Grenfell Tower

[Hornspieler]

I have to admit to astonishment and dismay at a handful of posts in this thread, whose callousness beggars belief and which I hope will not have been read by any of those directly affected by this tragedy; no names mentioned. ..................................... The only positive things to emerged from this appalling event have been (a) the swift, willing, generous and selfless help and support given by members of the public to those directly affected and (b) the wake-up call that has now been issued and which cannot be ignored, for there's no carpet large enough to sweep this under.

Your message #44 is, I think, a very good and unbiased post. qv

To express sympathy and concern is one thing - to jump up onto the political soap box is another and was certainly not my intention when I started this thread.

Please! If you wish to have an argument with someone, have it elsewhere - and not on this thread, which is concerned with expressing our deepest sympathy to ALL who have been affected by this tragedy.

To quote the parting words of the Irish Broadcaster, Dave Allen;


"... May your gods go with you."

HS

[Richard Barrett]

Please! If you wish to have an argument with someone, have it elsewhere - and not on this thread, which is concerned with expressing our deepest sympathy to ALL who have been affected by this tragedy.

The thing is that a tragedy like this does have all kinds of implications which go to the heart of issues facing our society which are often swept under the carpet in the interests of a quiet life (by those who can afford a quiet life).

It can be assumed, I hope, that everyone here has the deepest sympathy for those affected by the fire. However there is more to it than that. The survivors haven't been sitting around feeling sorry for themselves but are also angry and organising for justice, and our sympathy for them ought I think to extend to supporting them in this, not just immediate concerns such as being rehoused in the same borough which is surely the least they could demand, but also more far-reaching ones like getting on with ensuring that such a catastrophe isn't repeated, for which recommendations have been made to government, for example by an all-party parliamentary group on fire safety, and ignored or kicked into the long grass. There is also the CSIRO report mentioned above by Bryn. This is not "jumping onto the political soap box" but flows directly from compassion.

So the problem with saying let's wait until all the necessary investigations have been made is that in fact they have been made, as is clear from the statements of former chief fire officer Ronnie King, secretary of the aforementioned parliamentary group, for example that politicians "seem to need a disaster to change regulations, rather than evidence and experience. It was the same with the King’s Cross fire and the Bradford City football club fire. They always seem to need a significant loss of life before things are changed.” Is this also a "leftie rant"? Using language like that (not to mention "breeding like rabbits") is surely at the very least disrespectful to the victims of this disaster. No human life is worth more or less than any other.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Perhaps if Labour hadn't opened the doors to all and sundry or some people bred like rabbits, then we wouldn't have so much of a problem.

If this is the best you have to offer, then you might be better advised to take your opinions to other specifically political sites where such toxic fantasies are more likely to find approval. They are singularly unwelcome here at the best of times; in this context they are simply and completely loathsome.

[MrGongGong]

If this is the best you have to offer, then you might be better advised to take your opinions to other specifically political sites where such toxic fantasies are more likely to find approval. They are singularly unwelcome here at the best of times; in this context they are simply and completely loathsome.

They are unwelcome on this planet IMV

[ahinton]

The thing is that a tragedy like this does have all kinds of implications which go to the heart of issues facing our society which are often swept under the carpet in the interests of a quiet life (by those who can afford a quiet life).

It can be assumed, I hope, that everyone here has the deepest sympathy for those affected by the fire. However there is more to it than that. The survivors haven't been sitting around feeling sorry for themselves but are also angry and organising for justice, and our sympathy for them ought I think to extend to supporting them in this, not just immediate concerns such as being rehoused in the same borough which is surely the least they could demand, but also more far-reaching ones like getting on with ensuring that such a catastrophe isn't repeated, for which recommendations have been made to government, for example by an all-party parliamentary group on fire safety, and ignored or kicked into the long grass. There is also the CSIRO report mentioned above by Bryn. This is not "jumping onto the political soap box" but flows directly from compassion.

So the problem with saying let's wait until all the necessary investigations have been made is that in fact they have been made, as is clear from the statements of former chief fire officer Ronnie King, secretary of the aforementioned parliamentary group, for example that politicians "seem to need a disaster to change regulations, rather than evidence and experience. It was the same with the King’s Cross fire and the Bradford City football club fire. They always seem to need a significant loss of life before things are changed.” Is this also a "leftie rant"? Using language like that (not to mention "breeding like rabbits") is surely at the very least disrespectful to the victims of this disaster. No human life is worth more or less than any other.

Agreed in all particulars except that acting now, as is obviously necessary, need not and indeed should not undermine the investigations that will follow and whose outcomes ought to clarify everything that needs to be done, even though some of what needs to be done will be pretty obvious from the outset.

