The Great Tower Block Fire Tragedy of London

[NurembergVillan]

1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

Let's not turn this debate into a racial one either.

 

1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

it'll turn into a black lives matter kind of thing where looting/rioting etc will ensue.

EDIT - I'm aware that your reference to the Black Lives Matter campaign was something that started with good intent and got way out of hand. I'm being a cheeky chappy!

[peterms]

 

[Demitri_C]

Riots are coming no question, sadly this doesn't help the situation

[peterms]

10 minutes ago, jon_c said:

They can't even get back into the building as it's not safe.  How are they meant to have done an investigation yet? And people storming a building at this point demanding justice. I get people are emotional, but what are they expecting to happen? Throw a random target under the bus, and probably end up blaming the wrong people. 

People being interviewed accept that the building is unsafe and that it will take time to retrieve and identify all the bodies.  The complaints are about being told 17 people were dead, when there were more body bags than that lying on the ground, and when it was obvious many more than that were dead.  About having no senior person from the council or the TMO coming to talk to people.  About May doing a photo-op and hiding from people.  About having to organise the emergency collection of clothes and other things with no co-ordination, with the TMO even refusing permission to store the stuff at a local hall.  About the retreat from accepting responsibility and showing leadership.

The BBC have just shown an interview with May, where they put it to her that when there is a flood somewhere, we immediately see the army, with trained people organising the storage and allocation of supplies.  Here, people were being put in B&B for one night with no indication of where they would be the next night, with the community organising emergency supplies, and with senior people hiding from them.  The contrast is there for all to see.

The response in terms of rehousing, and this pitiful £5m, are things that are being dragged out of politicians, not willingly and proactively offered.

These things are set against the context of the H&S concerns having been rebuffed over years, and the evident failure to achieve adequate safety standards during the rehab.  It compounds the underlying feeling of being dispensable, being ignored, being unvalued.

It is utterly unsurprising that people are getting angry.  It is only surprising that they are not more angry.

[LakotaDakota]

50 minutes ago, Daweii said:

**** sake.. 

No one is expecting her to wave a magic wand and make everything go back to normal, but just stop and speak to those that just want to know everything will be okay in the end. They don't want a politician right now, they want a human, someone that cares, that has the power to hopefully make a difference and to push forward change.

Stop ignoring the people Theresa for **** sake. This is your job now start doing it. 

strange how litte coverage her hospital visit to see people injured in the fire today is getting, or is it just being ignored because someone advised her that going to an area full of professional protesters forcing their way into a building probably wasn't a good idea..

[LakotaDakota]

5 minutes ago, peterms said:

People being interviewed accept that the building is unsafe and that it will take time to retrieve and identify all the bodies.  The complaints are about being told 17 people were dead, when there were more body bags than that lying on the ground, and when it was obvious many more than that were dead.

do you want them to just guess? They had 17 bodies, another 12 have been retrieved today and another died in hospital.

Sure there are going to be more but until they actually retrieve the bodies what do people expect?

[magnkarl]

7 minutes ago, LakotaDakota said:

strange how litte coverage her hospital visit to see people injured in the fire today is getting, or is it just being ignored because someone advised her that going to an area full of professional protesters forcing their way into a building probably wasn't a good idea..

Nah, the media has just gone the total other way. May is now being dissed in the media instead of Corbyn. Nothing to see here. There's people in this thread that only post on what Theresa May is doing, like it gives them some sort of satisfaction to see her, and as a result, our response to this event, fail. I liked how people squeeled at how Corbyn got misquoted on commandeering houses while they are doing the exact same thing with what May has said. Blinkered v.2.

[peterms]

1 minute ago, LakotaDakota said:

do you want them to just guess? They had 17 bodies, another 12 have been retrieved today and another died in hospital.

Sure there are going to be more but until they actually retrieve the bodies what do people expect?

I would think people expect to be told something like "We have retrieved 17 bodies so far.  We believe that many more people will have been unable to escape", accompanied by comments about releasing information as soon as possible, etc.  The resentment seems to have been about stating a number as though that was the total, when everyone knew that it must be far higher.

What do you think people expect?

[Ingram85]

2 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Nah, the media has just gone the total other way. May is now being dissed in the media instead of Corbyn. Nothing to see here. There's people in this thread that only post on what Theresa May is doing, like it gives them some sort of satisfaction to see her, and as a result, our response to this event, fail. I liked how people squeeled at how Corbyn got misquoted on commandeering houses while they are doing the exact same thing with what May has said. Blinkered v.2.

Almost like one of them is the **** prime minister or something isn't it. 

