legal advice that the presence of reporters could "prejudice" a forthcoming public inquiry.
Labour called for Paget-Brown's resignation after the meeting descended in to a "fiasco".
The council originally said the meeting would be closed to the press and public, provoking widespread outrage that locals were being kept in the dark.
But an 11th hour ruling by a High Court judge forced the council to allow members of the media into the meeting.
Paget-Brown was furiously confronted by opposition councillor Robert Atkinson who stood up to demand the cabinet's resignation.
Journalists had initially been barred from the meeting until an order from the High Court permitted them entry......'
Or as he's known to the locals
c*** Wielding Felon
Tory in charge of Grenfell Tower refurbishment investigated TWICE over his role
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-charge-grenfell-tower-refurb ishment-10722834 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
I write this as people are protesting outside the Kensington and Chelsea Townhall, understandably enraged at the way they have been treated.
In this context, I have an urgent message to everyone jumping up and down after the ridiculous Sophie Khan interview on Newsnight re: the supposed dichotomy between a #Grenfell inquest and an independent public inquiry.
I question why BBC Newsnight would give a platform to someone who displays such a flagrantly incompetent understanding of the law, despite claiming to specialise in the relevant law, which has now led sincerely concerned members of the public down a bizarre garden path.
I was involved in the campaign for an independent public inquiry into the 7/7 terrorist attacks. WE NEVER GOT ONE. Instead, we got an inquest.
I wrote a report into the 7/7 attacks that was sponsored by Garden Court Chambers. The report was made mandatory reading for all legal counsel as part of the inquest proceedings. Despite that, virtually none of the key lines of inquiry set out in that report regarding the colossal and systemic failures of intelligence, counter-terrorism and foreign policy were actually pursued or resolved by the inquest. The findings of the inquest largely ignored key facts and evidence available to the inquest, and followed the line of the security services.
Meanwhile, many 7/7 survivors who had been denied a public inquiry and had pinned their last hope on the inquest were sorely disappointed that their burning questions remained unanswered.
The 7/7 inquest, for instance, exonerated the security services and attempted to resolve the question of the 'preventability' of the 2005 London bombings. It then concluded that there was no basis for an independent public inquiry, thus putting to bed the very possibility of a further wider public investigation - which was very much required (See for instance https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/sabir-on-security-5/)
1. A coroner's inquest into an event like this is a statutory requirement.
So really there is absolutely no reason why there will not be an inquest: "The Coroner is expected to open an inquest where there is reasonable suspicion that the deceased has died a violent or unnatural death, where the cause of death is unknown or if the deceased died while in custody or state detention as defined by section 1(2) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009."
2. An independent public inquiry does not rule out an inquest.
As the Law Gazette reported, human rights barrister Simon McKay clarifies that public inquiries and inquests are "not mutually exclusive".
But once an inquest takes place, as the 7/7 inquest shows, the inquest itself can fatally weaken the potential for a wider and more powerful public inquiry.
3. An independent public inquiry has a wider remit than an inquest and can still be chaired by an independent judge, with full legal representation for victims.
Under the Public Inquiry Act, according to McKay, a public inquiry "'will almost certainly' be chaired by an independent judge. Victims and other interest groups will be 'core participants' and can be represented by lawyers. Their lawyers can, under the Public Inquiry Rule, ask questions of any witness subject to the chair's permission." In contrast, an inquest "has a narrow frame of reference." (see https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/tower-fire-solicitor-urges-residents -to-demand-inquest-not-inquiry/5061588.article)
On this basis, I can only conclude the following:
Sophie Khan's Newsnight interview was fundamentally misleading. It is simply false to claim so irresponsibly that a public inquiry would rule out an inquest. It is absurd to urge the public to demand an inquest instead of a public inquiry, when an inquest is precisely an expectation by law for incidents exactly like this. And therefore this Newsnight interview is a complete slap in the face to the victims of Grenfell.
I therefore question why Khan would put herself forward on Newsnight to air views which are fundamentally counterproductive to the interests of the victims and their families.
I question why the BBC's producers would allow this flagrantly legally inaccurate information to be broadcast as if it was factual.
I wonder how convenient it is for the Tory junta that Khan's misleading Newsnight interview has provoked some people to begin campaigning against an independent public inquiry.
I should probably add that Khan is a solicitor, not a barrister, unlike McKay. A barrister has specific expertise in the points of law and is the point of authority for any solicitor.
In conclusion: an independent public inquiry is urgently required. A coroner's inquest is also required, and is to be expected under the law. The police have already declared that they have launched a criminal investigation.
Please share this post so that members of the public can be informed of the facts and realities about this matter. Please don't start or support campaigns based on misleading claims made irresponsibly by self-promoters. Please support the victims and their families by supporting a unified call for an independent public inquiry and an inquest.
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155682770195942&id=541 960941 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
EXCLUSIVE: firm responsible for tower's fire alarms facing accusations it installed defective equipment in HUNDREDS of properties
BENEDICT MOORE-BRIDGER 4 hours ago
The firm behind the fire alarms at Grenfell Tower is facing a probe by fraud police Met Police
The contractor responsible for fire alarms at Grenfell Tower is being probed by fraud squad police after accusations it installed defective safety equipment in hundreds of London properties, a Standard investigation reveals today.
Housing services company Lakehouse is at the centre of a fraud inquiry after a three-year investigation by police and Hackney Council relating to a £184 million government grant to renovate council properties and install fire and smoke alarms and emergency lighting.
The company was identified by the Standard last week as the contractor responsible for testing and maintaining the fire alarms at Grenfell Tower, which some surviving residents claimed failed to go off in the tragic blaze.
Ten people have been arrested by police after Hackney Council received allegations of “fraud and overcharging” from whistleblowers.
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Council leader quits over Grenfell Tower disaster
Further investigation revealed some of the fire safety work was “defective, including incorrectly installed alarms and emergency lighting systems”. Lakehouse denies any wrong-doing.
The council has now written to 166 town hall chief executives warning them to check work done by Lakehouse and subcontractor Polyteck in case more homes could be at risk.
grenfellletter0407a.jpg
Warning: the letter sent by Hackney council
The letter, seen by the Standard, says council bosses “immediately notified the police” after discovering the work was substandard.
It says: “At all times, throughout this, our focus has been on the safety of our residents.
“We have no evidence to suggest that work carried out on contracts to other councils, by Lakehouse, or its subcontractor Polyteck, was in any way at fault, so we do not wish to cause undue alarm.
tower.jpg
Emergency workers walk on the roof of the fire-ravaged Grenfell Tower (AP)
“However, we believe that as social landlords, after the Grenfell Tower tragedy we must share any information with each other that could potentially help to keep our residents safer.
“It is in this context that we are writing to you, so that if you have had fire safety works carried out by either of these contractors, you have a chance to check them carefully.”
Inside Grenfell Tower
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The defective works were signed off by staff at Hackney Homes, the arms-length management organisation set up by the council in 2006 in order to receive its allocation of the government’s £1.6 billion Decent Homes programme to help councils raise the standards of its housing stock.
Sources close to the case said the allegations date back to the scheme’s inception in 2011.
A well-placed source told the Standard that payments had been made for work that allegedly was not done, including fire safety work.
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A look inside a flat offered to a family of Grenfell Tower survivors
The source said: “Clearly it has implications for the situation councils find themselves in now.”
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “We can confirm that in July 2014 Hackney Council referred an allegation of fraud to the Metropolitan Police Service’s Complex Fraud Team. An investigation was launched and enquiries are ongoing.
grenfell2.jpg
The charred shell of Grenfell Tower in west London (Reuters)
“A total of 10 people have been arrested as part of the investigation and two people interviewed under caution as part of the investigation.”
Three men aged 48, 39, and 34, were arrested on suspicion of bribery. Two were released from police bail but were “still under investigation”, while one was bailed until October pending further inquiries.
One man, aged 50, was arrested on suspicion of bribery and conspiracy to defraud and also released under investigation.
Three men aged 44, 39, and 38 were arrested on suspicion of bribery and bailed until November pending further inquiries.
Two women aged 45 and 36 were arrested on suspicion of money laundering and released under investigation, as was a 66-year-old-man who was arrested in connection with the investigation.
kensington-town-hall.jpg
A media scrum at a Kensington and Chelsea council meeting in the wake of the fire (Getty Images)
Two men aged 42 and 62 were interviewed under caution on suspicion of bribery.
Founded in 1988 and with its headquarters in Romford, Essex, Lakehouse employs 2,400 people and has an annual turnover of more than £340 million.
In a statement, the firm said they “never comment on commercial relationships with clients” but that they “completely refute the allegations of fraud and the other matters relating to Lakehouse”.
They added: “We are aware on an ongoing police investigation and the company continues to fully cooperate with the Metropolitan Police in its investigation and support any actions taken against individuals in relation to the allegations which arose in 2013 and 2014.”
camdenevacuation2406d.jpg
Council blocks in Camden were evacuated due to fears over their cladding in the wake of the Grenfell fire (EPA)
Hackney Council said it has been re-doing the fire safety work at 68 tower blocks “to a standard that was fully compliant with regulatory requirements and our specification, and at the contractors’ own expense”.
Hackney Homes was brought back in-house by the council in April 2016. Hackney’s elected mayor Philip Glanville told the Standard the council carried out a “wholesale restructure” of the surveyors’ team and said: “The majority of former Hackney Homes staff left the organisation.”
He added: “Grenfell and its aftermath raises many issues about the conduct of the construction industry, including sub-contractors, and also about arms-length management arrangements for housing.
“It is right that councils and social landlords should work together, share information and support each other to prevent future tragedies, which is why we have taken this action.”
Scores of blocks of flats across the UK have failed emergency fire safety tests carried out in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster which killed an estimated 80 people.
Lakehouse, which has faced a number of difficulties since floating on the Stock Exchange two years ago - including issuing a series of profit warnings and enduring a boardroom battle with senior management leaving - did not declare its involvement in the tower when announcing its results to the Stock Exchange last week.
gren1a.jpg
Firefighters work at the site of the Grenfell Tower fire in which at least 80 people died (Jeremy Selwyn)
While investigations into the inferno have so far focused on the cladding, it is expected that the role of fire alarms will also be closely scrutinised.
