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.

Beside the point IT, the fact that they are considering prosecutions is important in itself.

JJ like George on here.. when in a hole stop digging.

It,

"In explaining to juries the test which they should apply to determine whether the negligence, in the particular case, amounted or did not amount to a crime, judges have used many epithets, such as ‘culpable’, ‘criminal’, ‘gross’, ‘wicked’, ‘clear’, ‘complete’. But, whatever epithet be used and whether an epithet be used or not, in order to establish criminal liability the facts must be such that, in the opinion of the jury, the negligence of the accused went beyond a mere matter of compensation between subjects and showed such disregard for the life and safety of others as to amount to a crime against the State and conduct deserving punishment."


My "feeling" is that before a court the above would apply.

(Ignorance, when one has responsibility is not a good argument.)

Dumbo,

Are you talking from experience?

I posted this on the day of the disaster...Just as relevant now as it was then.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The warnings that were repeatedly flagged up but ignored about the flats that caught fire today

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/kctmo-playing-with-
fire/

KCTMO – Playing with fire!


Posted on November 20, 2016 by grenfellactiongroup
fire

It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders. We believe that the KCTMO are an evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia who have no business to be charged with the responsibility of looking after the every day management of large scale social housing estates and that their sordid collusion with the RBKC Council is a recipe for a future major disaster.

Unfortunately, the Grenfell Action Group have reached the conclusion that only an incident that results in serious loss of life of KCTMO residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation. We believe that the KCTMO have ensured their ongoing survival by the use of proxy votes at their Annual General Meeting that see them returned with a mandate of 98% in favour of the continuation of their inept and highly dangerous management of our homes. It is no coincidence that the 98% is the same figure that is returned by the infamous Kim Jong-un of North Korea who claims mass popularity while reputedly enslaving the general population and starving the majority of his people to death.

It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block or similar high density residential property is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO will be found out and brought to justice! The Grenfell Action Group believe that the KCTMO narrowly averted a major fire disaster at Grenfell Tower in 2013 when residents experienced a period of terrifying power surges that were subsequently found to have been caused by faulty wiring. We believe that our attempts to highlight the seriousness of this event were covered up by the KCTMO with the help of the RBKC Scrutiny Committee who refused to investigate the legitimate concerns of tenants and leaseholders.

We have blogged many times on the subject of fire safety at Grenfell Tower and we believe that these investigations will become part of damning evidence of the poor safety record of the KCTMO should a fire affect any other of their properties and cause the loss of life that we are predicting:

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/fire-safety-scandal-at-lancaster-west/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/more-on-fire-safety/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/another-fire-safety-scandal/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/grenfell-tower-still-a-fire-risk/

In October 2015 a fire ripped through another KCTMO property, the 14 storey Adair Tower in North Kensington, causing mass panic and resulting in a number of residents taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation. It is reported that had it not been for the swift actions of the London Fire Brigade the consequences of this fire and potential loss of life could have been much worse.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11967592/50-rescued-from-burning-flats-in-Kensington.html

In the aftermath of the Adair Tower fire the London Fire Brigade found that the KCTMO had not been looking after the safety of residents properly and issued an Enforcement Order compelling them to improve the fire safety in the escape staircases and to provide self closing devices to all the tower block’s front doors. A further audit by the London Fire Brigade of the neighbouring Hazelwood Tower (located alongside Adair Tower) found similar breaches of health and safety legislation and an Enforcement Order was also issued for this property forcing the TMO to address the serious concerns of the Fire Brigade’s inspectors. What is shocking is that a decade ago a fatality occurred due to a fire at Hazelwood Tower and the Fire Investigation Team ordered that the grills on the fire escape staircase be covered over. This never happened and it is believed that the uncovered grills at Adair House (Hazelwood Tower’s twin block) acted like a chimney and were responsible for the accelerated spread of the fire and smoke damage.

In the last twenty years and despite the terrifying power surge incident in 2013 and recent fire at Adair Tower, the residents of Grenfell Tower have received no proper fire safety instructions from the KCTMO. Residents were informed by a temporary notice stuck in the lift and one announcement in a recent regeneration newsletter that they should remain in their flats in the event of fire. There are not and never have been any instructions posted in the Grenfell Tower noticeboard or on individual floor as to how residents should act in event of a fire. Anyone who witnessed the recent tower block fire at Shepherds Court, in nearby Shepherd’s Bush, will know that the advice to remain in our properties would have led to certain fatalities and we are calling on our landlord to re-consider the advice that they have so badly circulated.

The Grenfell Action Group predict that it won’t be long before the words of this blog come back to haunt the KCTMO management and we will do everything in our power to ensure that those in authority know how long and how appallingly our landlord has ignored their responsibility to ensure the heath and safety of their tenants and leaseholders. They can’t say that they haven’t been warned!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'You're jumping ahead of yourself Stan when you talk about prosecutions, at least as far as the councils are concerned.'

iturama...Now tell me I'm jumping ahead of myself.