And no, what you and other like thinking people have written here is NOT a "leftie rant". As to the "rabbits" reference, this is an unpardonable insult to rabbits, to say nothing of those who were killed in this terrible fire and their families, friends, &c. I'm astonished that anyone would write such a thing in these circumstances, frankly. Whilst "no human life is worth more or less than any other", when one reads that kind of thing and the appalling stuff about people celebrating the fire because most of its victims were thought to be Muslims, one could be tempted momentarily to wonder to what extent that is true...

[ahinton]

Talk of 'criminals' and 'murderers' in some of our press and media is absurdly premature when we have no answers yet to the important questions

But not all of that talk is emanating from "some of our press and media"; moreover, I understand that a criminal investigation has been instigated or is about to commence; how can the notion of possible criminality be avoided in such circumstances?

[kea]

So in the last 48 hours or so we've learned:
- the building was not built to fire safety standards and used materials banned in the UK
- Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has been turning away volunteers, aid and cash on the pretense of having too much already, whereas evacuees are getting almost nothing and some are still sleeping on floors
- There was an actual, literal committee trying to raise awareness of problems with the building for years, and they were ignored
- The Government ignored warnings from fire chiefs that safety standards were inadequate
- Evacuees who were traumatised from almost dying in a fire in a high-rise tower block being rehoused in, uh, high-rise tower blocks

I feel like this crossed the line from incompetence to negligence a long time ago and is now trending sharply towards manslaughter. The people responsible should indeed go to prison, but that's not very likely considering that category seems to include most of the House of Commons.

[oddoneout]

Anyway, a question that needs looking at IMO, is why KCTMO seems to have been so unresponsive to residents' concerns, when in fact residents make up a majority on its board.

Being a majority only helps if a)all are present at any given meeting and b) they are able to participate fully.
If English is not your first language, if you are unfamiliar with 'how things work', are unable to challenge the management sitting at the end of the room, if attending meetings(even assuming their existence is made obvious) is difficult, then the chances of the residents' views being heard are much reduced.
My son, an articulate, highly intelligent, native English speaker, had occasion to take on a London Borough property management department over issues with the flats on the estate where he lived. The council tenants were not interested in getting involved as there were no financial implications(they believed) for them, and of the owner-occupiers many felt it was a lost cause. He persisted and the residents' group won but it involved taking legal advice, an enormous amount of research, commissioning surveys from structural engineers, and attendance at a great many meetings.Oh and continuing the day job.... Simply sending in complaints and concerns wasn't enough to break through the protective bureaucracy. Were the residents of Grenfell Tower in a position to do that?
The documented instances of recent(last 4 or 5 years) tower block fires in other parts of the(wealthy) world suggests that there may be design/construction features which are not the sole preserve of '2nd class housing'. Chances of survival in the premium versions is presumably greatly enhanced though by better maintenance and monitoring( on-site staff), fire prevention and control systems being in place and fit for purpose(eg alarms that are effective), lower density occupation. Not sure that there's a case for complacency among those owning premium high-rise properties in London and other large cities, even so.

[ahinton]

So in the last 48 hours or so we've learned:
- the building was not built to fire safety standards and used materials banned in the UK
- Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has been turning away volunteers, aid and cash on the pretense of having too much already, whereas evacuees are getting almost nothing and some are still sleeping on floors
- There was an actual, literal committee trying to raise awareness of problems with the building for years, and they were ignored
- The Government ignored warnings from fire chiefs that safety standards were inadequate
- Evacuees who were traumatised from almost dying in a fire in a high-rise tower block being rehoused in, uh, high-rise tower blocks

I feel like this crossed the line from incompetence to negligence a long time ago and is now trending sharply towards manslaughter. The people responsible should indeed go to prison, but that's not very likely considering that category seems to include most of the House of Commons.

Yes, indeed - and one doesn't have to await the outcome of a series of lengthy inquiries to accept these statements as fact.

[MrGongGong]

Being a majority only helps if a)all are present at any given meeting and b) they are able to participate fully.
If English is not your first language, if you are unfamiliar with 'how things work', are unable to challenge the management sitting at the end of the room, if attending meetings(even assuming their existence is made obvious) is difficult, then the chances of the residents' views being heard are much reduced.
My son, an articulate, highly intelligent, native English speaker, had occasion to take on a London Borough property management department over issues with the flats on the estate where he lived. The council tenants were not interested in getting involved as there were no financial implications(they believed) for them, and of the owner-occupiers many felt it was a lost cause. He persisted and the residents' group won but it involved taking legal advice, an enormous amount of research, commissioning surveys from structural engineers, and attendance at a great many meetings.Oh and continuing the day job.... Simply sending in complaints and concerns wasn't enough to break through the protective bureaucracy. Were the residents of Grenfell Tower in a position to do that?
The documented instances of recent(last 4 or 5 years) tower block fires in other parts of the(wealthy) world suggests that there may be design/construction features which are not the sole preserve of '2nd class housing'. Chances of survival in the premium versions is presumably greatly enhanced though by better maintenance and monitoring( on-site staff), fire prevention and control systems being in place and fit for purpose(eg alarms that are effective), lower density occupation. Not sure that there's a case for complacency among those owning premium high-rise properties in London and other large cities, even so.

