Teresa May is a terrible politician:
Almost exactly 24 hours after Downing Street said the prime minister couldn’t possibly meet victims of the Grenfell disaster because of security concerns, the Queen and Prince William’s visit to Latimer Road came with minimal security.
They drove up in a green Range Rover – dog gates up at the back, although the corgis stayed at home – with so little fanfare several locals walked right past them, unaware of the identities of the latest well-wishers to Westway sports centre, applauding instead the firefighters who walked behind her.
In case you haven’t been following it, a housing block in London went up in flames – flames that were accelerated by non-fire resistant cladding applied to the building to make it look better to its Kensington neighbors. The gas lines laid in the stairways didn’t help either. At least 30 are confirmed dead and the death toll will probably be near 100 after all the bodies are found (if they can be – some will never be recovered).
dr. bloor
The horrific photos of that blaze screamed “Not even approaching code” clusterfuck. Whoever built and signed off on that disaster should be in the dock followed by a lengthy prison sentence.
Baud
Anglo Saxons aren’t doing so well with the whole self governance thing these days.
Laura
Good on the Queen and Prince William.
That’s a right and decent thing to do, and with an absence of hoopla and security.
Walker
I am fascinated by this corporate manslaughter law that the UK has. Anyone know whether there is a chance of a conviction here?
MattF
There was a fire in a large apartment building I was living in about 20 years ago. It was a
Q: Why are the fire alarms going off?
A: Look out the window and see flames coming out of an apartment across the courtyard.
So, scary, but did not and should not lead to catastrophe. Something went very wrong in London.
EBT
@Baud: Personally, I wonder if we should be allowed to breed with each other.
The Dangerman
WTF? Sounds like some builder/contractor is going to get sued to the stone ages.
ETA: Or what was said in 1.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Seems like Britain is even more fucked up than we are sometimes. Well, maybe more is a little harsh. As fucked up, or almost as fucked up. I can’t help feeling like Europe would be better off without them. I hope they squeeze them. I also hope Scotland has the good sense to leave Britain and go its own way. Wales, too. The English are just nutjobs, to borrow a phrase from Dear Leader.
Anne
@The Dangerman: I read that it saved the contractor 5000 pounds to not use the fire resistant kind. The cladding used is not allowed in Germany or the US. People bitch about regulations but many save lives.
montanareddog
@The Dangerman:
Except I heard that the contractor responsible for the refit declared bankruptcy some time back.And there are a lot of nested companies involved
Jim
@Laura: I’m reminded of the saying “slow and steady wins the race.” I can remember when the Queen was criticized as being stodgy and behind the times. But it’s events like this that show the value of the simple courtesies she has always shown. That consistency is one of the reasons for her personal likeability among Brits, even those who aren’t monarchists. Good on her. And good on Prince William.
Bobby Thomson
In fairness, May is running the government and the others are highly paid mascots.
Roger Moore
@The Dangerman:
From one of the articles:
Two points:
1) The FPA needs to fire its PR staff. Casually writing off a disaster like this as a matter of choice makes Teresa May look like a kind, caring person.
2) Safety regulations are always written in blood. Maybe there aren’t any regulations on the fire resilience of external cladding today, but you can bet there will be as soon as they can be written.
dr. luba
This building was erected back when British high rises were NOT mandated to have sprinkler systems. So it didn’t.
It apparently had a fairly expensive make-over recently, which did not include retrofitting sprinklers. They did make it look prettier, though.
And there were big concerns among the tenants about fire hazards which were not acted upon and, apparently, borne out.
Jack the Second
@MattF: There was a fire in the apartment directly below mine once. I didn’t even realize it until after it was over. I came home to an apartment being on fire, went to my apartment, got my cat, and was confused why the firemen wanted in after me. It wasn’t until afterwards I realized why the firemen wanted in; at the time I just felt lucky I came home when I did so I could let the firemen in and not deal with a broken down door.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: This would never have happened if the Romans had been allowed to finish their big beautiful wall.
scav
There’s also the problem that codes in the UK don’t match those here (not that those here are perfect) so yes, the cladding was the slightly cheaper not so fireresistant one illegal in US (last I read) but it was still legal in UK — despite earlier warnings and fires and an investigation. And yes, TMay is an idiot.
