The Great Tower Block Fire Tragedy of London

[mjmooney]

17 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

I think its more that a lot of people don't trust these government type schemes, that the risks are huge and that there are hidden catches somewhere waiting to catch you out. 

The real issue is that these weird schemes even exist. Creating remedies to problems that shouldn't exist in the first place. As Mooney said earlier, to most working class people an affordable property is sub £100k and I don't mean a run down hole either. We need nice, comfy, small properties.

The hardest part for me is the deposit, Im on my own on a modest monthly wage but with my rent and bills I cant save substantially near enough to get a deposit anytime soon, I could afford the monthly mortgage repayments easily, they would be the same as or less than my rent, but getting that deposit is pretty much going to take me 5+ years and the banks aren't willing to help. Short of a loaded relative dying, I have no chance and I don't trust those schemes. 

Exactly. Our kids will get our house when we peg out (assuming we don't have to sell it to pay for our health care, which is a big assumption). But we aren't planning on doing that for a while, so they're stuck for now. 

[Ingram85]

3 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

people

have

died

You do get this don't you? You've seen the start of the thread yeah? People burned to death.

People have died in a tower block and you want a conversation about shipping the poor out of town away from tourists and property investments.

you've even used the phrase:

Well it sure as **** is a human right not to burn to death on the 24th floor. 

The sum total of your response begins to read like you think the dead were at fault for living quite close to a nice area? I know you can't mean that, because I think that would be beyond the most crass view imaginable.

Serves the working class peasantry right for trying to live close to middle eastern royals 'London season' properties, Russian oligarchs UK bases, London Bankers boltholes and politicians penthouses and town houses. Why don't they try the council estate 20 miles away, they could get a nice little 3 bedroom terraced house surrounded by like minded individuals. Wait what? They don't want to move from the place they already live in or were born in? Well why not? That's just unreasonable. Rich people need these properties to make themselves richer. Inconsiderate peasants.

[lapal_fan]

1 hour ago, ml1dch said:

So someone who lives in London and its outskirts, Edinburgh, Bath, Oxford, York or Cambridge and requires more than a single bedroom - where are the right places that person should be looking?

Then you have to come to terms that you just can't afford to live in those places.

Like I can't afford to live in Kensington, or Beverly Hills, or Paris or any of the hundreds and thousands of other places I can't afford to live.  

The housing market is a joke, it's too expansive for what you get - but you can always find places for your budget, if you are in full time employment (and have a partner!).

What doesn't help now-a-days I think is that people think they need a certain standard of living to appear to be doing alright for themselves.  I hate having a beat up Peugeot, I always wonder how I see people my age in nice audis and bmw's.  But I have a nice little house in halesowen (I love it) and a car I just got 870 miles out of 1 tank, driving to Paris and back.  

My wages don't stretch to 500 quid a month cars, but I have been on 3 nice holidays to Iceland, Poland and France this year with another in Cornwall in September  (costing more than the others combined!)

[Dodgyknees]

'Be that the Isle of Wight..'

 

Bollocks to that comment. Holiday homes destroy any chance of young people here picking up 'cheap homes', so you can take that from your list of made up shit.

[PaulC]

3 hours ago, magnkarl said:

All major capitals in Europe have this sort of problem. Add in 8.6 million people living in London because it's London and you've got a perfect storm. For many people London is a tourist destination as much as our capital, which is why they have a second home or invest there. The market is driven by an almost insatiable thirst from young people around Europe, the world and the UK to go there. Investment in property is one of the reasons why property is expensive in London, but there are also a hell of a lot of other factors. It's too easy to point the finger at the rich and people investing when our country as a hole is terribly unbalanced on the account of London. 

When I said Cornwall I was clearly not talking about St. Ives and other coastal holiday destinations. Cornwall has some of the cheapest property markets in the country if you look in the right place. But I guess that doesn't fit the narrative that everyone should live where they want, be that Kensington, Isle of Wight, St Tropez or whatever. I've lived in a lot of more affordable areas before I got to live where I currently am, that has nothing to do with social cleansing or whatever people will call it. It's called life. Everyone isn't born into a family full of money and my black country parents are perfect examples of that. It isn't a human right to live in Kensington, it is however a human right to have a safe and proper house - which is the problem here.

If I had an extra £400k lying around I would also invest them in property - because that is the wise thing to do in our current market. The fact that a lot of people seem to have a hate for people investing wisely due to London being a pressure boiler full of housing needs I don't quite get. No one is breaking any laws and if this were the case I'd be angry too. Some people will have you believe that all empty flats in London are owned by mafia, kleptokrats etc when in fact a lot of them are owned by older people who saved their whole lives to be able to invest. There's no proof of any of those empty claims except for the odd house in Mayfair and Chelsea, but it is by far not the rule for who owns these houses.

 

I think that is a huge part of what is wrong with this Country even the world. Greed and selfishness! Not everyone can has the luxury of being born into wealth or have the health and ability to be successful in life. Reward success yes but not at the expense of people who are either homeless or live in unsafe or decrepit properties. Maybe if they make council tax for people with a second hpuse worth over say 300 grand triple what it should be, house prices would go down. dunno there has to be a solution that benefits everybody not just the few. 

[HanoiVillan]

Could we maybe move some of this 'you don't have a human right to live in Beverly Hills or St Tropez' rubbish to a new thread called 'Trite Observations about the Housing Market' or something?