Those of us who have had to deal with the deliberately Kafkaesque nature of official bodies will perfectly understand how folks are extremely angry and have no faith whatsoever in the processes that are supposed to protect.
Those who say "file a complaint" , "write to your MP" miss the point completely.
There is often no-where for people to go where they will be listened to and their concerns taken on board and "the law" is completely out of reach for most people.

That might be "political" or not but it's very telling to see which politicians (and Queen ! ) went to offer help and empathy and which went to protect their own skin and failed to talk to those affected.

[Lat-Literal]

Towers of Learning - I

There is a more fundamental point which is about the complexities and contradictions around towers in general. In the early 1970s, a significant part of the dismay around so-called slum clearance - if a few bombed out properties were among many good ones they were often all demolished compulsorily - was in the breaking up of communities. Those communities had evolved slowly but, whatever their evolution, many had the substance of history behind them of well over half a century. Planners dogmatically pursued their idealistic objectives. From their homes in Surrey and similar, they would insist that communities could be stronger when people were suddenly plonked randomly up in the skies.

It was always nonsense. Much of their predominantly shallow self-interest was in being modern while also playing Le Corbusier. Nevertheless, communities did just about hold together to some extent, especially when those who knew each other previously were placed in the same blocks. The aftermath of the Grenfell disaster all these years later has revealed a community spirit that is almost unprecedented in this country in modern times. And it has come with diverse populations, many of whom have been more frequently on the move. The nature of what has happened explains that for the most part but it might just say something too about how the community concept itself has evolved. That would, perhaps be especially true in towers where there is less scope in the main for being insular while domestic insularity elsewhere was beginning in the 1990s to define our times.

To what extent had these blocks changed between, say, 1980 and 2005? Well, one part of it was surely that some flats became privately owned. One can buy a flat now in my grandmother's tower, a place we would have loved to have helped her leave if we could have afforded to, for a price that neither my parents or I could possibly afford. Anecdotally, I visited her building alone circa 2005 and not without trepidation, walking up the six flights to her floor with a camera. The proverbial "health and safety" was in evidence to an extent. Where she used to put the rubbish out, there had been a wall up to barely waist height and above it just an open vent to the 6th floor ceiling. All of that vent was covered by a metal grate so it was quite impossible to take photos of Central London or even to see the main landmarks anymore. Safer in more than a cosmetic way but more confined.

I was also obliged to enter into an almost identical block in the suburb of Sutton. Most of the properties had been purchased and in contrast to the hard concrete on the floor of my grandmother's building, each floor was carpeted to dull the sound and provide a feeling of something much less brutal. One just knew that no one there would be dumping old mattresses or whatever in the gangways and there wasn't, unlike in the tower off the Walworth Road, an expectation of youths taking drugs. But were these small changes in two very different and yet also very similar buildings sufficient to make me change my mind on the advisability of such buildings? Yes and no. Mainly no but it was the point when I ceased to be unequivocally against them - a position I had held for more than 30 years. Those years had included my own experience of "living" in towers, having worked on the 16th and 17th floors of the "monstrous carbuncle" that was Marsham Towers before it was demolished not without concerns about asbestos. Here is a further complexity - the idea that governments look after their own is not borne out by historical facts including in respect of office accommodation. "Us and them" look different when one was once "them".

I was also in a one bedroom low rise flat in a leafier part of Sutton. From the outside, it looked wonderful. Inside the block, the noise was horrendous. That was partially the people but more about modern building design, notably the thinnest of walls. The irony was in the way we used to worry that my Nan was being kept awake if not by all night parties then by the large numbers of night workers simply going about their business at unusual times. But her walls were much thicker, given that the building was constructed at a similar time to Grenfell, and she probably suffered less noise there than she would have done where I lived. When I entered the carpeted tower in Sutton, I was struck by how quiet that tower was in comparison to mine. It started to make sense why the old couple who owned several of our flats had chosen to live there. Not that I stayed around. They had placed so many loud people in our block. And having finally got a foothold in the management of the building alongside them, I was delivering a letter drafted for free by an accountant friend to lay down the law on them getting the finances fully in order before I moved out. Their pig-headed ways only shifted when the wording was in a professional form they recognised and I recall the moment so vividly. They were very evidently shocked that anyone at age 42 living in a one bedroom flat in Sutton had access to that professionalism.