Wag
God save QEII. Mr Rotten got it wrong. She is all too human, and was dealt a difficult hand from the start.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@dr. bloor: Just think, we Yanks could be in for that in our future because of that Trump flunky event planner being appointed to oversee Housing and Development in NYC and elsewhere
dr. luba
2012: Prime Minister David Cameron today said that his new year’s resolution was to “kill off the health and safety culture for good“.
Health and safety legislation has become an “albatross around the neck of British businesses”, costing them billions of pounds a year and leaving entrepreneurs in fear of speculative claims, he said.
……..Mission accomplished!
Calouste
Keep in mind that Kensington & Chelsea is probably the richest borough in the UK and that its council has been run by the Tories for more than 50 years. It’s not like they couldn’t afford to do things right, it’s that they didn’t think the poor were worth treating well.
I would not be surprised if the criminal investigation is going to show some interesting connections between the council, the management company, and the builders.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Dangerman: Building inspectors will go to jail.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I don’t follow British politics, but it seems like it’s been “Americanized” for lack of a better term. Intense and bitter partisanship seems to be the norm over there like it is here.
Punchy
May seems jejune.
schrodingers_cat
What does Andrew Sullivan say about May, does he treat her like the second coming Thatcher? I am curious.
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Tories have always had a curious disregard for life of those not to the manor born.
Barbara
@The Dangerman: Although still being confirmed, the product that was used was fire resistant to a point but there were more fire resistant versions of the same basic product. In addition to making the outside look better, it was supposed to provide better insulation to the residents. The more fire resistant versions provided somewhat less insulation, but some architects and builders have already said publicly that they would never have used the less fire resistant version for an application to the outside of a building. The problem as I understand it is that it is very hard to avoid having a “chimney effect” in an external application, so you need the most fire resistant interior core. The Guardian has a lot of useful and developing information.
Barbara
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: The NYT actually had a really good article on what has been happening. Basically, most European countries have some kind of proportional voting that allows more than two parties to sustain themselves. This leads to a lot of coalition governance. The British do not, so the system in Britain has gradually migrated to a two party system, as it has been for a long time in the U.S., as people do not want to dilute the overall impact of their vote by voting for a party destined to lose (and so enable the one they really don’t want). The Lib Dems and the SNP are the main third parties to the left, while the main third parties to the right are the DUP (Ulster) and the Scottish conservatives. Sinn Fein would presumably be more leftists but is basically a permanent protest party that receives around 7 seats that it never occupies, basically making it somewhat easier for Tories to maintain a majority.
bystander
I for one am glad to see the Job Creators unencumbered by Job Killing Regulations. This is good news for unemployed people, including many of the takers in taxpayer subsidized housing.
Barbara
@Roger Moore: The point is — it WAS a matter of choice and it should not have been. Firing the PR guy for telling the truth won’t change it. They had a choice and their choice was catastrophic.
hovercraft
@Calouste:
I remember last week when Kensington was the last race called they said it was the first time Labour won it , and it was considered a “safe” Tory seat. So the Tories own this tragedy, and the council who cared more about aesthetics than safety. Conservative everywhere hate ‘regulations’, be the Health and Safety or environmental ones, but as soon as disaster hits, then it’s like where the hell’s the government. The BP oil spill was the same thing, they cut corners and make contingency plans they know will never work, based on the hope that their flawed “emergency plans” will never be put to the test. The thing is if you’re willing to cut corners on your emergency procedures then you’re also going to cut corners in other places thereby making it more likely you will have an emergency. Gambling with other people lives to make a quick buck is the conservative philosophy. You’ve got to love this business ethos, they are genius for reaping the profits, but just poor victims of the governments lack of efficiency when everything blows up in their faces, win, win.
