Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

bbc news gutter press bringing black women on tv to accuse MAY AND BLAMING MAY

WHAT LOAD OF SHIT AT THE BBC

SELL OFF THE BBC IT IS A DISGRACEFUL ORG

ITS THEIR LOCAL COUNCIL NOT THE GOV .

ARE THESE PEOPLE SO THICK

CORBYN CONDEMING THE CONSERVATIVES FOR TALKING TO THE DUP IS BECAUSE OF THEIR VIEWS ON GAYS AND MARRIAGE , DOES THE IDIOT NOT KNOW HE HAS OVER 18 LABOUR MPS WHO ARE TOTALY AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE HAS MUSLIMS
AND THEIR RELIGION

IS THE MAN A NUTTER YES HE IS

ANY PERSON GOING TO THE TOWER WHO IS NOT THEIR TO HELP AND WORK
SHOULD KEEP AWAY EVER ONE INCLUDING MPS GLOATING FOR PRESS PICTURES TO SAY I WAS THEIR THAT IS JUST WHAT CORBYN IS DOING IDIOT

LETS WAIT FOR THE ANSWERS AND SEE WHAT WENT WRONG ,

How appropriate.

you're pretty much correct
if TM had gone to the site and alerted the press etc, then she would have been accused of making political capital or similar from the tragedy of others


the cladding or perhaps the insulation looks to be prime suspect, but as you say, we should await full and proper facts

it still won't bring back those who died or even be of any comfort to their familes
i guessed at a toll of 75, and i fear that will not be wrong and perhaps on the low side

As I type, it has been revealed more than 70 people remain unaccounted for from the Grenfell Tower blaze and 30 are confirmed dead.

ITS A TERRIBLE INCIDENT BUT CORBYN TRYING TO CAPITALIES ON IT IS A DIGRACE

THE Y HELP NOT THE PRESS TRYING TO MAKE POLITICAL POINTS THE BBC IS A DIGUSTING ORG ,
IT HOMES THESE PEOPLE NEED

Having listened to first hand accounts from next door neighbours the fire started in a flat around the 4th floor when a fridge (not clear if electric or gas) exploded or caught fire.

As far as the insulation is concerned the fatal reason why the fire spread so quickly was that the corners of the building were not properly sealed allowing the wind to enter and well.. the rest is history.

AND ANOTHER PERSON SAID HE LEFT IS DOOR OPEN PACKED IS SUIT CASES THEM TOLD THEM NEXT DOOR , WAIT FOR THE REAL FACTS

The Teeside troubadour Vin Garbutt featured now on R4

There is rumours that someone was cultivating cannabis..How true i don't know..

There are rumours that someone is trying to cultivate distraction tactics..How true I don't know..

It's turning into a circus.

The professionals have turned up, complete with facemasks and hoods.

Simple facts : the smoke alarms with normally very high decibels were not working throughout the building !.....another thing is sprinklers can really only be used in common parts and very tricky to manage as kids might tamper with them and if they go off by mistake : disaster...they really should not be installed in private flats but in stairwells and around lift areas by all means.....a lot of common sense has to be used with installing a major fire safety system in a large block of flats and testing on a regular basis with all residents informed is a must do.....

From: https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2017/jun/17/architects-grenfell-tower-fire-was-an-avoidable-tragedy

Architects like me know Grenfell Tower fire was an avoidable tragedy
Building control departments in councils have been left toothless and eviscerated while the authority of fire officers and architects has been weakened in favour of profit. Look where that has got us.

by Deon Lombard
Principal, Deon Lombard Architects
Saturday 17 June 2017 10.07 BST Last modified on Saturday 17 June 2017 10.17 BST

I am an architect in private practice with considerable experience in the design and delivery of a range of buildings in London, including high-rise residential buildings. The terrible Grenfell Tower fire in North Kensington was entirely avoidable.

It was not an act of God, but the tragic outcome of a growing void in the responsibility, expertise and single oversight of large construction projects. This has largely come about due to the breaking up of what I would call the triple safety lock around project delivery.

