Companies deliberately concealed dangers of cladding and successive governments knew about and ignored risks but Starmer’s record suggests he won’t act widely enough
The inquiry into the Grenfell Tower blaze that killed at least seventy-two people in June 2017 has blamed the fire on ;systematically dishonest’ companies that knew they were selling and installing lethal cladding – and on successive governments that knew about and ignored the dangers of the industry practices that allowed the corporate deception to continue.
The inquiry’s report condemns ‘systemic dishonesty’ by cladding manufacturers and installers who ‘deliberately concealed’ the dangers of their products – which safety experts had warned about for years – even using misleading flammability tests, and says that a string of governments had
ignored, delayed or disregarded
warnings about safety.
The inquiry also found that the local Tenant Management Organisation showed:
persistent indifference to fire safety and safety of vulnerable people.
Every death in the fire was ‘entirely avoidable’ yet Kensington and Chelsea Council showed:
a marked lack of respect for human decency and dignity.
Keir Starmer and opposition leader Rishi Sunak said this afternoon that they would ‘support’ the Metropolitan police in pursuing prosecutions of the ‘small number’ of ‘manufacturers and contractors’ who were responsible for the fire. That is simply not good enough. Every politician, local or national, who knew what was always likely to happen when companies were allowed to turn high-rise buildings into fire-bombs, yet did not act, must be prosecuted – including those in governments at the time and including then-London mayor Boris Johnson, who told London’s fire safety panel to ‘get stuffed’ (the most-read article in Skwawkbox history) when it raised concerns about his cuts to London fire brigade services.
And the thousands of people who have been forced, or face being forced, to pay for the removal of deadly cladding from the thousands of residential buildings on which it was installed are now confirmed, as was always clear, to have been victims of deliberate crime. They should be compensated as such – forcing them to pay to put right the crimes inflicted on them is obscene. Millions remain at risk, according to fire safety expert Arnold Tarling.
Tragically for them and the nation, Keir Starmer is a creature of the same Establishment that enabled the criminals and has a record that suggests he will not break his long habit now by taking action against the guilty and powerful. He even took free football tickets from the cladding manufacturer last year, as the inquiry was underway.
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As I keep saying: “Shit rolls downhill”.
I predict that no politician (MP or K&C councillor, serving or not) will face a criminal trial.
The bosses of the firms will do their very best to ensure that those junior to them do any budgie, with the assistance of the defence counsel(s)
The above cohort will blame anything and everything except their greed, their incompetence, their outright arrogance, and most of all, their criminal aloofness for it.
Anyone convicted will not serve a lengthy sentence, and certainly not in a cat c, or above, prison.
And proper compensation for the victims, like the postmasters, like the infected blood victims, the miners (silicosis) and many others, will start to be paid once a considerable number of survivors start dying off.
‘Twas ever thus.
You’re on form Tofee.
I’d blame the Tory Govt with their Neo-Liberal ideology – smaller central & local states, privatisations, outsourcing, seeking the cheapest options reinforced by the local Tory Council who also opted for the cheapest solutions.
Neo-Liberalism Kills!
Spot on.
As Richard Murphy observes…..
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/05/neoliberalism-was-the-underlying-cause-of-the-grenfell-disaster/
“Underpinning all of this is, of course, one political philosophy, which is that of neoliberalism. Neoliberal thinkers, whether they be philosophers, economists or politicians, have argued that minimal government and regulation is what enables society to prosper. Of all those who are likely to face prosecution once the Metropolitan police close what will end up seeming like a never-ending investigation in the aftermath of this report, the proponents of neoliberalism are the least likely to face any risk of being brought to account and yet in my opinion they are easily the most culpable for their actions.
The falsehoods that they have promulgated have ultimately led to the deaths of the victims of Grenfell.
Their claim that small government is good for society is wrong. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.
Likewise, their claim that limited regulation is necessary for competition to thrive is false. You can no more have fair competition and honest markets without high quality, properly imposed regulation then you can have a game of soccer without the rules of football being followed.
In addition, the idea that low cost when it comes to government is necessarily best is very obviously false, as has been proven so many times, not least at Grenfell.
And finally, the tacitly implied idea within neoliberalism that tokenistic regulation is all that is necessary is very obviously false. If society is to be protected from abuse, which abuse is apparent throughout much of the activity that led to this disaster, then proper regulation led by those who are dedicated to the task, who are trained in it and who are committed to upholding standards for the benefit of society as a whole is essential. Anything else is disastrous.
The faults that I note have permeated the thinking of too many of the UK’s political parties, and most especially that of both the Tories and Labour: there is little point differentiating them. They have embraced these corrupt ideas to deliver government that is not fit for purpose and which has failed us.
The unfortunate fact is that this is not the message that has been delivered about why the Grenfell disaster happened. Appointing a judge-led inquiry, overseen by a person who is himself a member of the establishment, was never likely to result in an outcome where the systemic failings that resulted in this tragedy were going to be mentioned, let alone be discussed. It seems that they have not been.
Instead, the focus is on the detail and the personalities, but not on the real underlying cause of the failure.
That real cause is the neoliberal thinking that is corrupting our society in so many ways. Only by ridding our politics of that thinking will we eliminate the risk of another Grenfell happening, but what is the likelihood of that happening when most of our politicians are corrupted by this thinking?”
We need ministers named! Specific companies, specific CEOs, specific directors! Prison sentences.
CH4 earlier this evening were particularly keen to highlight eric ‘porker’ pickles’ hand in it (no – not the biscuit barrel) as he was housing minister who eagerly abolished the building/construction bureaucracy.
He (like the rest of them) should hang …but even a boat chain’d snap under that lardarse’s weight.
And thanks to the elephantine oaf’s track record, they’d probably build the gallows on the cheap…out of balsa wood or summit, rather than the RSJ’s it’d require.
How to prevent Grenfell II:
Strip the namby-pamby cladding from the ruins and use them to suspend several gibbets. Place inside said gibbets the lying & fraudulent spivs and incompetent regulators & politicians, wrap them with flammable materials and set light to them, one after the other, waiting for the screams of one to die out before putting a torch to the next. Leave the bodies there.
Ordinary people risk years in jail for supporting riots, yet these bar stewards, responsible for the deaths of dozens, will get far less, if they are jailed at all.
#TwoTierPolicing
Bravo!!
…But who to leave until last?