Boatboy_srq
@Laura: The House of Windsor has a long and notable history of attending to its people with a minimum of fanfare. This event should surprise no-one – although it obviously took May off guard. Honestly, does May think SHE’s the Queen?
chopper
@Laura:
that’s liz throwin shade like only her majesty can.
EBT
@Major Major Major Major: Hadrian just wanted to Make Rome Great Again.
schrodingers_cat
@EBT: Proton or neutron?
Big Ole Hound
@Walker: Very similar case going on with the Flint MI water company.
Another Scott
Only one escape route, also too.
Disasters like this almost always have many, many causes. But one common theme is almost always the attempt to do things on the cheap, to pooh-pooh safety standards, and/or to maximize profits by taking money away from the work and directing it to certain people’s pockets.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Nicole
The 91-year-old Queen, let’s not forget.
George V once said, “I pray to God that my eldest son will never marry and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet (the future Queen Elizabeth II) and the throne.” The old guy knew what he was talking about.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Barbara: @schrodingers_cat:
Ah. That clears things up. No idea about the Conservatives, but Republicans haven’t been good for anything since the end of Reconstruction. And hilariously, for the longest time they could have been accused of being a “plantation” since they used to get a large amount of the African-American vote.
EBT
@schrodingers_cat: I am just a country bumpkin from 400 years of white trash. Spelling is hard ;.;
ruemara
The video from the scene of this fire was horrific. I had to turn it off. There’s nothing less than prison for any and all involved in this. It was murder by neglect. I shall try to stay away from the news today. I haven’t slept since 1am thursday. All my energy should go into keeping me upright and focused. 25 hrs of sleep in 6 days. Sheesh. Completely incapable of handling whatever Cheetolini comes up with. Y’all be … well, never mind. Just be yourselves.
scav
@Another Scott: The official instructions were also to stay put in the building, which didn’t exactly help.
dr. luba
@Big Ole Hound: That was the fault of the state interfering in the city’s business. The Emergency Manager the GOP appointed was not beholden to the citizens, and penny-wise decisions were made.
Also, too–the GOP had long wanted to take over the Detroit water system (which was run by Detroit but also supplied the suburbs), and saw pulling Flint out of it as a way to cripple the Detroit water system and then take it over.
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
There are still better and worse ways of saying the same basic point, and the whole purpose of a PR department is to know them. I read that statement as a “Ha, ha! Sucks to be you!”, which is not what the PR people for a health and safety organization should be saying after a disaster- especially given that the victims were not the ones who made the catastrophic choice of materials.
sharl
Commenter Suzanne, our resident architect, weighed in on this a couple nights ago, based on what she had read at that time. Search her name in this post if interested. Below I’ve pasted in a few of her more detailed comments from that post.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara:
Harsh!
Roger Moore
@Boatboy_srq:
In fairness, the Queen has been doing this since before May was born. I think she has more time in her position than her entire cabinet but together, and that experience tells.
Nicole
@Roger Moore: She also had a pretty good example set by her parents, who refused to leave England during WWII, bombings or no.
Major Major Major Major
@sharl: the ghost ship in Oakland wasn’t even zoned as a residence and the people living there were essentially rent-paying squatters. The fire happened during an illegal party. I don’t think the parallel really holds up.
eclare
@Jim: She does pretty well for 90.
Emma
The Windsors have a long history with the people of London. During the Blitz, they stayed on even after being prodded to at least send the girls to Canada for safety. The then Queen Consort Elizabeth (the one everyone knows as “the Queen Mother”) answered someone to had the cheek to ask: The girls will not go without me, I will not go without the King, and the King will never go. They were known for visiting the East End on foot to inspect bomb damage, knowing that the Germans wanted desperately to kill them. The Queen Mother’s response after Buckingham palace was bombed: thank God, now I can look the East End in the face.
trollhattan
@Barbara:
I read (BBC?) the panels are aluminum-clad foam (whoops) and were installed primarily for insulation and energy efficiency. The council block management had been privatized so as to bestow private-sector magic. They clearly held residents at arms length, given the many complaints of absent fire alarms and protection.
sharl
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, I think you’re right, based on my recollection (from the opposite side of the country). More of a failure of enforcement of law/regulation in that case, as I recall.