Lakehouse chairman Bob Holt said last week the company had not been asked to give evidence to any inquiry and said: “We are very happy because there have been many people saying they were woken by the alarms.”
Responding to today’s revelations, he said: “I have no comment to make.” The Standard has approached Polyteck for comment.
Retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, leading the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster, is preparing to consider the “broad” causes of the fire amid concern from survivors’ groups over its scope and leadership, and will scrutinise issues tracing back to building regulations at the time the block was erected.
Meanwhile Elizabeth Campbell, nominated to take over from Kensington and Chelsea leader Nicholas Paget-Brown, who resigned on Friday amid fierce criticism of the council’s response to the tragedy, said she was “truly sorry” and pledged to “heal the wounds” in the community. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Robert Mendick, chief reporter 4 JULY 2017 • 9:21PM
The Grenfell Tower judge is being subjected to a politically-motivated witch hunt, his allies said yesterday, as a Labour MP demanded he be replaced by someone “who understands human beings”.
Friends of Sir Martin Moore-Bick have been taken aback by the sustained attacks on him since his appointment as Grenfell inquiry chairman just five days ago.
A member of the Grenfell Action Group confronts a Conservative MP over the lack of help & services for survivors in the wake of the tragedy pic.twitter.com/eA46vMn9vw
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 11:59 am Post subject:
Grenfell Tower: fire-proof cladding specified by architects used only on ground floor
Non-combustible panels were fitted to base of building but cheaper panels were used for upper floors, documents show
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/06/grenfell-fire-proof-cl adding-specified-by-architects-only-used-on-ground-floor
An “urgent” email on 16 July 2014 from KCTMO’s project manager told its quantity surveyor, Artelia: “We need good costs for Cllr Feilding Mellen” [referring to a former deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea].
Rock Feilding-Mellen, until his resignation [pdf] on 30 June, was the deputy leader of Kensington & Chelsea council. He had special responsibility for housing.
According to his council profile, Feilding-Mellen also sits on London Councils’ housing and economic development boards. Furthermore, he is a member of the LGA’s Urban Commission and has sat on its housing and environment board. However, it’s not known if he will be resigning from these bodies too, or whether he will also receive a payoff from Kensington & Chelsea.
Cost cutting
It was Feilding-Mellen who was responsible for overseeing the refurbishment project of Grenfell Tower. The original submission [pdf] by architects Studio E for the refurbishment quoted [pdf, page 3] a zinc-based, non-combustible cladding. However a document shows that KCTMO pressed project management consultants Artelia UK to come up with cheaper figures on a range of items, including cladding.
As can be seen, by opting for the combustible cladding, just under £300,000 was saved:
Grenfell claddiing bid
According to The Times, documents from June and July 2014 show [paywall] Artelia UK apparently coming under pressure to reduce costs:
An ‘urgent nudge email’ about cladding prices from Kensington and Chelsea tenant management organisation (KCTMO) to Artelia says: ‘We need good costs for Cllr Feilding-Mellen and the planner tomorrow at 8.45am!’
The email lists three options for reducing the cost of cladding. Using aluminum panels rather than zinc would mean a “saving of £293,368”. Whereas the zinc panels would have been non-combustible, the aluminum eventually used had a flammable polyethylene core.
Artelia declined to discuss the matter with The Guardian, citing “a duty of confidentiality in its contract with KCTMO”.
Properties galore
But Feilding-Mellen’s resignation from Kensington & Chelsea will hardly see him penniless.
Rock Basil Hugo Feilding Mellen is the son of Joseph Chase Hurt Mellen and Amanda Claire Marian Feilding, the Countess of Wemyss and March. The family has royal/aristocratic connections, with a lineage that can be traced back to the Habsburg’s and to Charles II. One of Feilding-Mellen’s family homes is Beckley Park (image below), a Tudor hunting lodge with three towers and three moats, situated on the edge of a fen outside Oxford.
Beckley Park
Another Feilding-Mellen property is Stanway House (Gloucestershire):
Stanway House
And there’s also Gosford House, Scotland:
Gosford
Feilding-Mellen’s other interests
Rock Feilding-Mellen also heads a land development company. He is the owner and director [pdf] of Socially Conscious Capital (SCC). The company describes its core business as:
strategic land promotion: that is envisaging, master-planning, and securing planning permission for the creation of beautiful new places, often on the edge of existing villages, towns, or cities.
One such project is to advise on the planning aspects of a new village, with 450 homes at Longniddry, Scotland. This is not far from the Feilding-Mellen estate at Gosford, which includes a number of art works by Botticelli, Murillo and Rubens.
SCC has lodged a planning application for houses around Longniddry Farm, according to Herald Scotland.
However, a spokesperson for Listen to Longniddry, a group formed to campaign against the proposals, said:
A FIREMAN called for a halt to the policy of telling high-rise residents to remain in their homes during a blaze a year before the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
Firefighters at a meeting of the Fire Brigade Union’s (FBU) National Health & Safety committee last June demanded the policy be suspended.
The London meeting also heard calls from members for an urgent review of high-rise evacuation policies.
Last week the FBU wrote to Prime Minster Theresa May saying firefighters and the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire have “questions that need answering” about the tragedy.
Many are angry Grenfell residents were ordered to stay in their flats during the blaze, in which 79 people are believed to have died.
Numerous fire safety concerns have been raised and the Government’s response has been criticised.
The FBU are calling for a “broad inquiry” into building regulations and
planning policy – including probing the long-held policy of “stay put”.
But it’s now been revealed the FBU were talking about the policy 12 months ago after a firefighter highlighted concerns in a report.
The report was prompted by a study into a building that collapsed in New York in 2001 during the 9/11 terror attack.
World Trade Centre Building 7 – not one of the Twin Towers – collapsed during a fire and was not struck by a plane.
An official report by the US Government’s National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) found the 47-storey building collapsed due to an office fire breaking out – believed to be the first instance of the total collapse of a tall building primarily due to fires.
Last year, the FBU’s National Health & Safety team heard claims the fire services could not continue with the “stay put” policy after the NIST findings.
The report concluded that: “Buildings at risk include multistorey car parks, large steel portal frames and steel-framed high rise offices, flats and hotels.
“If normal office fires can cause this to happen to steelframed buildings, it is a significant risk we should be exploring on behalf of our members.
“If there is a risk of this happening again, the safety of our firefighters depends upon us being prepared.”
Report author Paul Kayley said the findings showed “stay put” policies were “dangerous”.
He said: “If a modern class-A fire protected structure can catastrophically fail due to fire, stay-put policies are dangerous, with or without unsafe exterior cladding.”
But Dave Sibert, the FBU’s fire safety advisor, challenged that view.
He said: “The ‘stay put’ policy does not need reviewing.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 1:30 pm Post subject:
Grenfell Tower families still without homes as Theresa May misses rehousing deadline
In the days after the tragedy the PM said residents of the tower would be rehoused within three weeks at the latest, but London mayor Sadiq Khan says no permanent homes have been found
The Prime Minister's three-week deadline for rehousing families forced from their homes by the Grenfell Tower tragedy has been missed with none of them found permanent accommodation in that time, the mayor of London said.
In the days after the blaze Theresa May said residents of the tower would be rehoused within three weeks at the latest.
But, speaking at Mayor's Question Time on Thursday, Sadiq Khan said, four weeks on from the tragedy, not enough has been done to find new homes for the Grenfell survivors.
He said: "It is clear much more needs to be done to find appropriate housing for Grenfell survivors.
"The Prime Minister's deadline of three weeks for everyone to be rehoused nearby has passed.
READ MORE
Grenfell Tower mum who lost unborn baby reveals he may have been poisoned by cyanide released in blaze
Sadiq Khan says 'much more needs to be done' to help the families (Image: Getty Images Europe)
"And yet, as the deadline was reached, just three households had moved into new temporary accommodation and no families had moved into permanent housing."
Around 255 survivors escaped Grenfell Tower which contained 129 flats.
Mr Khan also criticised Kensington and Chelsea Council, saying residents had no confidence in it.
He said: "I have been to North Kensington many times since the fire.
"Kensington and Chelsea Council are inept, they are incompetent and they are close to being useless in the eyes of the residents. And I concur with the residents.
"They have been missing in action, they have failed to provide the residents with the support they need."
READ MORE
Grenfell Tower survivor, 12, being treated for cyanide poisoning after fears burning cladding released highly toxic gas
Khan accused Kensington and Chelsea Council of being 'inept' (Image: Getty Images Europe)
Mr Khan said the Government could have sent in commissioners to help in the aftermath of the tragedy, but had instead struck a backroom deal with the leadership.
He also said he had asked the fire commissioner for an urgent review into the equipment she thinks she needs, in light of the disaster.
He continued: "I have written the Home Secretary asking for extra support financially to make sure our fire services have the support they need."
On Wednesday, hundreds of mourners gathered at a wall plastered in tributes in the west London neighbourhood to mark four weeks since the blaze.
Among those at the vigil was Emma Dent Coad, the newly elected MP for the area, who told the Press Association: "It is still chaotic, the whole process of housing people, getting them social housing, mental health help, whatever other help they are getting, obviously the people who aren't getting help come to me.
Officials at Kensington and Chelsea council are withdrawing documents sent to Grenfell Tower survivors that they feared could have waived their legal rights in return for receiving emergency payments, the Guardian has learned.
A letter sent from the council this week to families affected by the fire asked survivors to sign a form confirming receipt of the emergency “compensation” money. The form stated: “I confirm that this is required to compensate me for expenses I have incurred or need to incur as a consequence of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.”
The document was in addition to the one sent by the Department for Work and Pensions after the prime minister announced the first £5,500 payments in the wake of the disaster, which killed at least 79 people in the west London tower block.
Survivors said they had not been told why they were asked to sign a separate form for the council when the emergency payments were coming from central government. They and their lawyers feared the council form might hamper them from taking any future legal action against the royal borough as a result of the fire.
“The form the council has circulated has increased our anxiety and distress at a time when we are all already deeply traumatised,” said one resident.