Because I'm starting to find it incredibly disrespectful to the actual people who actually died while living in their flats in Kensington this week. 

[Ingram85]

Why dont we like natural flows of conversation here? Thats how discussion works. Things are linked together and feed back into each other.

If we started talking about computer games or strawberry jam I'd understand the 'off topic' cry more.

Social injustice/justice is utterly 100% on topic in this topic and fighting for it is anything but disrespectful for the victims. 

Edited June 17, 2017 by Ingram85

[snowychap]

The Met bloke has apparently said that it's 58 missing presumed dead.

[Ingram85]

And likely to rise

[chrisp65]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Could we maybe move some of this 'you don't have a human right to live in Beverly Hills or St Tropez' rubbish to a new thread called 'Trite Observations about the Housing Market' or something?

Because I'm starting to find it incredibly disrespectful to the actual people who actually died while living in their flats in Kensington this week. 

 

2 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

Why dont we like natural flows of conversation here? Thats how discussion works. Things are linked together and feed back into each other.

If we started talking about computer games or strawberry jam I'd understand the 'off topic' cry more.

Social injustice/justice is utterly 100% on topic in this topic and fighting for it is anything but disrespectful for the victims. 

 

I've liked both because I agree with both.

Conversation can snake around and explore other angles.

But this constant deflection shite about shipping the poor to Cornwall is horrific.

 

Anyway, to go back closer to topic. I'm interested to see what the final facts are on the lack of sprinklers and the claimed costings and decision making process. I'm no cost consultant so I'm happy to be put right, but the figure being mentioned of £200,000 to install sprinklers doesn't sound right.

I know that in the last few weeks I've been involved in altering a sprinkler layout in an empty single storey building and the cost was just under £20k. So installing a new system in an existing 24 storey occupied building? I can't see that being 200k.

Don't get me wrong, it was still in retrospect where the millions spent on cladding should have gone. But there's a level of unknown detail to be gone through here that is going to take a long time. 

 

[Genie]

19 minutes ago, snowychap said:

The Met bloke has apparently said that it's 58 missing presumed dead.

Quote

At least 58 people are now missing and presumed dead in the Grenfell Tower disaster, police have said.

This latest figure includes the 30 already confirmed to have died in the devastating fire in a west London tower block on Wednesday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40315194

Strangely worded again, because there are 30 confirmed dead (so not 58 missing). Why not just say they believe there are 28 or so bodies to be recovered?

Edited June 17, 2017 by Genie

[TrentVilla]

 

In a lot of cases there won't be bodies to recover I'm afraid.

[Xela]

38 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Could we maybe move some of this 'you don't have a human right to live in Beverly Hills or St Tropez' rubbish to a new thread called 'Trite Observations about the Housing Market' or something?

Because I'm starting to find it incredibly disrespectful to the actual people who actually died while living in their flats in Kensington this week. 

It is how most threads go though (off on a tangent) unfortunately... you only have to look at the Manchester and London Bridge threads for that. It always turns political.

 

Edited June 17, 2017 by Xela

[Genie]

Just now, TrentVilla said:

 

In a lot of cases there won't be bodies to recover I'm afraid.

Yes of course, I just find the choice of words they've used odd. It's a highly charged and emotional time so why not just say it as clearly and plainly as possible rather than this 58 missing, but includes the 30 we know are dead.

[Xela]

29 minutes ago, snowychap said:

The Met bloke has apparently said that it's 58 missing presumed dead.

I still think that seems low, as horrible as that sounds. 

[Chindie]

4 minutes ago, Genie said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40315194

Strangely worded again, because there are 30 confirmed dead (so not 58 missing). Why not just say they believe there are 28 or so bodies to be recovered?

They can't announce anything beyond what that are certain they know. They don't know there's x amount of bodies to recover, and they don't know how many died. Everyone and his dog can have a good guess, as at this point missing is effectively dead (though who knows if someone just decided that night to runaway or whatever) but that can't say that until they know. Similar to the legal thing of someone not being dead until the coroner says so.

It's part of the reason it'll take months to work out the numbers of dead and exactly who they were. Unfortunately a lot of that building is a high rise crematorium.

[Genie]

Could just be me, but I thought it was odd to include confirmed deaths in a number of "missing" people... Like they were trying to be clever and make it sound different to what it was.

"We have 30 confirmed fatalities and our investigations to date suggest that there are in the region of an additional 28 people currently missing presumed dead". 

Crystal clear.

Edited June 17, 2017 by Genie

[Xela]

7 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

 

In a lot of cases there won't be bodies to recover I'm afraid.

Would the temperature of a fire like this have been hot enough to cause bones to turn to ash? I know its a horribly morbid question. 

[darrenm]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40315194

Strangely worded again, because there are 30 confirmed dead (so not 58 missing). Why not just say they believe there are 28 or so bodies to be recovered?

As Trent also said above, I think the distinction is, confirmed dead is where they can identify remains. We couldn't have a missing figure before due to people being in critical condition in hospital being unable to be identified. I'd imagine all in hospital are now accounted for so the missing are where there are no remains or in the part of the building which is still inaccessible.

[Chindie]

1 minute ago, Xela said:

Would the temperature of a fire like this have been hot enough to cause bones to turn to ash? I know its a horribly morbid question. 

At it's height it would have been potentially thousands of degrees and it burnt for a day in some places. There won't be much left.