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
The ghost ship manager and evil sidekick are being charged with manslaughter. IMHO the absentee owners should be held culpable as well, but we shall see about that. Local inspectors have a share of guilt due to non-enforcement; in no sense was that warehouse living quarters or an entertainment space.
Bruce K
Seems to me that there should be a general rule: if “throwing shade” overlaps with “doing the right thing by the people you’re responsible for”, then someone is badly in the wrong, and I don’t think the House of Windsor is the party in the wrong in this instance…
MomSense
@dr. bloor: @Baud:
Preventing exactly this kind of human tragedy is exactly why we create job killing regulations! I mean the idiot libertarian anti government Republicans just cannot wrap their greedy minds around the idea that regulations and safety protocols cause the kind of security and confidence that makes prosperity possible.
lurker dean
@sharl: thanks for that recap, i missed suzanne’s posts on this..
scav
I don’t really think showing up after a tragedy and being with the victims of same is exactly arcane, only-learned-from-personal-experience sophisticated politico knowledge. TMay just decided that a quick selfie with herself and charred building was all that was safe (well, GW thought a birthday cake was more impoerant than hustling to Katrina) and responses may not go as they had hoped.
Major Major Major Major
@sharl: you could argue that a lack of low-income housing forces people into such desperate situations but as long as we’re doing counterfactual economics it’s just as easy to argue that too many regulations stymie cheaper construction projects and force people into such desperate situations.
Just One More Canuck
@Laura: Theresa May : “I couldn’t speak to residents of Grenfell Tower because of security concerns”
The Queen : “Hold my crown…”
https://
twitter.com/bbcbreaking/st
atus/875656064984690689
…
6:18 AM – 16 Jun 2017
Barbara
@scav: This is actually common in large buildings because internal fire exits can become filled with smoke, and people have actually died trying to leave buildings when they would have been much safer in their apartment. This is premised, however, on the building meeting a code that more or less results in an apartment fire taking at least one hour to spread to another apartment. Within that time, the fire department can either put it out or assist in an evacuation if needed. No one anticipated that the fire would spread unchecked. So this “safety” step ended up being disastrous because it was based on assumptions that turned out to be false in this instance.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
They’re perpetual 5-year-olds, always complaining about too many rules but whining that Mommy should have stopped them from making a bad choice.
sharl
@Major Major Major Major: Are you playing devil’s advocate (he sez hopefully)?
Having been on some ASTM subcommittees for developing industry standards – though not in any area very relevant to this topic – I can tell you it is about as slow and arduous a process as you might expect. No one wants to go overboard on criteria, especially industry technical nerds who have to answer to the management of their for-profit corporations.
My observation is that excessive regulation comes about in response to panicked politicians and senior leaders having to show they are doing something about a recent disaster of some sort, big example being the Dept. of Homeland Security (thanks Joe Lieberman, you preening asshole!), shoe removal at airports, other fun stuff like that.
We’re kind of going through this shit with infosec – something you know about far better than I do – with SV wanting to (AFAICT) continue to move fast & break things (and rake in the VC cash), while technology-ignorant Washington politicians want to impose draconian and often untenable legal constraints. Well, something needs to be done, but it will require deliberation and care by experts and affected parties. The usual boring but necessary process, but tailored to the technical and business issues at hand.
karen marie
@Anne: The story I heard on NPR is that design faults funneled fire between the cladding and the outside wall, the fire-resistant (not fireproof) cladding started burning once a high enough temp was reached. According to person interviewed, design flaws led to the disaster. Makes sense to me. You don’t get fires consuming 27-story blocks covered in fire-resistant cladding through bad luck.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
Maybe Theresa May needs to stop and think for a minute why people might be fucking enraged with her right now as the death toll from this fire climbs higher and higher.
I crack myself up.