A team of black and minority ethnic lawyers are supporting the survivors, many of whom are from similar backgrounds.
The lawyers called for the forms to be withdrawn immediately, and the fire response team, based at Westminster council, commenting on behalf of Kensington and Chelsea, has now confirmed that is happening.
“We utterly condemn the requirement being placed on residents of Grenfell Tower to sign a declaration in order to receive an emergency payment of £5,000 which refers to the payment as ‘compensation’ and states nothing to protect the rights of those who receive it,” the lawyers said in a statement to the Guardian.
“An apology must also be made to those residents who were asked to sign in the absence of legal advice, without any translation into their first language (where appropriate). For survivors who have lost every single possession anything less is simply a disgrace that would add insult to injury.”
Ismet Rawat, president of the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said: “We are deeply concerned that victims were presented with this document without any regard for their vulnerability. As BME lawyers we will continue to protect the rights of the victims and take legal action if necessary.”
In a statement to parliament on Thursday, the prime minister said of the emergency payments: “It is absolutely essential, Mr Speaker, that people understand they can keep the money they receive – that these grants are not loans and they will not be expected to repay a single penny. Neither are they waiving any legal rights as a result of accepting this financial help.”
Dame Judith Hackitt previously director of Energy Savings Trust, a body invested in promoting insulation blamed for tragic high-rise blaze
Ellie Cullen 4 days ago The Independent Online
There is no “conflict of interest” over a former role held by the woman leading a probe into building regulations in the wake of the Grenfell disaster, the Government has said.
Dame Judith Hackitt was formerly a director of the Energy Saving Trust - a body which promotes insulation products containing the material blamed for fuelling the devastating high-rise blaze that killed at least 80.
The trust advertises a list of “approved products”, some of which are insulation containing polyisocyanurate (PIR) foam.
It is reported that Dame Judith resigned from her role at the trust 24 hours before communities secretary Sajid Javid appointed her to chair the independent buildings review.
Sue Caro of the Justice for Grenfell campaign told the Times: “The Energy Saving Trust, when she was a director, endorsed plastic foam insulation, the very substance believed to be responsible for the rapid and deadly spread of the fire at Grenfell.
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“A more unsuitable candidate for this vitally important review would be hard to find.”
Dame Judith told the Times she had intended to resign from the trust in 2017 but it had been moved forward due to her appointment.
She added that she had no role in approving products.
At the time of her appointment, on 28 July, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) published a biography of Dame Judith, mentioning that she was a chemical engineer who was chairwoman of EEF, The Manufacturers' Organisation, but did not include her role at the Energy Saving Trust.
A spokeswoman for the DCLG said: “Dame Judith Hackitt is an independent and authoritative voice in the engineering sector.
“She has stood down from her position on the board of the Energy Saving Trust on taking up her role of chair of the independent review of building regulations and fire safety.
Grenfell tower fire
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“It was determined that there is no conflict of interest and that her previous role at the Energy Saving Trust did not prevent Dame Judith from being appointed chair of the review.”
The department added that its biography of Dame Judith was “not intended to provide a comprehensive list of all the roles she has undertaken”.
Press Association
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COMMENTS
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2 days ago
Meranerin
How stupid and vile the UK govt is. Even if this woman is entirely innocent and was not directly involved in promoting the improper use of this material, it is clear that in view of the seriousness of this case and the devastating lack of trust in the authorities, that the inquiry should be carried out by people in no way ever associated with this product and its promotion. The defining characteristics of modern Britain are total lack of respect by the government for the people they are suppposed to be serving and total and justified lack of trust in them on the part of the public.
ReplyShare+3
2 days ago
WendylHarris
The tories are overly confident in their manoeuvring a cover-up it seems...they delude themselves that just because public outrage on social media has abated somewhat, that we forget their culpability in this wholesale slaughter, right from the outset of their vile deregulation of Health & Safety standards...social media might preoccupy itself with the latest scandals but it doesn't mean we forget Grenfell and the survivors who are still struggling - we will see justice, no matter how long it takes!
ReplyShare+4
2 days ago
BarrieD
No government inquiry is independent.
The last forty years has seen every office of state and agency corrupted, every one, without exception.
ReplyShare+3
3 days ago
MightyMax
The cladding around Grenfell would never have ignited unless acted upon by a great heat. The fire was already in full flow before the insulation melted.
ReplyShare2 replies-6
3 days ago
Peter Ormonde
Not how it actually works Max ... once the fire is inside the paneling it's pretty much unstoppable on a chimney like that Grenfell block - immense air pressure - turbocharged ... and smoke as toxic as all heck. Erupts in sheets of flame ... doesn't have a "front" or an edge you can see. Big dump sprinklers might work- all at once. Hoses are a waste if time.
The Australian lab that tests this sort of stuff runs a standard destructive test where they watch the progress of a fire over 30 minutes. They had to shut the test on this stuff down after 30 seconds. Phooosh!!!
The boffins have been campaigning to enforce the existing bans and regulations over the last decade but iffy folks still manage to sneak it in. Merits gaol time.
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2 days ago
Edgarscult
Well , what I saw on TV was a fire that escalated quickly BECAUSE of the cladding . Every expert has said the same , but you know different ? That seems unlikely , doesn't it ?
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3 days ago
oaktree
Emma Dent Coan, the MP for Kensington since the 2017 General Election, has some conflicts of interest which are not being examined by the Justice for Grenfell Campaign. Ms Dent Coan is an expert on modern architecture, and was the only Borough Councillor appointed to the Tenant Management Committee with knowledge of building techniques. As a member of it she was party to a number of decisions which led to hat happened. She is as much involved as a number of Kensington & Chelsea Councillors who have been forced to resign.
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2 days ago
Edgarscult
The MP who took her office a WEEK before the fire ? She achieved a lot in that week , if we believe you . I don't .
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2 days ago
oaktree
The conflict of interest is related to Emma Dent Coan's time as a LB Kensington & Chelsea Councillor and as an appointee by the LB to the tentn Members Organisation that was supposed to administer the blocks of flats - not to her being an MP now.
It would however be worth the press investigating how that past set of positions affects how she should approach the subject now that she is the MP for the area.
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2 days ago
missy
The only part the whole of the RBKC Council played in the Grenfell Refurbishment Project was approving the Budget. Thereafter, project specific decisions became the fiefdom of the Cabinet, specifically CllrFeilding-Mellen – Deputy Leader andCabinet Member for Housing, Property and Regeneration &
Cllr Nick Paget-Brown – Leader of the RBKC Council& certain people at KCTMO.
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2 days ago
oaktree
Cllr Emma Dent Coan was a member of the Board of the KCTMO for quite a long time. She was appointed to appears because she had studied and written about modern architecture. So the Labour group on the Council put her forward for membership as knowledgeable about modern buildings.
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3 days ago
Ted
Lots of justifiable outrage below
But let us not forget - you voted for the f------ so what did you expect?
These are Tories - this is what they do
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3 days ago
missy
First there was Kingspan involved in the Post-Grenfell Fire Cladding testing at the BRE, then Sir Ken Knight who's connected to the Certification of Building Materials by a enterprise that has much to do with finding clever ways around the spirit of Building Safety Standards and now Dame Judith Hackitt, someone, whom here in the US would hold the loathsome title of LOBBYIST but people aren't to question whether government isn't stacking the deck to moneyed interests. The insolence of it all is beyond words. There were other more qualified people who could have filled these rolls.
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2 days ago
fulham1958
Maybe you don't understand British inquiries. They are not held to find the truth. Well at least not for forty years.
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3 days ago
Ranmore
Is it any wonder NO ONE believes or has any faith in any review of anything. From Hillsborough to Child Protection to Grenfell ? This lady is the second person on the Grenfell case with compromised interests.
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3 days ago
lyonedes
In a sense this demonstrates how gullible the government believe the public are and hardly surprising considering we're in the main docile, obedient and suffer being treated like cattle.
I sincerely hope they're not allowed to get away with this blatant insult to the Grenfell victims.
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2 days ago
BarrieD
Sadly, I think we can predict that they will get away with it.
Just look at historic child sex abuse. A man close to the then serving Prime Minister and members of the Royal Family passes any MI5 scrutiny, when even middle managers at the BBC were subjected to it.
The arrogance of a political and ruling class that presumes we're too stupid to know or care.
We're governed by criminals.
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2 days ago
Ray Visino
They can get away with anything so assume everyone are idiots, which is pretty close as they got 44% of the vote.
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3 days ago
Fur-Q
There are very few building materials with any insulation value at all that don't burn. We don't use asbestos for obvious reasons. Rockwool is not that popular as it has a poor carbon footprint. Most other plastic or natural based insulation materials will burn to a greater or lesser extent. Even aluminium used in the cladding will burn in kind of temperatures seen in the Grenfell fire. The problem is most of these tower blocks were built from concrete with little or no insulation as at the time of construction it wasn't needed because we were promised almost free limitless nuclear generated electricity. We are now having to put people first, go back to brick & concrete to provide fire safety and screw energy saving & global warming.
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Show more comments _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Documents from June and July 2014, seen by the Times, allegedly show that Grenfell Tower refurbishment consultants Artelia UK were pressured to reduce costs. An “urgent nudge email” about cladding prices from Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) to Artelia says: “We need good costs for Cllr Feilding-Mellen and the planner tomorrow at 8.45am!”
Feilding-Mellen is the deputy leader of the council and chairman of its housing committee and oversaw the refurbishment of the block.
'Sir Martin Moore-Bick said he was prepared to force witnesses to appear if they refused to give evidence voluntarily.
The former Court of Appeal judge, pictured today, also promised not to “shrink” from making any damning findings or recommendations which could lead to criminal charges against individuals or organisations.
Assessors will also be appointed to advise Sir Martin. However, he ruled out one of them being a Grenfell survivor or another local resident given that it could impact on whether the inquiry is seen as “impartial”.
After a minute’s silence as a mark of respect for the victims of the fire, he said in his opening statement: “It is right that at the very outset of the inquiry I should express on my own behalf and on behalf of all members of the inquiry team the dismay and sadness we feel at the loss of life, devastation and injury caused by the fire.