[NurembergVillan]

1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

You don't hear the major of Barcelona complaining that the tens of thousands of flats that are owned by foreigners in his city that stand vacant most of the year need to be "reclaimed for the homeless and poor". 

No, but there's THIS

Quote

The municipal government of Barcelona has announced plans to hit owners of empty homes in the city with a new charge.

According to local press reports, Barcelona City Hall has provisionally approved a plan to hit owners of empty homes in the city with a new administrative charge (tasa in Spanish) of €633, followed up with further fines of €286 for every notification issued to owners of empty homes. City Hall will present this provisional plan to the Economy Commission this week for approval.

And also THIS

Quote

Barcelona’s left-wing council has fined three Spanish banks more than one million euros in total for allowing apartments to remain empty for more than two years.

In an aggressive new phase of a plan to ease the city's housing problems and clamp down on what it calls speculation, the council fined the banks €315,000 (£269,000) for each the apartments which were allowed to remain empty for more than two years. 

It's a huge problem in cities across the world too.  Desirable cities, that is.  I experienced it first hand in Vancouver, where there is a huge housing shortage, largely driven by Asian "investment" into the city.  Over 90% of houses across the city are AT LEAST CAD$1m, with 25,000 homes being empty or rarely occupied.  That's a staggering 8.2% of the whole city!  It means crazy rents too.  The rent on a 4 bedroom house in a nicer (not the nicest) area while we were there was $5,000 per month.

They're trying to tackle it by introducing a 1% second home tax on empty properties, which relates to the value of the property.  In the nicest suburbs of Vancouver a typical family 3-4 bedroom home would sell for around $3.5m so it's a decent chunk of change.

 

[magnkarl]

5 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

No, but there's THIS

And also THIS

It's a huge problem in cities across the world too.  Desirable cities, that is.  I experienced it first hand in Vancouver, where there is a huge housing shortage, largely driven by Asian "investment" into the city.  Over 90% of houses across the city are AT LEAST CAD$1m, with 25,000 homes being empty or rarely occupied.  That's a staggering 8.2% of the whole city!  It means crazy rents too.  The rent on a 4 bedroom house in a nicer (not the nicest) area while we were there was $5,000 per month.

They're trying to tackle it by introducing a 1% second home tax on empty properties, which relates to the value of the property.  In the nicest suburbs of Vancouver a typical family 3-4 bedroom home would sell for around $3.5m so it's a decent chunk of change.

 

Yes it's a problem, but I don't see how maybe 10% of the housing market being foreign owned, and maybe 5% of that standing empty, has anything to do with 200 or so families losing their house in a fire. Every city has people speculating in the property market - should we just ban this instead of helping the people to get on the ladder in another area than Kensington/Chelsea, where to be frank, no one should EVER look for their first home.

The fact that London attracts people is one thing, but they have to deal with the ramifications of this housing market being way above all other cities in this country. Do you not think the sale of properties in London generates anything for our economy?

Taxing it isn't going to give these types of homes to homeless and the poorest in our society - that is a pipe-dream. It'll just make them slightly less profitable for investors.

Edited June 16, 2017 by magnkarl

[Xela]

2 hours ago, villakram said:

So, there is no way that given the past 16 years of us bombing muslim nations **and** the recent terrorist attacks **and** the hatred spewed daily from a couple of prominent newspapers **and** the large number of muslims in this particular building that these same people might be feeling under attack in some sense right now. Pretending that there is no problem is not how this should be dealt with. Some of these real issues need to be spoken about openly.

Giving airtime to some claiming this is a 'revenge' attack on muslims is irresponsible and the claim has zero foundation. 

[LakotaDakota]

13 minutes ago, peterms said:

I would think people expect to be told something like "We have retrieved 17 bodies so far.  We believe that many more people will have been unable to escape", accompanied by comments about releasing information as soon as possible, etc.  The resentment seems to have been about stating a number as though that was the total, when everyone knew that it must be far higher.

What do you think people expect?

so something like this then?

If people choose not to ignore it the official information is out there

http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-six-fatalities-following-the-fire-in-north-kensington-246230?hootPostID=f79df8af87dbdc0a7551f18d19577790

Every idiot forcing their way into a buliding & potentially rioting is taking people/resources away from the place they are most needed to sort this mess out and make sure that it doesn't happen again

 

The Metropolitan Police Service is leading the investigation into the fire at Grenfell Tower.

The investigation team is being drawn together from detectives from across the Met, led by Detective Chief Inspector Matt Bonner of the Homicide and Major Crime Command.