Mart
@dr. bloor: We use Exterior Finish Insulation Systems (EFIS) all over the USA – even killed folks in a Vegas Tower because of it. EFIS is used to dress up old buildings and strip malls to look new. It passes certain small scale fire tests, making it “fire rated”; but is a disaster in large scale tests as the plastic foam backing is essentially solid gasoline. Hopefully this will curb its use here and abroad, but being a cheap cosmetic fix I doubt it.
scav
@Barbara: Not surprised because wasn’t that the instructions in the twin towers too? But I read this in the context of a discussion of how the internal and external compartamentalization of the building had been compromised during the renovation (cladding included) so there seems to be room for a discussion about one-rule heuristics for all buildings, especially when actual building codes are not resulting in conditions where the rule works reliably.
Baud
@MomSense:
I really don’t understand why the residents didn’t negotiate better fire safety protections before they moved in.
schrodingers_cat
The Queen fangirling rivals the Tunch fan club.
For God, Queen and Tunch, new Balloon Juice motto.
rikyrah
It was just an awful visual.
How you not gonna meet with them?
She is horrible. A horrible person.
Mnemosyne
@karen marie:
The truly maddening thing is that the residents of the building have apparently been complaining to the management about safety issues — particularly fire safety — for at least two years and have been completely ignored.
I don’t want to hear a single asshole say “nobody could have predicted …” because the building’s residents have been screaming about this exact outcome for at least two years and no one in the government or the building management bothered to pay attention.
Amir Khalid
Margaret Thatcher despised the Royal Family for their compassion towards less fortunate Britons. Andrew Sullivan, who has that weird Mummy fetish for her, sees more than a little something of her in Theresa May. I’m just saying this: Sully could be right.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
With all the faults of the monarchy and QEII herself, she’s still a better person than Theresa May.
chopper
@EBT:
DRAIN THE FENS!
rikyrah
I will say this forever…
Ain’t no shade like Upper Crust British Shade…..
Go Betty Windsor and Wills.
The Moar You Know
Teresa May is perhaps the most awful and incompetent head of state currently serving anywhere, and with Trump in the White House that is really saying something.
Major Major Major Major
@sharl: true enough about Silicon Valley. And yes, I was …not so much playing devil’s advocate as saying that both arguments are similarly useless examples of “this disaster proves my hobby-horse.”
Jack the Second
@schrodingers_cat: For Tunch, Queen and Country?
Origuy
There have been a number of high-rise fires in recent years that involved cladding, including two in Scotland.
The Fucking Express is asking “Did EU regulation mean deadly cladding was used on Grenfell Tower?” Betteridge’s Law says NO.
schrodingers_cat
@Jack the Second: Good, I like it.
ETA: But which country? Mummy or her truant child?
The Moar You Know
Funny thing, I was staying not a quarter mile from Latimer Road when I was over there this Christmas. The locals said it was a bad neighborhood. Well, I had to walk through there to get to the Tube station, and let me tell you, Britons need to be sent over to the US. I’ll show ’em what a truly “bad neighborhood” is. Latimer Road is poor and run-down, but it’s nowhere near a bad neighborhood. And the people are very nice.
Teresa May is a fucking asshole.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: May be, I just find the BJ fangirling over her, quaint!
Amir Khalid
@The Moar You Know:
Ahem … May is head of government. The Queen is head of state — and, as noted in the BBC clip at Just One More Canuck’s link (#59), also head of the nation.
hovercraft
@The Moar You Know:
I’m sorry, I just don’t see it, yes her snap election was a huge backfire that will end up costing her job, but her government is functioning, they accept science and she’s viewed as a bad politician with terrible instincts whereas out Orange shitstain is an idiot, who is a laughingstock and dumber than a pet rock, he may have better instincts on how to keep his mouth breathers happy, but the chances of him accidentally blowing up the world in a fit of pique make him and his inability to understand basic math and science, worse. She miscalculated and blew her majority, but she was smart enough to do the math and ally herself with a group of loyalist neanderthals to maintain power for now. Twitler has an entire legislature eager to rip the country and it’s safety nets to shreds, but he’s so wrapped in himself he’s making it impossible for them to get to the business of reducing us all to serfs living on the largess of the wealthy while they empty the treasury.