"We are acutely aware, not only that so many people died or were injured in the fire, but that many of those who survived have been severely affected by their experiences. We are also conscious that many have lost everything and even now are dependent on others for many of their daily needs.
“The inquiry cannot undo any of that, but it can and will provide answers to the pressing questions of how a disaster of this kind could occur in 21st-century London and thereby, I hope, provide a small measure of solace.”
At least 80 people are known to have died in the fire, which ravaged the North Kensington tower on June 14.
Sir Martin outlined how his inquiry would be divided into two phases, which would run in parallel “as far as possible”. An interim report is expected by Easter. Experts on fires in high-rise buildings and building regulations will be drafted in to provide specialist opinions. All hearings will be held in public unless the “particular nature” of evidence requires otherwise.
The first phase will focus on the fire itself and what happened before it was extinguished, as well as the response of the emergency services and the evacuation of residents.
Sir Martin said: “There is an urgent need to find out what aspects of the building’s design and construction played a significant role in enabling the disaster to occur.
“That is important because, if there are similar defects in other high-rise buildings, steps must be taken quickly to ensure that those who live in them are kept safe.”
Former residents will be invited to give their accounts of the night. Footage of the fire and recordings of the calls made to the emergency services will also be analysed. The inquiry aims to ensure that people who lived in the tower will only be asked to give evidence once.
Speaking at the Grand Connaught Rooms in central London, Sir Martin said: “For some of those who escaped from the tower... the stress of giving evidence is likely to be greatly magnified by the continuing effects of what can only have been a most traumatic experience. I am acutely aware of the challenges that presents. I intend to do everything possible to ensure that the process of assisting the inquiry does not result in further unnecessary suffering. To that end I shall be looking for particular help and co-operation from those who represent the victims, the families and the emergency services.
“I am open to suggestions about how I can obtain evidence from those witnesses in a sensitive and appropriate way.”
The second phase of the inquiry will examine how the building came to be “so seriously exposed to the risk of a disastrous fire”.
It will investigate the design of the tower, its modifications over previous years, decisions relating to design and construction for those modifications and the “reasons” for those decisions.
Sir Martin said: “I shall also be asking whether at each stage of its development the building complied with the regulations then in force and whether the regulations themselves were adequate.”
A particular focus would be placed on the most recent refurbishment of the building and the fitting of the external cladding.
Communications between residents and Kensington and Chelsea council and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation will also be examined, given that some local people had raised safety concerns over the tower.
The second phase will also probe the “motivation” for decisions relating to modifications, which is likely to include whether less fire resistant cladding was installed as part of a cost-saving measure.
It will also examine the response to the disaster, including steps taken in the days immediately following the fire to provide food, shelter and other basic amenities to those whose homes were destroyed.
Kensington and Chelsea council has been heavily criticised over how it reacted to the fire. Both its leader, Nicholas Paget-Brown, and chief executive, Nicholas Holgate, have quit.
Survivors and victims’ families watched Sir Martin’s statement live on a screen in Notting Hill Methodist Church. Many families who lost their homes are angry that they still have not been found a permanent replacement flat or house.
About 300 individuals or organisations have requested to be “core participants” in the inquiry, which would allow them legal representation during the hearings. Sir Martin is seeking to reduce this number by getting some of them to co-operate together.
The first hearings may start later this year. Sir Martin said he understood the “great sense of anger and betrayal” among the local community, but added: “If the inquiry is to get to the truth of what happened, it must seek out all the relevant evidence and examine it calmly and rationally.
“The scale of the task is enormous.
“We are all searching after the truth about the cause of the fire and the massive loss of life that it caused and we owe it to those who died, and to those whose homes have been destroyed, to work together to achieve that goal.”
Miguel Alves, who escaped the fire, said residents wanted justice, and for either people or institutions responsible to be held to account.
“It’s very important for us that they will come out with some outcome, some justice,” he told BBC Breakfast.
“This is a big opportunity for things to be changed in the near future. If we save lives from now, at least it’s something.”
The key questions
What happened?
The fire was reported at the 24-storey block in North Kensington at 12.54am on June 14, with 40 fire engines and more than 200 firefighters tackling it.
It took 24 hours to get it under control and 151 homes in the tower and surrounding areas were destroyed.
The Metropolitan Police says it will consider manslaughter, health and safety and fire safety charges.
How many victims?
Police say that while 80 people are presumed to have died, the final toll will not be known until at least the end of the year.
What caused it?
The fire began in a Hotpoint fridge-freezer, with the blaze spreading up one side of the building externally, before engulfing the block.
The building’s cladding has come under scrutiny, with experts saying a more fire-resistant type could have been used. Documents suggested it had been changed to a cheaper version during a refurbishment, and both the cladding and insulation on the outside of the building failed all preliminary tests by the police.
A total of 259 buildings out of 600 around the country subsequently failed government fire safety tests.
What has happened since?
Kensington and Chelsea council’s chief executive, Nicholas Holgate, resigned amid criticism over the borough’s response. The council’s leader Nick Paget-Brown also resigned, while the chief executive of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, the council’s arms-length body which manages the tower, stepped down to “concentrate on assisting with the investigation”.
The Government ordered a task force to take over the housing department, as well as other council operations.
Retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick was appointed to head an inquiry.'
'..Assessors will also be appointed to advise Sir Martin. However, he ruled out one of them being a Grenfell survivor or another local resident given that it could impact on whether the inquiry is seen as “impartial”...' - Yes, I'm sure only 'impartial' people will be appointed!!!
Grand Connaught Rooms - nice Masonic venue!!!
'....In one 2014 case, Moore-Bick said Westminster council could rehouse Titina Nzolameso, a single mother with five children, more than 50 miles away in Milton Keynes. He ruled that it was not necessary for Westminster to explain in detail what other accommodation was available and that it could take “a broad range of factors” into account, including the pressures on the council, in deciding what housing was available.
In April 2015, the supreme court reversed his ruling, pointing out that the council had not asked “any questions aimed at assessing how practicable it would be for the family to move out of the area”.....' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:10 pm Post subject:
Londoner's Diary: K&C’s deputy Rock Feilding-Mellen avoids bash at his family estate
In today's Diary: Kensington and Chelsea council deputy avoids step-sister's aristo party | Grenfell tower artist Khadija Saye shown in Tate | Times up for Gove's newspaper column | Med party | Alternative Tory leadership tip
KENSINGTON and Chelsea council’s Rock Feilding-Mellen has made one correct call since the Grenfell Tower fire. He decided not to head to his family home, Stanway House in Gloucestershire, for a wild weekend of partying with the aristo-boho set.
Feilding-Mellen is deputy leader of the council and cabinet member for housing, property and regeneration, with a brief covering the Grenfell Tower but he’s also part of a social set a world apart.
This weekend was the 30th birthday of his step-sister Mary Charteris, model and member of the band The Big Pink with her husband Robbie Furze, held at Stanway.
Party time: birthday girl Mary Charteris and friends. @georgianahuddart
He had been expected to go home at the weekend to party but, after Wednesday, he told his friends that is just wouldn’t be right. One friend tells us he was “shattered” by what happened.
It would have made “bad optics”, as they say, had Rocky been seen knocking back champagne with his family and friends. Those who did go to Mary’s party included Cara Delevingne, actor Jaime Winstone and aristos including Scarlett Spencer-Churchill.
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A dawn walk, with Cara Delevingne in yellow. @felixradford
There is a video online of Cara driving to Gloucestershire in a Range Rover. Pictures of the all-night garden party appeared on Instagram this weekend.
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The morning after. @jonte0
Rocky’s mother Amanda is married to James Charteris, the Earl of Wemyss and March. Mary is the daughter of James from his first marriage to Catherine Guinness. Stanway is the family house, set in 5,000 acres with a 300ft single jet fountain, the tallest gravity fountain in the world.
A rather different sort of estate to those in North Kensington.
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Gove’s Times column MIA since April
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SO FAREWELL, then, to Michael Gove’s Times column. It hasn’t been seen since April, when he took a little break for the snap election. “Maybe I’m old-fashioned. A sad relic rooted in the past. Woefully and irretrievably out of touch,” he began one early column. Times readers will surely miss his spot-on observations. It is unlikely that May would let Gove continue to pontificate from the altar of The Times. Boris wasn’t from The Telegraph. And how will the Gove family survive with the £150,000-a-year hit to their finances? Lucky there’s always his wife Sarah Vine’s Daily Mail column to fall back on.
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Quote of the day: “My strong feeling is the last thing the electorate wants is more political shenanigans”
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As opined to Radio 4’s Today programme by Boris Johnson, minister for political shenanigans.
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Giant steps forward on the Côte d’Azur
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(Dave Benett/Getty Images for Clu)
Dancing shoes were on at Yacht Club de Monaco, where Club Eclectique founders Anna Nasobina and Julia Polivoda held a charity evening in honour of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev. Russian prima-ballerina Maria Alexandrova performed in a play about dancers to an audience including Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her husband Richard Jones, Yasmin Mills and her chef boyfriend Justin Horne, designer Julien Macdonald and party queen Jo Wood. Singer Camilla Kerslake sang and actress Camilla Rutherford strutted the decks. But who wants to be on a yacht on the Med anyway?
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David Davis in Brussels as Brexit negotiations start today
David Davis’s personal army was briefing furiously over the weekend, ensuring the Sunday papers were riddled with talk tipping him as Tory leader before Brexit meetings in Brussels. But is Prime Minister Davis really likely? Talk from the Tory machine’s rank-and-file is of a very different candidate: MP staffers all keep tipping Rishi Sunak, MP for Richmond, William Hague’s old seat. Aged only 37, with a background of Winchester College, Oxford and Stanford, is the one to watch.
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Tate praise for fire victim
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Maria Balshaw, the Tate's new director
Last week, London lost promising young artist Khadija Saye, who died in the Grenfell fire aged just 24. The Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak tweeted Maria Balshaw, pictured right, new director of the Tate last week, to suggest Saye’s work was hung in their space.
Balshaw has replied. “Our thoughts are with everyone who knew her,” she wrote on Saturday. “We will be marking her creativity by showing one of her works at Tate Britain next week.” The young artist was a friend of MP David Lammy and his wife Nicola Green, who have paid tribute to her talent.