At this stage the Met can confirm that, following initial reports from specialist investigators and experts who have examined the flat where the fire started, there is nothing to suggest the fire was started deliberately.

However, like any police investigation, it is the job of the police to establish all the facts and if any criminal offences have been committed.

The Met will work closely with the London Fire Brigade and the Health and Safety Executive, and it has been agreed that the police will take primacy of the investigation.

The investigation will look at all aspects of how people tragically lost their lives in this terrible fire, what happened and why.

At least 30 fatalities have been confirmed; the bodies of twelve people have been recovered and are at a mortuary, which includes one person who has also died at hospital, despite the best efforts of colleagues in the NHS.

The other deceased remain inside the building. Sadly, it is expected that the total will rise and it is not expected that any survivors will be found.

Edited June 16, 2017 by LakotaDakota

[NurembergVillan]

4 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Do you not think the sale of properties in London generates anything for our economy?

Yes.  It generates too much disparity, it drives prices up, it drives rents up.  If a big part of Kensington is unoccupied that's a lot of homes unavailable for sale or rent.  That means people move to other areas.  That means those areas are oversubscribed, and so prices go up and rents go up.  As rents rise, so it becomes harder for renters to buy.

In 2014 there were 1.4m empty properties across the UK.  And there are people living on our streets, and people with good jobs who can't afford to buy a house because the ones on the market are in such high demand.

And beneath all that?  The folks who live in places like Grenfell Tower, who can never dream of owning somewhere (particularly somewhere near where they were born and went to school).  They're shacked up in glorified jails while we celebrate an influx of Chinese investment that has disastrous consequences across the land.

[magnkarl]

5 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

Yes.  It generates too much disparity, it drives prices up, it drives rents up.  If a big part of Kensington is unoccupied that's a lot of homes unavailable for sale or rent.  That means people move to other areas.  That means those areas are oversubscribed, and so prices go up and rents go up.  As rents rise, so it becomes harder for renters to buy.

In 2014 there were 1.4m empty properties across the UK.  And there are people living on our streets, and people with good jobs who can't afford to buy a house because the ones on the market are in such high demand.

And beneath all that?  The folks who live in places like Grenfell Tower, who can never dream of owning somewhere (particularly somewhere near where they were born and went to school).  They're shacked up in glorified jails while we celebrate an influx of Chinese investment that has disastrous consequences across the land.

A solution to this problem would be that people stopped clamouring about living in the squalid, tepid, petri-dish called London. There's jobs in Cornwall, there's jobs in Cardiff. People wanting to live in Kensington doesn't give them the right to control the housing market. It's people wanting to live outside of their means that drive that market up. It's a rich city - the houses are naturally going to be highly valued. Get the jist and move out and commute or find a job somewhere else.

A place like Basingstoke in Hampshire has an instant reduction of 50% on house prices, it'll get you to central London in an hour.

Edited June 16, 2017 by magnkarl

[peterms]

5 minutes ago, LakotaDakota said:

so something like this then?

Yes, something along those lines, rather earlier than midday today, would probably have avoided people feeling they were having things kept from them, at least in respect of the scale of the deaths.

[tinker]

Politics in a thread of this nature is totally wrong, doesn't matter who started, stop ffs.

No leadership on the ground or through the whole system is evident here, still no one has the bollox to stand up and say this is what's going to happen , we have a plan.

The press coverage is also well out of order , no information just videos of people's desperations and the sound sound bites over and over. They even covered other news events with the fuxking flat in the background......riot, I would if it was my family at the top of that structure of doom and failure

 The block should remain to remind us all of what weak management and corner cutting can lead to. 

God rest them all and God help the friends and relatives of those that have perished and those people who knew all along the systems used were dangerous, but chose to ignore it because it was the easy option .

This is a failure of our country.

[peterms]

2 minutes ago, peterms said:

Yes, something along those lines, rather earlier than midday today, would probably have avoided people feeling they were having things kept from them, at least in respect of the scale of the deaths.

Just now in the Guardian.

Quote

A chief concern among demonstrators is what they see as the continued downplaying of the death toll in the media. They feel that authorities are trying to manage the impact of the tragedy by withholding its scale from the public.

 

[villakram]

From the Guardian liveblog... couldn't make it up.

 

[LakotaDakota]

5 minutes ago, peterms said:

Yes, something along those lines, rather earlier than midday today, would probably have avoided people feeling they were having things kept from them, at least in respect of the scale of the deaths.

Scroll down, there are updates from yesterday & the day before as the numbers rose detailing exactly what the police were doing and what people should do/where they should go if they were missing people