A smidgen of competence would have gotten most of his agenda passed already. Hi would still be in the high eighties with rethugs, instead of at 75 according to the new AP poll.
low-tech cyclist
@MomSense:
Damn straight. Every Dem politician needs to use instances like these to make that fundamental point: this is why we have regulations. And this is why we need people on the Federal payroll who are out there enforcing those regulations, making sure that they’re followed.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know: And it’s highly unlikely however bad the neighborhood in the UK that you will be taken down by a stray bullet. Their violent crime tends be less inadvertently lethal, not that it doesn’t exist, but people tend to live another day to talk about.
The Lodger
@schrodingers_cat: Clearly, the wall was designed so that invading forces would run into it at high speed.
In fact, it was originally called the Large Hadrian Collider.
Barbara
@hovercraft: Also in May’s defense, however idiotic her call for early elections was, and it was idiotic, it pales in comparison to the self-inflicted fatal wound that constituted David Cameron’s call for the plebiscite known as Brexit. A lot of May’s incompetence stems from trying to figure out what to do with an impossible situation that was dumped in her lap as Cameron had the humility to exit stage right. Mediocrity and incompetence eventually meet their match, and the British ruling class now seems strangely reminiscent of what happened during WWI, where military promotions had more to do with class than merit to the utter catastrophe of many British soldiers. I don’t know May’s background, but this seems to be the case for Cameron and Boris Johnson. Upper class twits, basically.
Brachiator
Among the problems contributing to this awful disaster:
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Not a lot of humility involved here. Cameron foolishly guessed wrong about BREXIT and had to step aside. May was the last person standing in the ensuing power struggle.
Part of May’s background
Not a twit, but definitely a member of the club.
Barbara
@Brachiator: The thinking is that this disaster would not have been avoided by a sprinkler system, but it is nonetheless shocking that sprinklers and expanded exits were not part of the renovation plan.
ETA: A plan that included sprinklers probably would have paid greater attention to the fire safety of other elements, such as the cladding, which seems more and more to be the focus of why the fire spread so rapidly.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I think we like to see evidence that you don’t have to be a total asshole when you grow up with enormous unearned wealth, unlike our American billionaire offspring. Noblesse oblige still exists somewhere in the world.
ETA: Prince William and Prince Harry vs Don Jr and Eric Trump. I rest my case.
TenguPhule
@MomSense:
Human Tragedy is just the cost of doing business to Republicans and Libertarians.
And a cost they long to be free from responsibility for.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Some of us have made our peace with the UK’s historically bad behavior to our countries.
Jay C
@Brachiator: @Barbara:
I recall seeing a Tweet earlier today (or maybe yesterday) from a (presumed) professional saying that the cost of installing a sprinkler system in the apartments in Grenfell Tower would have been maybe £150,000: not a heckuva lot compared to the £8.6MM ($11MM) they spent on the general renovation project: but apparently something they just didn’t think about.
Personally, I think that estimate is a tad low: but then again, compared to the cost of either demolishing and rebuilding the Tower, or somehow rehabilitating it (or simply writing it off: I have no idea what the structural damage from a fire like this will/can be), a few fire-safety improvements would have been chump-change. Not to mention claims against the Council/management for deaths, injuries, property destruction, etc.
TenguPhule
@hovercraft:
She fired 10,000 police officers as Home Sec.
She cut funding for firefighters as Home Sec.
She demonized immigrants as Home Sec.
She’s risking a restart of the Troubles just to keep herself as PM.
She is literally incapable of answering a question with a straight answer from a friendly interviewer.
Basically, she’s a female Trump who has had many years to do her damage and now the fruits of the harvest are coming in.
Every single one of the disasters that have hit the UK recently can in some way be traced to her.
Every. Single. One.
KithKanan
@hovercraft:
Living in California, this is reminding me of the recent problems with the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway — unpaved, supposedly rated for 300,000 cu ft/s but started failing at less than 1% of that flow rate when used for the first time since it was built in 1968 and 200,000 people had to be evacuated.