'Make all tower blocks safe
To Sajid Javid - Minister for Communities and Local Government and Local council leaders
Petition text
Prevent another fire like Grenfell Tower. Please urgently make a deal to fund and refurbish all unsafe tower blocks.
Why is this important?
Months after the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower killed 80 people, families are still going to bed every night in dangerous homes. The government promised to make tower blocks safer, but essential safety work has been held up over squabbles about who should pay.
Thousands of people are still living in flats similar to Grenfell Tower: homes built with materials that set fire quickly, or lack proper sprinkler systems. Unless we get the government to do something about it now, we could see a tragedy like Grenfell again.
A massive petition, signed by hundreds of thousands of us, could force the government to get vital safety work under way immediately.' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'Make all tower blocks safe
To Sajid Javid - Minister for Communities and Local Government and Local council leaders
Petition text
Prevent another fire like Grenfell Tower. Please urgently make a deal to fund and refurbish all unsafe tower blocks.
Why is this important?
Months after the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower killed 80 people, families are still going to bed every night in dangerous homes. The government promised to make tower blocks safer, but essential safety work has been held up over squabbles about who should pay.
Thousands of people are still living in flats similar to Grenfell Tower: homes built with materials that set fire quickly, or lack proper sprinkler systems. Unless we get the government to do something about it now, we could see a tragedy like Grenfell again.
A massive petition, signed by hundreds of thousands of us, could force the government to get vital safety work under way immediately.' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
James McGill Buchanan’s vision of totalitarian capitalism has infected public policy in the US. Now it’s being exported
Wednesday 19 July 2017 05.29
It’s the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century. To read Nancy MacLean’s new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, is to see what was previously invisible.
The history professor’s work on the subject began by accident. In 2013 she stumbled across a deserted clapboard house on the campus of George Mason University in Virginia. It was stuffed with the unsorted archives of a man who had died that year whose name is probably unfamiliar to you: James McGill Buchanan. She says the first thing she picked up was a stack of confidential letters concerning millions of dollars transferred to the university by the billionaire Charles Koch.
Her discoveries in that house of horrors reveal how Buchanan, in collaboration with business tycoons and the institutes they founded, developed a hidden programme for suppressing democracy on behalf of the very rich. The programme is now reshaping politics, and not just in the US.
Buchanan was strongly influenced by both the neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the property supremacism of John C Calhoun, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that freedom consists of the absolute right to use your property (including your slaves) however you may wish; any institution that impinges on this right is an agent of oppression, exploiting men of property on behalf of the undeserving masses.
James Buchanan brought these influences together to create what he called public choice theory. He argued that a society could not be considered free unless every citizen has the right to veto its decisions. What he meant by this was that no one should be taxed against their will. But the rich were being exploited by people who use their votes to demand money that others have earned, through involuntary taxes to support public spending and welfare. Allowing workers to form trade unions and imposing graduated income taxes were forms of “differential or discriminatory legislation” against the owners of capital.
Any clash between “freedom” (allowing the rich to do as they wish) and democracy should be resolved in favour of freedom. In his book The Limits of Liberty, he noted that “despotism may be the only organisational alternative to the political structure that we observe.” Despotism in defence of freedom.
His prescription was a “constitutional revolution”: creating irrevocable restraints to limit democratic choice. Sponsored throughout his working life by wealthy foundations, billionaires and corporations, he developed a theoretical account of what this constitutional revolution would look like, and a strategy for implementing it.
He explained how attempts to desegregate schooling in the American south could be frustrated by setting up a network of state-sponsored private schools. It was he who first proposed privatising universities, and imposing full tuition fees on students: his original purpose was to crush student activism. He urged privatisation of social security and many other functions of the state. He sought to break the links between people and government, and demolish trust in public institutions. He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.
In 1980, he was able to put the programme into action. He was invited to Chile, where he helped the Pinochet dictatorship write a new constitution, which, partly through the clever devices Buchanan proposed, has proved impossible to reverse entirely. Amid the torture and killings, he advised the government to extend programmes of privatisation, austerity, monetary restraint, deregulation and the destruction of trade unions: a package that helped trigger economic collapse in 1982.
None of this troubled the Swedish Academy, which through his devotee at Stockholm University Assar Lindbeck in 1986 awarded James Buchanan the Nobel memorial prize for economics. It is one of several decisions that have turned this prize toxic.
But his power really began to be felt when Koch, currently the seventh richest man in the US, decided that Buchanan held the key to the transformation he sought. Koch saw even such ideologues as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan as “sellouts”, as they sought to improve the efficiency of government rather than destroy it altogether. But Buchanan took it all the way.
MacLean says that Charles Koch poured millions into Buchanan’s work at George Mason University, whose law and economics departments look as much like corporate-funded thinktanks as they do academic faculties. He employed the economist to select the revolutionary “cadre” that would implement his programme (Murray Rothbard, at the Cato Institute that Koch founded, had urged the billionaire to study Lenin’s techniques and apply them to the libertarian cause). Between them, they began to develop a programme for changing the rules.
The papers Nancy MacLean discovered show that Buchanan saw stealth as crucial. He told his collaborators that “conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential”. Instead of revealing their ultimate destination, they would proceed by incremental steps. For example, in seeking to destroy the social security system, they would claim to be saving it, arguing that it would fail without a series of radical “reforms”. (The same argument is used by those attacking the NHS). Gradually they would build a “counter-intelligentsia”, allied to a “vast network of political power” that would become the new establishment.
Through the network of thinktanks that Koch and other billionaires have sponsored, through their transformation of the Republican party, and the hundreds of millions they have poured into state congressional and judicial races, through the mass colonisation of Trump’s administration by members of this network and lethally effective campaigns against everything from public health to action on climate change, it would be fair to say that Buchanan’s vision is maturing in the US.
But not just there. Reading this book felt like a demisting of the window through which I see British politics. The bonfire of regulations highlighted by the Grenfell Tower disaster, the destruction of state architecture through austerity, the budgeting rules, the dismantling of public services, tuition fees and the control of schools: all these measures follow Buchanan’s programme to the letter. I wonder how many people are aware that David Cameron’s free schools project stands in a tradition designed to hamper racial desegregation in the American south.
In one respect, Buchanan was right: there is an inherent conflict between what he called “economic freedom” and political liberty. Complete freedom for billionaires means poverty, insecurity, pollution and collapsing public services for everyone else. Because we will not vote for this, it can be delivered only through deception and authoritarian control. The choice we face is between unfettered capitalism and democracy. You cannot have both.
Buchanan’s programme is a prescription for totalitarian capitalism. And his disciples have only begun to implement it. But at least, thanks to MacLean’s discoveries, we can now apprehend the agenda. One of the first rules of politics is, know your enemy. We’re getting there.
A public inquiry where the government chooses charges, judge and jury puts the bonfire of regulations outside the frame. An independent commission is needed
Contact author
Wednesday 5 July 2017 06.00 BST Last modified on Tuesday 15 August 2017 11.53 BST
We don’t allow defendants in court cases to select the charges on which they will be tried. So why should the government set the terms of a public inquiry into its own failings? We don’t allow criminal suspects to vet the trial judge. Why should the government approve the inquiry’s chair?
The Grenfell residents should boycott a superficial public inquiry | Jolyon Maugham
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Even before the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster has begun, it looks like a stitch-up, its initial terms of reference set so narrowly that government policy remains outside the frame. An inquiry that honours the dead would investigate the wider causes of this crime. It would examine a governing ideology that sees torching public protections as a sacred duty.
Let me give you an example. On the morning of 14 June, as the tower blazed, an organisation called the Red Tape Initiative convened for its prearranged discussion about building regulations. One of the organisation’s tasks was to consider whether rules determining the fire resistance of cladding materials should be removed for the sake of construction industry profits.
Please bear with me while I explain what this initiative is and who runs it, as it’s a perfect cameo of British politics. It’s a government-backed body, established “to grasp the opportunities” that Brexit offers to cut “red tape” – a disparaging term for public protections. It’s chaired by the Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who has claimed that “the call to minimise risk is a call for a cowardly society”. It is a forum in which exceedingly wealthy people help decide which protections should be stripped away from lesser beings.
Among the members of its advisory panel are Charles Moore, who was editor of the Daily Telegraph and the chair of an organisation called Policy Exchange. He was also best man at Letwin’s wedding. Sitting beside him is Archie Norman, the former chief executive of Asda and the founder of Policy Exchange. He was once Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells – and was succeeded in that seat by Greg Clark, the minister who now provides government support for the Red Tape Initiative.
Until he became environment secretary, Michael Gove was also a member of the Red Tape Initiative panel. Oh, and he was appointed by Norman as the first chairman of Policy Exchange. (He was replaced by Moore.) Policy Exchange also supplied two of Letwin’s staff in the Conservative policy unit that he used to run. Policy Exchange is a neoliberal lobby group funded by dark money, that seeks to tear down regulations.
The Red Tape Initiative’s management board consists of Letwin, Baroness Rock and Lord Marland. Baroness Rock is a childhood friend of the former Tory chancellor George Osborne, and is married to the wealthy financier Caspar Rock. Marland is a multimillionaire businessman who owns a house and four flats in London, “various properties in Salisbury”, three apartments in France and two apartments in Switzerland.
In other words, the Red Tape Initiative is a representative cross-section of the British public. In no sense is it a self-serving clique of old chums, insulated from hazard by their extreme wealth, whose role is to decide whether other people (colloquially known as “cowards”) should be exposed to risk.
Letwin’s initiative appointed a panel to investigate housing regulations. It includes representatives of trade unions and NGOs, though they are outnumbered by executives and lobbyists from the industry. And there – surprise, surprise – is a man, called Richard Blakeway, from Policy Exchange.
The panel’s task on 14 June was to consider a report that the Red Tape Initiative had commissioned whose purpose was to identify building rules that could be cut. Among those it listed as “burdensome” was the EU Construction Products Regulation, which seeks to protect people from fire, and restricts the kind of cladding that can be used.