Public safety should not be privatised. Putting a monetary value on human lives is unacceptable.

The first is building control, ensuring that increasingly complex building regulations are properly implemented. Building control departments in many local authorities have been eviscerated. They are invariably under-resourced with no teeth. Often a subset of planning departments, they lack the authority to carry out what is arguably the most important part of a local authority’s remit – to ensure the safety of its residents.

Furthermore this function has been partly privatised, with a range of companies competing for the business. It is often those companies with a reputation for gaining “easy” approvals that increasingly dominate the market, further undercutting the council building control.

The morale among many council building control officers is extremely low. I completed a small complex project in an inner London borough last year. The council building control officer I worked with was excellent, but told me that he could not cope with his workload, and was unhappy with the way the department was run. He has since left the council.

When I worked for KCTMO I had nightmares about burning tower blocks
by Seraphima Kennedy Read more

Second, fire officers play a crucial role in ensuring that all fire regulations are met, and devising a fire strategy for a project. Building control acts as a conduit to local fire departments to assess that all fire regulations have been met, as well as bringing their own experience to bear.

In early 2007 I was working on a large refurbishment project in the West End. We were informed by the fire officer who was reviewing the project with us that in the near future fire officers would no longer play an active role.

A new form of self-certification was to be introduced, with the onus on the developer/owner to ensure a project met all fire regulations. This took no cognisance of the fact that different buildings could have very different fire requirements. The fire officer looked me straight in the eyes and told me that in his opinion this was a recipe for disaster.

The third part of the triple lock is to ensure that all materials used in a building are fit for purpose – obviously particularly important in the case of fire safety. In the past, architects have specified construction materials and have then been in a position to ensure that the specified materials were used. This is increasingly not the case as performance specifications enable alternative materials to be used, often selected by the developer, contractor or sub-contractors.

With architects now seldom having the authority to insist on specific products being used, there is a tendency to go for cheaper materials, without necessarily understanding the impact or potential knock-on effect.

Council planners like me could solve the housing crisis - if ministers let us
Rob Krzyszowski Read more

Public safety should not be privatised. Putting a monetary value on human lives is unacceptable. The triple lock should be recognised and strengthened.

Bring back building control to its rightful place in local authorities, working independently of the planning function and the private sector. Bring back fire officers working closely with council building control to scrutinise proposals and carry out proper inspections on all projects. Bring back the specification of materials to a single point of responsibility under the architect or engineer responsible for the specification of materials, working with the building control officer and fire officer.

Allow the experts to do what they know best without interference from politicians or those who tend to take shortcuts or the cheapest option. Look where that has got us.

Deon Lombard has a private architecture practice.

The Guardian has commissioned a series of 'Eye Opening' articles on Public Service. Check them out: HERE

CLADDING
just a very brief word ..... i read today that there are hundreds or even thousands of schools and hospitals and other buildings that are clad with whatever this stuff is

==================

TODAY'S RUGBY
i see the scots had a great result vs oz, and believe it was a cracking match, though did not see it

the lions also won handsomely, but many nagging doubts remain that they have the firepower to beat the real all blacks
today they broke the back of the opposition when they were reduced to 14 men, but there remains an inability to cross the line ..... this will have been well noted by the all blacks and certainly does not apply to their own back line

From: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/

Cladding for Grenfell Tower was cheaper, more flammable option
Exclusive: Omnis Exteriors asked to supply cladding £2 cheaper a square metre than fire-resistant type, investigation finds

Rob Davies, Kate Connolly in Berlin and Ian Sample
Friday 16 June 2017 13.44 BST First published on Friday 16 June 2017 12.44 BST

Material used in the cladding that covered the Grenfell Tower was the cheaper, more flammable version of the two available options, an investigation of the supply chain has confirmed.

Omnis Exteriors manufactured the aluminium composite material (ACM) used in the cladding, a company director, John Cowley, confirmed to the Guardian.