LAO
I cannot (read “will not”) link to it — but Megan McArdle has chimed in:
KS in MA
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: This, too.
Scotian
First, not surprised to see the woman that freed my nation with a signature is still doing the right, kind, and good thing 35 years later even at her current age.
Second, I agree in general with the scorn heaped upon May as a leader,
but…
in her case the security/threat argument holds more water than it does for QEII (which is not to say it holds none, just lesser especially at the current time). While both are high profile subjects (one head of government, the other Head of State), one has a lot more animosity aimed at them than the other even in the best of times, and these are not that, especially with this fire coming on top of that idiotic snap election. So i can actually see a real case being made for her security risks being significantly higher than QEII’s. Now, that is on May’s side, i would be shocked to find out QEII even bothered to check, I’d expect her to simply tell her security folks this is what I am doing and where, deal with it. It is after all her way of operating through her entire history.
KS in MA
@dr. luba: Good lord, Cameron was disgusting.
A great smackdown, from the same 2012 article:
His comments were branded “appalling and unhelpful” by Richard Jones, head of policy and public affairs at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.
“Labelling workplace health and safety as a monster is appalling and unhelpful, as the reason our legislative system exists is to prevent death, injury or illness at work, protecting livelihoods in the process,” said Mr Jones.
“The problem identified by the Government’s own reviews is not the law, but rather, exaggerated fear of being sued, fed by aggressive marketing.”
Barbara
@LAO: My husband has experience in planning affordable housing. It is true that certain things that raise the cost of housing are often required beyond what is arguably reasonable, to the cost of people who need housing. However, basic safety really shouldn’t be one of those things that is considered optional. How the building looks, how much parking it is required to have, whether it has gym or nursery or retail facilities on the ground floors, and how posh or big those are, what level of LEED certification should be required, whether the neighbors get to insist on high end landscaping, etc. Those are things that need to be examined as possible trade offs to having more housing or cheaper housing. I can’t even remember anyone trying to argue that things like sprinkler systems or minimum number of building exits were up for debate. As with so much else, McArdle is simply talking out of her ass. I bet she has never had to consider any of this in any real world way.
Sherparick
@dr. luba: By the way the dream of the billionaires funding Briexit has been to turn the U.K. into a low tax, regulation free, Galt Gulch. Losing a 100 people here or there or having counties drowned by flooding like in 2012, 2014, and 2016 are just (some one else’s) cost of doing business.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
Has she shamed the Republican reps who were shot for not rushing the gunman like she was urging 6-year-olds to do after Newtown?
Sherparick
The Queen (and Prince William) have more political sense in their little fingers then the entire Tory Party right now.
hovercraft
@TenguPhule:
So you’re saying that she operated as a typical “conservative” would during the austerity period following the financial meltdown. She was the Home Secretary, David Cameron was the Prime Minister, she did nothing that he didn’t support, I’ll concede that since she’s been around longer, her finger prints are on actual policies that have turned out to have been disastrous, but I bet most Tories in good standing would have done most of the same. Obama went with stimulus, Britain went with austerity, they had to slash the budgets somewhere. Stoking of xenophobia and nationalism has been on the rise since the great recession, and craven politicians have stoked it for political gain. I agree she’s a terrible leader, but her terrible ideas are based on a terrible philosophy, conservatives believe in Galtism, Twitler on the other hand believes in noting but Twitler, he believes in anything that will enrich him and his, he doesn’t understand most of how anything works, which makes him more dangerous, he’s easily swayed by flattery and the need to win and exact revenge. We can fight a political philosophy, it’s harder to fight against a raging ball of id, fortunately, the GOP are going all in with him, which is making it easier to brand them with the shit he does, they own him.
Speaking of dumbasses who actually thought Twitler stood for something:
Via Josh Marshall
Barbara
@Mnemosyne: It would be hard to find a more obvious example of white privilege than Megan McArdle. I mean, after reading one or two things she had written I NEVER read anything written by her again. She is mediocre in every sense except in parroting right wing economic talking points.