What was the source of the report’s assertion that this regulation was unnecessary? One of the sources was a column in the Sunday Telegraph by Christopher Booker. He has a fair claim to being more wrong more often than any other British journalist – quite an achievement, given the field. While Grenfell Tower was smouldering, the panel members decided that on this occasion they would not recommend the removal of the regulation.
But the Red Tape Initiative, gruesome spectre that it is, continues its work. It is one of many such schemes set up in recent decades, by Conservatives and New Labour. Recent examples are David Cameron’s Star Chamber (yes, that really was the name he gave it), in which ministers were interrogated by a panel of corporate executives; and the Cutting Red Tape programme, which boasts that “businesses with good records have had fire safety inspections reduced from six hours to 45 minutes”.
Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems
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One of the results of this bonfire of regulation is the government’s repeal in 2012 of the fire prevention measures in the London Building Act. Had they remained in place, the Grenfell fire is unlikely to have risen up the tower. This assault on public protections is just one element of the compound disaster that neoliberalism –promoted by opaquely funded groups such as Policy Exchange –has imposed on Britain since 1979. Its central purpose is not just to empower corporations and the very rich, but actively to disempower everyone else, through austerity, outsourcing and privatisation.
An inquiry that failed to investigate such possible causes would be a farce. It would do nothing to prevent any similar catastrophes from recurring. It would do nothing to stop the rich from destroying other people’s protections, as the Red Tape Initiative threatens to do.
But this is what we have been offered so far by a government that can choose charges, judge and jury. There’s an urgent need for an independent commission whose purpose is to decide when inquiries should be called, what their terms should be, and who should chair them. Governments should have no influence over any of these decisions.
On 14 June a facade caught fire, in more senses than one. A blinkered inquiry threatens to clad the origins of this great crime, shielding their embarrassing ugliness from public view. We cannot, and must not, accept it. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
A Kremlin-controlled TV station seized on the Grenfell Tower fire to try to foment “class war” in Britain.
RT, formerly Russia Today, misreported that £10 million had been spent cladding the building to improve its appearance to wealthy neighbours.
Afshin Rattansi, one of the channel’s presenters, asked if “state-backed neglect, corruption and cuts to services had led to social cleansing at Grenfell”.
“No one really knows how many people have been killed by government austerity to bail out the bankrupt City of London since 2008 . . . but if anyone wanted an emblem for the slashing of emergency services, social housing and capitalist regulation, this week’s tragic and lethal inferno was it,” he added.
Here, pictured above are the not-so-secret society that several of our Conservative councillors are members of.
THINK do not have anything against members’ clubs or societies, but we do question why the policing of Grenfell Tower and the surrounding area is under control of the mysterious “Grenfell Command” and not under Notting Dale Ward.
Why should the governance and management and general accountability (or lack of) to the public not only go on, but in fact worsen in an already very fractured local community ?
There have been some recent discoveries of Freemason regalia around the vicinity of the Maxilla space area. This is outside the blocked off grounds of Grenfell Tower and is a public space. We question why therefore, it is not Policed by the local Notting Dale Ward officers and by unknown officers from elsewhere?
All a community asks for is that their Police and local governance is open to scrutiny and while the matter of investigation into Grenfell Tower is sensitive and has to be treated with confidentiality, our local community is being denied direct accountability. Who are these mysterious “Grenfell Response” officers? Why have there not even been a mention of a name of at least one of them?
We have the utmost respect for our Notting Police Ward officers, particularly Steve Curtis and John Turner, who know many in the local community and do an outstanding job.
But THINK believe that conducting other Police duties in absolute secrecy only further undermines our local community and in fact causes division and undermines the Police themselves.
21 May 2018 Jon Snow
Eddie Daffarn wrote a blog post predicting the Grenfell fire seven months before it happened. He lived on the 16th floor and spoke to Channel 4 News in his first in-depth interview.
Eddie Daffarn wrote a blog post predicting the Grenfell Tower fire seven months before it happened. He lived on the 16th floor of the London tower.
Those who survived the fire will also be heard later in the inquiry. One person whose evidence will be closely listened to is that of Eddie Daffarn. An activist in the tower, his Grenfell Action blog warned of the tower’s mismanagement and neglect.
Shockingly, he warned seven months before the disaster that it would take a fire in a tower block like Grenfell to bring the negligent guilty to book. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
A Kensington and Chelsea finance chief who spent £62,000 of Grenfell Tower disaster money on holidays around the world, luxury shopping sprees, and gambling has been jailed for five and a half years.
Jenny McDonagh, 39, splashed out on trips to Dubai, Los Angeles, Paris, and Iceland with the stolen money, treated herself to expensive dinners out, and went on a £32,000 gambling spree.
She had been appointed as finance manager by the local authority in October 2017, four months after fire had ripped through Grenfell Tower and left 72 residents dead.
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McDonagh was employed to help distribute money to survivors of the disaster, including paying for their accommodation and other essentials.
However, she abused the position to spend vast sums of money on herself, using the identity of one of the survivors to hide the scam.
At Isleworth crown court yesterday, McDonagh also admitted defrauding Medway NHS Foundation Trust, her previous employers, out of £35,000.
This morning, Judge Robin Johnson sentenced a sobbing McDonagh to five and a half years in prison, telling her the frauds were "utterly repugnant".
"After you had been confronted with your offending you continued to siphon money."
The judge added: "The effect on those who died, their families and friends, cannot be imagined by those who were not directly affected.
"Members of the public, indeed the nation, were shocked by this dreadful event. The fact that you, a person who had been given the task of assisting in the aftermath, sought to enrich yourself, is the more shocking in the light of the outpouring of grief and sympathy that followed the disaster."
The court heard McDonagh used an account in the name of Edward Daffarn, the vice chairman of survivor campaign group Grenfell United, to siphon off more than £50,000.
Mr Daffarn described McDonagh as "truly beyond contempt", adding: "It is like pouring salt on the wounds of bereaved residents.
"These feelings go right down to our very core. The action of a few criminals pains our community."
Prosecutor Benjamin Holt said McDonagh had been responsible for "frivolous" spending, including £120 on beauty treatments, £350 at Marks and Spencer, £48 at Ann Summers, and £200 at the West End restaurant Delaunay.
She had taken eight-day trips to both Los Angeles and Dubai, and also went on excursions to Iceland and Paris.
After her arrest for the Grenfell fraud, it emerged McDonagh had also been stealing from the NHS she had worked for, setting up a fake company to pay money into.
Video: Fire brigade chief 'would not change anything' about Grenfell Tower response (PA)
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00:0200:39 HQ Fire brigade chief 'would not change anything' about Grenfell Tower response
"Your dishonesty necessarily placed additional strains on the Medway NHS Trust budget, said Defence barrister Neil Ross.
He said the case had wrecked McDonagh's marriage and she is now on anti-depressants and seeking counselling.
"She has destroyed her own future and of course has brought that on herself", he said. "She is a pathetic woman in the original meaning of that word."
McDonagh, from Abbey Wood, south-east London, pleaded guilty to three offences of fraud, one count of theft and one charge of concealing criminal property.
Sick video shows crowd torching cardboard Grenfell Tower on bonfire
Horrifying footage has emerged of a crowd of people callously burning a cardboard cut-out of Grenfell Tower on a bonfire while they jeer and laugh.
A video clip, which is circulating on Whatsapp and social media, shows a group of adults placing a cardboard effigy of the tower on a bonfire as they shriek with laughter.
The cardboard cut-out has Grenfell Tower written across the top of it and has drawings of victims standing at the windows of the building.
Disgusted viewers of the footage have described it as "sick" and said that those responsible had "no shame."
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'Sick': A cardboard cut-out of Grenfell Tower is placed on to a bonfire
Seventy-two people were killed when the tower was engulfed in an inferno in west London in June 2017.
After the cardboard effigy was placed on the fire, the crowd shouted out sick taunts.
Tony Harrison, who viewed the footage and shared it with the Standard, said he believed it amounted to a hate crime.
grenfell1.jpg
'Disgusting': viewers of the clip have been left outraged
He said: “I do feel it needs to be investigated. It’s without a doubt some of the most racist, hate-crime driven footage I’ve seen in an age. Surely people have to be held accountable for things like this."
The 55-year-old added: "It really is a sad day for humanity when we have to safeguard each other from such base level low minded individuals."
A woman named Nadeem M shared the clip on Facebook with the caption: "This is absolutely disgusting. Pictures of hijab wearing characters and shouts of 'this is because they didnt pay their rent!' Is this what humanity has come to? I personally attended funerals for those perished in Grenfall, heard the echoing crys of voicemails from sisters clutching their children while the smoke engulfed their apartments and they passed out! Seriously people, fear karma!"
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Grenfell disaster: the inferno left 72 people dead (Jeremy Selwyn )
Another woman tweeted the footage to the Met Police and asked the force: “Can this be treated as a hate crime? If not, please advise.”
It is unclear where the video was filmed but several members of the group have London accents.
A spokeswoman for Justice 4 Grenfell said: "We are disgusted and shocked at the inhumanity and callousness of those involved in this video.
"This was an unnecessary sickening act of hate against those who, through no fault of their own, have experienced the worst since June 14, 2017.
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Grenfell council launches £50m building plan to beat homes crisis
"This is clearly a hate crime and as a society we should never tolerate these types of blatant acts of hatred."
She added: "We have an expectation that the Police will look into this robustly and that the perpetrators will face the full force of the law."
Natasha Elcock, from Grenfell United said: "It’s a disgusting video. We hope that the police are taking this seriously.
"Not only is it extremely upsetting to survivors and people who lost family, it’s hateful and offensive to everyone that has been affected by the tragic events of that night."
The Metropolitan Police have been approached by the Standard about the video.
According to recent press reports the cladding and insulation system used in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was never subject to legally required fire safety tests. It was reported in The Times on 7th February and The Independent the following day, that no record of independent testing had been found by any of the three separate investigations into the Grenfell fire. It is claimed that neither the government’s expert panel on fire safety, the Metropolitan Police Investigation, or the review of building regulations by Dame Judith Hackitt had found any evidence of such testing.