[Lat-Literal]

Towers of Learning - 2

After the late 1990s, we had had a number of new London mayors of various persuasions who were all determined to revive towers in the capital city. Initially aghast, one slowly started to think of the international examples from Hong Kong to Dubai and recognised that there were several different lenses other than direct personal experience through which one could view the phenomenon. This was the world post the mainly business development of Canary Wharf where housing appeared desperately needed and, well, perhaps it could be provided again in that way but this time from a more privatized perspective even with connotations of status. There were provisos. No slave labour here please, that is, with Indian builders living "temporarily" ten to a room before finding they are unable to afford to return as they wish to their homelands. No elderly inhabitants once the things have been built and probably no families. Otherwise, though, in a rare line of thinking to "try to ride with the times", tower block living in the 21st Century was to be a a young people's thing. City executives, single, who enjoyed being close to lively nightlife. Maybe in buildings like The Shard it is along those lines. I don't know. We don't know, do we? We have absolutely no idea who lives in tower blocks in 2017. We have no idea of the differences or otherwise in blocks that are old and blocks that are new. Except we do now have an idea of the very wide range of people who were in Grenfell Tower. I'd suggest that it has both come as a surprise and yet, when one comes to think of it, it hasn't been surprising at all.

From an aesthetic point of view, my local MP has consistently opposed the proposals for a Purley tower while the Council which is of a different political hue is religious in its pursuit of it. What those points largely represent are an opinion that Croydon as the biggest urban entity in this borough should have its boundaries set more or less where they are now or that those boundaries should be eroded and ultimately extended. One could call it nimbyism or insist that it is protecting the local character. He has my firm support.

Elsewhere, there has been a welcoming of the dismantling of much of 1960s/1970s Southwark, concerns expressed about the number of pigeons who have found the rubble to be a decent home, and astonishment that towers will again be built only this time for the exceedingly rich. As always, it isn't clear who the people making the decisions are on such matters but as was the case half a century ago it seems to be the cosiest of arrangements between those who would purport to be on the distinctly left and the distinctly right.

As discussed elsewhere on this forum, there is considerable research to suggest that the likes of the once notorious Aylesbury Estate - the one which Tony Blair visited on his first day in office having walked to it from his party's headquarters just across the road and which my grandmother was at least fortunate not to have been dumped in - was not as efficient in terms of providing housing in dense spaces as had been claimed in earlier years. The amount of distance between the vast elaborate blocks was so huge, particularly given concerns about their stability in strong winds, that as many people could have been housed if what had been built there had been new terraced streets. The obvious community inclinations of diverse people in the wake of the Grenfell disaster suggests not for the first time that such housing in the future might support and could enhance those natural human ways architecturally. Whether wealthy single people will be more inclined in the short term to buy properties in towers - or even work in them - remains to be seen.

The Two Eras:

The Clash - Up in Heaven : Not Only Here - 1979-1980, White British and West Indian Working Class - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfMA9nYzo2M
The Cinematic Orchestra ft. Roots Manuva - All Things To All Men - 2000s - Multicultural, US leanings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zux1CTCmP8

"I'll take you to my Tardis"........the outlook but also the.tower block as was shown in an excellent amateur film now sadly unavailable but I've found one that is not dissimilar.

[french frank]

For Lat's information", threads don't go AWOL. They may be moved down to the basement where most discussions can be continued if people wish, and a few are closed for discussion but may still be read. If you can't find them, ask a Host for the url. The basement is primarily for the benefit of the majority of the forum members who get fed up with the same few members chewing the same bone for weeks on end and therefore dominating the What's New? list. Why removal to the basement should make continuance of the discussions less attractive to participants, I have no idea.

[Lat-Literal]

For Lat's information", threads don't go AWOL. They may be moved down to the basement where most discussions can be continued if people wish, and a few are closed for discussion but may still be read. If you can't find them, ask a Host for the url. The basement is primarily for the benefit of the majority of the forum members who get fed up with the same few members chewing the same bone for weeks on end and therefore dominating the What's New? list. Why removal to the basement should make continuance of the discussions less attractive to participants, I have no idea.

Thank you frenchfrank.

I have never been able to locate the forum basement, genuinely, and would welcome a route map.

I was raised in bungalows - I am back in one now - and the more I think of it that is my mentality.

[french frank]

I have never been able to locate the forum basement, genuinely, and would welcome a route map.

On this forum discussions can be continued:

http://www.for3.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?77-Diversions-Forum

On this one they are closed (mostly), usually because they have become vitriolic:

http://www.for3.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?78-Diversions-closed