Ruckus
@MattF:
Lived in a condo in the late 70s. Units were still being built (about 20, 5 buildings of 4 units each) and were still in the framing stage. We heard sirens and fire trucks one night, went outside to see what’s what and all of the unfinished buildings were burning, a roaring fire. Turns out it was set by a disgruntled security guard. There was no one to watch the guy who was supposed to be watching. By the time the fire trucks got there all the framing was a total loss and people whose cars were parked in the spaces next to the new construction got to see their cars wilting/melting from the heat. Fire dept did a great job protecting the built units and no injuries. Still a rather scary night, with what was reported to be well over a million dollars of damage.
catclub
@Barbara:
This is all true, but when every single one of her stupid columns get 500 comments at Bloomberg, they are going to keep her there.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
She started her career blogging under the pseudonym “Jane Galt.” That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about her life of conservative white privilege.
TenguPhule
@hovercraft:
I’d agree with most of that, except for the DUP negotiations. As people in the UK have noted, its something she did not and definitely should not have had to do. She’s risking a restart of the Troubles and not even her own party’s philosophy supported that, its a pure power grab completely in the style of Donald Trump made even more damning because she’s supposed to be smarter and more competent then him.
sharl
@Barbara: Yep. While McMegan is just one of many examples of privileged white people who have failed upward, her regular writings – on how less fortunate people just need to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and not rely on big gubmint rules and regs – are particularly galling.
catclub
@The Lodger:
I larfed, I did.
catclub
OT Energy:
Bllomberg article
This looks impressive at first, but really, they think coal will fall from 60% to 40% of electrical supply in the US in 2040. Not a big improvement. That 87% fall is much more impressive.
We can only hope that all the predictions so far that have underestimated the impact of wind and solar continue to be wrong and low.
sharl
LOL
sm*t cl*de
I think the closed fire stations in London, and the reduction of numbers of firefighters, was the specific choice of one Boris Johnson during his tenure as Mayor.
sm*t cl*de
@trollhattan:
The management body is literally an “Arms-Length Management Organisation“, which sounds better than “plausible deniability”. Set up to enact the Kensington & Chelsea Council’s budgetary decisions while shielding them of all responsibility.
Applejinx
@Major Major Major Major:
Be careful. McArdle is arguing exactly that in Bloomberg. I’ve been watching the dirtbag left (r/chapotraphouse) flip out with rage at the spectacle, and I was really interested to come here and see which prevails: neoliberalism and love of privatization & deregulation, or hatred of McArdle.
It’s not a conflict for me. I despise McAddled all the more for this one. But you might give a thought to who you’re shacking up with. You’re assuming capitalist free-market systems rule all these things.
If capital isn’t building cheaper construction projects and people are desperate, fucking call Jimmy Carter. And build cheaper housing.
And watch ‘The Pruitt-Igoe Myth’. Yes, you can build public housing and have it be wonderful. What happened to Pruitt-Igoe? Neglect due to racism and the demand that poor people fund all their own housing and maintenance on their own! Which feeds back into racism. It never had a chance.
Dmbeaster
What seems to be clear is that there are serious deficiencies in UK building codes and/or enforcement. It is absolutely crazy for an entire high rise to be completely engulfed in flames in a very short time. Modern codes in the US have repeatedly prevented this scenario from happening. The last comparable episode in the US that I can recall is the 1980 MGM fire which was so lethal because of the proliferation of flammable plastics in building materials made the fire explode as well as generating toxic smoke. And that was not a high rise fire so much as demonstrating the danger of newer plastic materials.
It appears that the exterior materials of this building had a highly flammable polyurethane core, and the fire propegated rapidly through these exteriors plastics rapidly engulfing the entire exterior. Pictures of the entire exterior burning are unbelievable. Aftermath pictures show the entire exterior burned to a crisp. This just should not happen with any decent safety standards, but apparently the flammable exterior was legal. Shocking.