It is also believed that the same potentially applies with regard to 299 other high-rise buildings in England that use similar cladding and insulation, including at least nine hospitals, 160 social housing blocks, 31 student residences, 13 public buildings and 95 private residential blocks.
The Times quoted a source with knowledge of the investigations saying;
“The question that has to be asked is how on earth did this material come to be installed on all of those buildings. Somehow or other, those materials have got on to 300 buildings without any tests being done or test results being produced.”
The refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, following which 72 innocemt victims lost their lives in a raging inferno on 14th June last year, was signed off by building control managers at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in 2016. However, if the reports in the Times and the Independent are correct, the cladding and insulation system never underwent the required mandatory safety testing. Furthermore, Reynobond ACM cladding panels, in combination with Celotex RS5000 PIR insulation, were fitted during the refurbishment of the block, neither of which had been approved in the planning consent issued for the works in January 2014. On the contrary the planning consent for the Grenfell project specified ZINC rainscreen cladding (not the aluminium type used) and Celotex FR5000 insulation (not the Celotex RS5000 used).
Sustainability and Energy Statement-952368
It has been widely suggested that the highly flammable cladding and Celotex polyisocyanurate (PIR) insulation foam were major contributors to the rapid and unprecedented spread of the blaze, which killed 72 people in June last year. In light of these revelations we believe that an urgent review of the circumstances under which Rydon were awarded the contract for the Grenfell project should be ordered. We believe such a review would prove highly informative and should be absolutely mandatory.
According to a report prepared for the RBKC Housing and Property Scrutiny Committee in July 2013 Leadbitter, at that time the main contractor for the Kensington Academy and Leisure Centre Project, was also the favored potential contractor for the Grenfell Tower project. Leadbitter, however, submitted an estimate of £11.278 million for the cost of the project. This was £1.6 million above the budget proposed by RBKC and, despite considerable pressure from RBKC to reduce this estimate, Leadbitter insisted they were unable to do so and couldn’t deliver the scheme within the proposed budget. RBKC planners, having tried and failed to pressurise Leadbitter into reducing their bid, instead reverted to an open competitive tendering process for the project. At this point it would appear that either Leadbitter were excluded from the bidding process or had withdrawn from it. Consequently, in February 2014, the contract was awarded to Rydon who had successfully undercut Leadbitter’s estimate by a considerable margin.
Assuming that Leadbitter were genuinely unable to bid within budget while maintaining quality and health and safety standards, this raises serious questions about how Rydon managed to submit a bid that substantially undercut Leadbitter and all other competitors. Did they achieve this at the expense of quality and essential health and safety considerations, by substituting the safer external cladding and insulation specified in the planning application with cheaper, more toxic and flammable alternatives that were responsible for the uniquely rapid spread of the Grenfell fire and that led to the needless and completely avoidable loss of 72 lives under the most terrible of circumstances?
Reports in the Times and BBC online news in June 2017 strongly suggest that RBKC were fully aware that, under Rydon, corners would be cut and health and safety compromised, that they were fully complicit with this strategy and that they had pressurised Rydon and their subcontractors to cut costs wherever possible, regardless of the consequences.
On 24 June 2017 Reuters reported on an exchange of six emails sent by and to an Arconic sales manager that raise questions about the supply by Arconic of highly combustible cladding for use at Grenfell Tower, despite having publicly warned the companies concerned that such panels posed a serious fire risk for tall buildings.
The emails, dating from 2014 and seen by Reuters, were between Deborah French, Arconic’s UK sales manager, and executives at the contractors (ie Rydon or their sub-contractors) seeking to procure materials for the planned refurbishment works.
French, who was based at Arconic’s factory in Merxheim, France, responded between May and July 2014 to requests on the availability of samples of five different types of Reynobond aluminium-covered panels, all of which were only available in the highly combustible PE and FR versions. The company manufactures three main types of Reynobond panel — one with a polyethylene (PE) core, one with a slightly more fire retardant core (FR) and a third with an entirely non-combustible core (A2).
When asked about the emails, Arconic said in a statement that it had known the panels would be used at Grenfell Tower but that it was not its role to decide what was or was not compliant with local building regulations.
A 2016 Arconic brochure for Reynobond panels describes PE core panels as suitable for structures up to 10 metres in height. According to the same brochure panels with a fire resistant core — the FR model — should be used up to 30 metres, while above that height, panels with the non-combustible core — the A2 model — should only be used.
Nonetheless, between May and July 2014, French responded to requests from the companies involved on the availability of samples of five different types of Reynobond aluminium-covered panels, all of which were only available in the PE and FR versions.
Despite having warned that the combustible Reynobond PE panels were safe to use on high rise buildings only if the insulation material behind the panels was made of non-combustible material such as mineral fibre, Arconic nonetheless supplied the PE panels which were ultimately used with highly combustible Celotex RS5000 insulation.
Whether or not the Arconic PE aluminium cladding used at Grenfell did or did not satisfy the BS standard is ultimately irrelevant because the underlying insulation certainly did not. Behind its shining metal surface, the tower was coated in a 6 inch layer of highly flammable and highly toxic foam insulation (Celotex RS5000) made from a plastic called polyisocyanurate that does not meet the required standard of ‘limited combustibility’. Indeed, according to a special feature published recently by Inside Housing magazine, Detective Superintendent Fiona McCormack, who is overseeing the criminal investigation into the fire, said that the insulation was “more flammable than the cladding”.
If both elements of the insulation system had achieved the limited combustibility standard in separate tests, then a combined test would not have been necessary. However Reynobond PE and Celotex RS5000 did not satisfy the combustibility tests separately. This meant that the two materials combined would need to pass another test known as BS 8414 to show that both materials, when used together, were sufficiently resistant to combustion to satisfy the UK building standard. The BS 8414 test must be commissioned from a government approved independent testing agency. It involves setting a fire under a three-storey mock-up of the proposed wall construction. Without proof that BS 8414 testing had been carried out, the cladding system would not have met building regulations. That proof is apparently not in evidence so the Grenfell cladding system should never have been approved by building control managers at RBKC.
According to Dame Judith Hackitt’s interim report commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government in response to the outcry over the Grenfell fire;
“I have found that the regulatory system for safely designing, constructing and managing buildings is not fit for purpose. The current system of building regulation is highly complex and there is confusion about the roles and responsibilities at each stage. It has become clear that the whole system of regulation is not fit for purpose, leaving room for those who want to take shortcuts to do so.
I have been shocked by some of the practices I have heard about and I am convinced of the need for a new intelligent system of regulation and enforcement for high-rise and complex buildings which will encourage everyone to do the right thing and will hold to account those who try to cut corners.”
In our view culpability for the Grenfell fire, and the 72 deaths that resulted, must extend from those responsible for proposing the cladding system that was installed on the exterior of Grenfell Tower, to the local authority for signing off on its use, and the building contractors for fitting such dangerous materials. We also believe that the lack of a rigorous testing regime, despite the considerable known risks, is strongly suggestive of a system bordering on criminal conspiracy at the heart of what are supposedly called “building standards”. These apparently exist not for the protection of the public, but primarily to enable the use of the lowest cost materials and to generate, regardless of the risks to public safety, the maximum possible profits for the construction giants and property speculators.
POSTSCRIPT
While we were still working on this blog and just about to publish it startling new revelations emerged on 5th April that the controversial Celotex PE cladding installed at Grenfell Tower had failed to meet the safety standards originally claimed by its manufacturer Arconic. Fire tests had been secretly carried out by Arconic the year before the cladding was installed at Grenfell, according to a BBC investigation. Arconic,who had commissioned the tests, did not publish the results. Arconic claimed it had informed ‘various customers and certification authorities’ but the British body that certifies building products claimed it had not been notified.
Fire resistant zinc cladding was initially proposed for the £9 million refurbishment in 2012 but was ultimately substituted for a cheaper aluminium and plastic version, at a saving of £293,368. The planning approval issued in January 2014 was based in part on the Sustainability and Energy Statement published in October 2012 as a crucial part of the planning application. It specified the use of zinc rainscreen cladding in combination with Celotex FR insulation, both of which were later substituted for cheaper and highly combustible alternatives in breach of the specifiications in the planning consent.
In standard European tests for fire safety, products are rated A to F, with ‘A’ being the safest. The BBC investigation found tests commissioned by Arconic in 2014 and 2015 produced lower classifications. Cladding classed as ‘riveted’ was tested and classified as ‘C’ in 2014 and 2015. Panels classed as ‘cassette’ – meaning they were shaped before being fitted – were classified as ‘E’. Both types of panel were reportedly installed at Grenfell.
The BBC spoke to one source, who has worked on major cladding schemes, though not on Grenfell Tower. He said he should have been informed of the new classification results by Arconic and they should have issued an immediate product recall. He added that ‘E’ rated cladding would not have been acceptable for the projects he worked on.
“TO BE BLUNT”, HE SAID, “YOU WOULDN’T PUT ‘E’ ON A DOG KENNEL”
Protesters disrupted a Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) council meeting on 7 March. And a poster was held up demanding the whereabouts of an ex-councillor responsible for the tower’s refurbishment. But plans for new houses in Norfolk hint at what he’s been up to.
Where’s Rock?
Rock Feilding-Mellen oversaw Grenfell Tower’s refurbishments, including the flammable cladding believed to have accelerated the fire’s spread. Documents suggest the decision to use cheaper but more flammable cladding was made to satisfy the councillor and the planner. But on 24 June 2017, the Mirror reported he “fled his home” following backlash from residents who were angry at his role in the fire.
Six days later, on 30 June 2017, Feilding-Mellen resigned from his £48,000 a year [pdf, p2] council position. He has since left the public eye. And this led one person at RBKC’s recent full council meeting to hold up a poster featuring Feilding-Mellen’s face and the question, “Where?”:
@saveEarlsCourt #RBKC full Council meeting tonight. Protesters wave signs asking where is Cllr Rock Feilding-Mellen (yet another no show since July last year) & demanding commissioners be brought in as former Leader Paget-Brown speaks. Paget-Brown still a councillor, still getting paid #grenfell
Socially Conscious Capital (SCC) is a property development firm listing Feilding-Mellen as its director. In 2017, The Times reported [paywall] that he is also the company’s majority owner. The developer designs and develops housing estates with “distinctive character”. And it claims to base its work on a principle of “responsibility” by:
Genuinely listening to local residents. Awareness of the sensitivities of the site and its surroundings. Becoming a real part of the community.