He also said Omnis had been asked to supply Reynobond PE cladding, which is £2 cheaper per square metre than the alternative Reynobond FR, which stands for “fire resistant” to the companies that worked on refurbishing Grenfell Tower.


White cladding on Grenfell Tower. The supplier said it had been asked for Reynobond PE rather than FR – fire resistant Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

“We supplied components for a system created by the design and build team on that project,” said Cowley.

Harley Facades confirmed it had installed the panels bought from Omnis in the work it performed on Grenfell Tower.

Omnis sold ACM cladding to Harley Facades, which was responsible for installing it.

Construction firm Rydon Maintenance was the lead contractor on the project but sub-contracted elements of the work to smaller companies, including Harley.

Omnis Exteriors describes itself as a “leading UK manufacturer and supplier of exterior building products and systems”. Its website states: “With almost 400 multi-storey projects completed, you know that you are in good hands.”

The website also says Omnis manufactures cladding at a workshop in St Helens and has supplied dozens of building projects around the country.

It reported a profit of £1.2m last year, the same year in which the ACM it supplied was installed on Grenfell Tower.

The company also paid a dividend of £950,000 to its sole shareholder, an investment group specialising in construction companies called Xerxes Equity.

The chairman of Xerxes and its largest shareholder is the corporate grandee Tony Rice, who is a former chief executive of the telecoms multinational Cable & Wireless and is also a trustee of the housing charity Shelter.

German construction companies have been banned from using plastic-filled cladding, such as Reynobond PE, on towers more than 22 metres high since the 1980s when regulations were brought in to improve fire safety at residential blocks.

Concerns that the panels could exacerbate the spread of fires led authorities to allow them only on buildings that can be reached by the fire brigade using fully-extended ladders from the ground. Taller buildings require panels with a more fire-resistant core and separate staircases for people to use if evacuation becomes necessary.

Frankfurt’s fire chief, Reinhard Ries, said he was appalled at the fire at Grenfell Tower and said tighter fire-safety rules for tower blocks in Germany meant that a similar incident could not happen there. US building codes also restrict the use of metal-composite panels without flame-retardant cores on buildings above 15 metres.

Germany is deemed to have some of the most stringent fire regulations in the world. High-rise tower blocks are common, particularly in former communist parts of the country, where they dominated new-build housing for decades. In Berlin and elsewhere, the austere blocks have become fashionable places to live, in part because of a housing shortage and the high cost of accommodation.

Berlin’s fire chief, Wilfried Gräfling, said the London fire made it clear that fire regulations should be tightened further with only mineral materials used in cladding panels. “We will try to persuade lawmakers that flammable material should no longer be allowed to be used as an insulant,” he told Der Spiegel. “Only mineral material that can’t burn, ensuring that it’s no longer possible for a fire to spread via the cladding,.”

The speed at which the fire spread at Grenfell Tower has led to intense speculation that external cladding panels made from aluminium sheets with a flammable polyethylene core may have fuelled the fire that tore through the block in the early hours of Wednesday morning. But the investigation into the tragedy will look at scores of other factors that could have contributed to the blaze, including the proper installation of fire barriers between the cladding on each floor and any holes left after the recent refurbishment through which fire could have spread.

In the UK there are no regulations requiring the use of fire-retardant material in cladding used on the exterior of tower blocks and schools. But the Fire Protection Association (FPA), an industry body, has been pushing for years for the government to make it a statutory requirement for local authorities and companies to use only fire-retardant material. Jim Glocking, technical director of the FPA, said it had “lobbied long and hard” for building regulations on the issue to be tightened, but nothing had happened.

On Thursday police launched a criminal inquiry into the fire at the 24-storey building. At least 30 people died in the blaze, though police expect the figure to rise substantially. Of the injured, 30 remain in hospital with 15 in a critical condition.

Yes well done to Scotland and the Lions but as you say the All Blacks will be a much tougher call.

After all the Horrors, Politics, and uncertainty of the last few weeks it was a pleasure to watch the Trooping of the Colour today. We still do the Pomp and Ceremony so well and lifted some of my depression as to what is happening to the Country.