But one of SCC’s projects suggests otherwise.
‘Not interested in the views of local people’
Racecourse Plantation is a proposed housing development located on the edge of Norwich, Norfolk. Designs were submitted in 2011, 2013 and 2016. Each was rejected by the local authority. The plan has faced controversy because of its location inside woodland that Norfolk Wildlife Trust describes as a “key biodiversity asset” for the city.
The 2016 proposal was rejected by local authority Broadland District Council in June 2017 for a number of ecological reasons including the size of woodland that would be removed. But Friends of Thorpe Woodlands, a group of locals opposed to the plans, were worried SCC would appeal.
These fears came true when SCC appealed [pdf] in October 2017. The appeal claims [pdf, p12] that “all of the reasons from the Council and Consultees are unwarranted or unfounded”. But Friends of Thorpe Woodlands says this shows SCC “are not interested in the views of local people or their councillors”. The appeal is due to be heard in May this year.
SCC claimed that more than 70 people support its 2016 proposal. In 2013, 2,440 letters of opposition were made to the local authority, alongside statements from conservation charities. These included the RSPB, Norfolk Wildlife Trust and Natural England. And now, the local opposition group is asking the public to “make a big difference” by sending letters of opposition to the latest appeal.
Continuing to profit
A 450-house estate is being built by SCC in the village of Longniddry, Scotland. Approval was granted in August 2017 despite similar long-running opposition by local residents.
Grenfell Action Group had written a number of posts about Feilding-Mellen and Socially Conscious Capital. The group, made up of local residents, had blogged about the tower’s safety risks for months before the fire. And in a post on 6 March 2017, it said:
Given the record of Feilding-Mellen’s ‘Socially Conscious Capital’… one has to seriously question whether this man can be trusted with the ecological and environmental protections to which the RBKC Council is supposedly committed and whether he is fit to manage the so-called ‘regeneration’ of the social housing estates of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Despite SCC’s claims of responsibility, impacts on local residents and ecology appear to mean very little. And its director continues to profit from housing development as hundreds remain homeless after the Grenfell Tower fire. This lack of accountability cannot continue.
The fire chief Brenda Cotton needs to foster a leadership strategy which encourages and listens to feedback and therefore can deliver a flexible response. That didn't happen. We had a bureaucratic pliable stooge in charge on the night, not a true firefighters response.
Many more could have been saved if the officer in charge had recognised the obvious fact that the fire was enveloping the entire building and that the 'stay put' policy wouldn't work, needed reversing. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Grenfell Tower
GRENFELL justice campaigners and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) today condemned the leaking of the inquiry’s first phase report to the Telegraph.
On Monday, the inquiry’s core participants were made to sign non-disclosure agreements before being given 48 hours to read and digest the report ahead of its wider publication and debate in Parliament today.
But the embargo was broken and the report was splashed on the front of today’s Telegraph.
Campaign group Grenfell United said: “A number of bereaved and survivors have not yet had the opportunity to read the inquiry report and it is unacceptable that they should be drip fed the inquiry’s findings through the national media.â€
Joe Delaney, who was evacuated from a block of flats adjacent to Grenfell Tower, called for the embargo to be dropped because it “silenced†those affected while media outlets were free to report.
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack condemned the “deeply upsetting†leaking of the report to the media.
He also criticised the inquiry for focusing on actions of firefighters and “utterly failing†to scrutinise the aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding that was put on the tower a year before the June 2017 fire broke out and killed 72 people.
Mr Wrack described the inquiry as being “completely back to front.â€
He added: “The truth is that the fire spread the way it did because it was wrapped in flammable cladding.
“The firefighters turned up after that had happened, after the building had already been turned, in reality, into a death trap.â€
In the report, inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick acknowledges that the “principal reason†the flames spread at speed was the ACM cladding with polyethylene cores which acted as a “source of fuel.â€
But he says “serious shortcomings†plagued the London Fire Brigade’s (LFB) response and fewer people would have died if firefighters and 999 operators rescinded the “stay-put†strategy sooner.
He praises the bravery of firefighters, but accuses LFB commissioner Dany Cotton of “remarkable insensitivity†after she said she would not have done anything differently.
Mr Wrack said: “The issues behind the Grenfell Tower fire go back 30 years or more and they lie at the heart of central government.
“My frustration with this is that individual firefighters, including senior officers like Dany Cotton, are being subject to a degree of scrutiny which government ministers are avoiding.â€
The inquiry’s second phase is due to start in the new year.
Eddie Daffarn wrote a blog post predicting the Grenfell Tower fire seven months before it happened. He lived on the 16th floor of the London tower.
Those who survived the fire will also be heard later in the inquiry. One person whose evidence will be closely listened to is that of Eddie Daffarn. An activist in the tower, his Grenfell Action blog warned of the tower's mismanagement and neglect.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2019 1:59 am Post subject:
Bolton fire: government downplaying risks of HPL cladding, say critics Pleas to remove flammable panels were apparently being dismissed as recently as a fortnight ago
Bolton fire: government downplaying risks of HPL cladding, say critics
Pleas to remove flammable panels were apparently being dismissed as recently as a fortnight ago
Robert Booth and Nazia Parveen
Sun 17 Nov 2019 18.55 GMTFirst published on Sun 17 Nov 2019 12.32 GMT
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Firefighters at Bradshawgate
Firefighters at the scene after the blaze at Bradshawgate in Bolton. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
The government has been accused of downplaying the fire risk posed by the type of cladding that burned ferociously on a Bolton student housing block on Friday – and of refusing help to worried residents of other affected buildings.
Officials were dismissing pleas for the removal of high-pressure laminate panels similar to those used at the Cube in Bolton as recently as a fortnight ago, the Guardian has learned.
In August, owners of flats in high-rise blocks wrapped in combustible cladding in other parts of Greater Manchester asked the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, for help to find the money to strip their buildings of all kinds of combustible cladding. It took almost three months for an official to respond that money would be made available to remove only the specific kind of aluminium composite cladding (ACM) used at Grenfell Tower, and not the high-pressure laminate (HPL) cladding used in Bolton and on thousands of other homes.
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The official said that “government intervention to provide funding for the removal of unsafe ACM cladding is wholly exceptional” and ”was based on the unparalleled fire risk ACM poses”.
The response came despite the government’s own fire safety advisers calling for the panels to be removed unless they are used with the least combustible insulation. They have told owners to take immediate action. It is estimated that hundreds of high-rise apartment blocks are believed to be covered in combustible HPL panels.
Over the weekend, an investigation was launched into Friday’s fire, which caused the evacuation of 200 students and two injuries. A small fire on the fourth floor ripped through the upper part of the six-storey town centre building, which the fire brigade said was clad in HPL panels, “within minutes”. One witness said the fire was “crawling up the cladding like it was nothing”. Greater Manchester fire and rescue service said it had requested a fire safety assessment of the building in 2018 which included assessing the cladding materials. It said unspecified works were subsequently carried out.
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“We feel extremely let down by the government continuing to ignore our pleas to take the dangers of other materials such as HPL seriously,” said Fran Reddington, a tower block resident in Manchester who wrote to Jenrick. “The recent horrific fire at Bolton with HPL cladding clearly demonstrates that this cladding is as dangerous as ACM and we urge government to reassess, retest and provide much-needed funding to leaseholders in these blocks. We are relying on sheer luck. You shouldn’t have to rely on luck when your life is at stake.”
The government still has not completed testing of HPL cladding to fully determine the fire risk it poses and will not know how many thousands of residents are at risk from the material until March 2020 at the earliest, as the data collection exercise was only launched in July this year.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government denied it had been slow to tackle the risk. “Building owners must ensure their tenants can live safely in their homes and this means all cladding systems, including HPL, that do not conform to our strict building safety standards must be removed,” they said.
“We made clear that we agree with the Hackitt review and have committed to implementing its recommendations in a new building safety bill.”
In July 2017, a month after the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people, the shadow housing secretary, John Healey, was among those calling on the government to widen its testing regime beyond Grenfell-style cladding. The then housing secretary, Sajid Javid, replied that it was important to prioritise, but that did not “preclude tests on other types of cladding”. Yet it was not until April 2019 that tests on HPL began.
“It was always implausible that it was only this specific type of cladding that was at fault when the whole system of building safety checks had been exposed as failing, but ministers refused to act,” said Healey. “The government still hasn’t passed the legislation needed to overhaul the high-rise fire safety system.”
Sarah Jones, the shadow housing minister, said: “It’s scandalous that ministers knew this type of cladding was lethal for over a year and failed to act.”
Sources with knowledge of government thinking suggest its decision to prioritise tackling ACM cladding appeared to be driven in part by the potential additional cost of exposing a far higher number of affected buildings than the 436 found to be covered in ACM. It has already earmarked £600m to cover replacement costs of ACM. They also highlighted the greater political urgency in tackling Grenfell-style cladding and awareness that civil servants and council officials were already stretched by dealing with ACM.
Boris Johnson speaks to staff and students as he visits the University of Bolton after the fire.
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Boris Johnson speaks to staff and students as he visits the University of Bolton after the fire. Photograph: Reuters
Boris Johnson visited the scene of the fire on Saturday afternoon and briefly met students who had been evacuated. He hailed the “incredible response” from the community after appeals were made via social media to help students displaced by the fire. The University of Bolton said it had plans in place to support students, with food and accommodation for all evacuated students. Access to the building would be reviewed on Monday.
It was top EU Bilderberger and crook Klaus Kleinfeld CEO of Arconic who knowingly sold flammable cladding which was used on the Grenfell Tower.
The shareholders brought a lawsuit against him because their shares plummeted.
Previously he was CEO of Siemens but was fired for having being involved with bribery.
Last heard of he was advising the Saudi Regime.Christine Lagarde another Bilderberger and convicted criminal.
The judge said he would not punish her.
Formally head of the IMF and now head of the EU bank.
How do they get away with it beggars belief.
From Dave Lawton _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
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