The Action Group clearly have an axe to grind and perhaps rightly so. However, the law requires that both sides have a right to speak and defend themselves, if necessary, and any judgement be based on a full evaluation of the facts. What we appear to know is that the catastrophic fire was fuelled by the cladding and the fire brigade were unable to control it despite a quick response. Why the cladding was used needs to be explained as well as why the fridge freezer caught fire in the first place. There are many domestic fires each year due to faulty appliances, particularly clothes dryers, and the manufacturers seem to escape any liability. The other compendium of complaints seem peripheral to the main cause of the tragedy and will no doubt be considered in a full inquiry.

It's been the same in Labour controlled Camden and several other Labour boroughs. Tenants complaining about fire risk and being ignored. This is not a party political problem. Much of it started during last Labour government and continued under coalition and Conservatives.
The sprinkler fuss is largely nonsense. The basic blocks are safe from fire and designed to be. Concrete doesn't burn. Fires in flats tend to be contained there. It was the cladding that caused the problem. Cladding put there by Conservative and Labour councils

Hays,

The toties are said to have been in government for 6years. They had six years to recognise these problems.

What were they doing?

Lining their own pockets?

60 high rise blocks now with cladding that has failed tests

Worth a read:

" 25 Jun 2017The Observer
Observer Comment

Britain has had many governments, of many complexions. There have been one-party governments, coalition governments, minority governments and governments of national unity. In 1806, following the death of William Pitt the Younger, there was even a “ministry of all the talents”, intended to hold the country together. It did not last long and failed to end the war with France. Yet rarely if ever has Britain seen anything like the government we have now.
It is most unfortunate that we have so many makeweights and mediocrities collected together in the same place, at the same time, and under the same leader – especially when Britain is wrestling with Brexit, the most important decision in generations.
If the election delivered one clear message it was that voters were fed up with austerity and that anything that prolonged or worsened it was unwelcome. Has Theresa May, the notional prime minister but in reality the frontperson for the hard-Brexit fringe of the Conservative party, heard this message? She has not. May travelled to Brussels last week and told our EU partners that controlling immigration, not raising living standards, remained a priority.
May lacks a vision for the country. She appears oblivious to the firmly held view of her chancellor, Philip Hammond, and many others that the economy must come first. She ignores the warnings of senior figures, such as John Major, that leaving the European single market and customs union, as she is bent on doing, risks consigning millions of “just managing” people to a twilight world of declining wages, higher prices, failing services and rising debt.
May does not heed the independent voice of the governor of the Bank of England who states that, one year after the Brexit referendum, Britain is becoming measurably poorer. Ironically, the only growth areas are exports and tourism, thanks to a devalued pound. Britain’s biggest export, meanwhile, may soon be of skilled and able people.
How can a politician who constantly calls on the country to rally round, heal its divisions and pull together not grasp the obvious fact that, in order for that to happen, a consensus approach to a Brexit deal is essential? What is it about the developing crisis over a shortage of NHS nurses and doctors, caused by a sharp fall in EU applicants, that she does not understand?
Does May not hear the same worries that everybody else hears, from farmers prospectively lacking vital seasonal workers, from bankers and city institutions under mounting pressure to move jobs and business to Frankfurt and Paris, to universities fearful that European students and funding will shift elsewhere? Apparently not. As her grudging, selfdefeating approach to one of the easier Brexit issues – the rights of EU citizens – indicates, May still does not get it.
May is not malicious or wicked, just sadly lacking. A year on, the prime minister seems trapped in a June 2016 time-warp, doomed to endless reiterations of “Brexit means Brexit”, and from which nightmarish snare, because of the inconclusive nature of the election, she is not allowed, for the time being, to escape. This will change, of course, once Boris Johnson or Michael Gove or some other opportunist knifes her in the next Tory fight.
Yet why should the British people allow themselves and their country, in effect, to be led towards ruination by a gang of hard-right Eurosceptics whose dreams of lost empire are matched in impotent futility only by their glaring inability to justify the hard Brexit they have advocated for so long? The mood here and in Europe has changed. In the Netherlands, in Austria, in France, and now prospectively in Germany, the populists, the haters, the xenophobes and the ultra-nationalists have been vanquished. Look what happened to Ukip on 8 June. That train has left the station.
The hard Brexit argument that the EU is finished, that the eurozone is imploding, that the economies of the 27 are going under, now sounds as inept as a Boris Johnson interview with Eddie Mair. Britain is doing less well than any of the developed country economies and those of most EU members. And although the hard Brexit camp cannot bear to admit it, they know the public mood is changing, too, with opinion polls pointing in favour of a softer Brexit. Their bluff is being called, as David Davis’s first-day capitulation on the sequencing of negotiations showed. And their ability to scare and bully people is diminishing. Among moderate Tory and Labour MPs, fear of questioning Brexit is being overtaken, with good reason, by an even greater fear of plunging the country into a repeat of the Great Depression.
The urgent, undeniable cry linking Leavers and Remainers, the well-to-do and the less well-off, the mainstream left and right as well as Greens, Lib Dems and the SNP, is for a common-sense Brexit that enhances ordinary families’ economic prospects, not damages them; that guarantees citizens’ rights and opportunities, not limits them; that underpins essential public services and furthers the imperative, for example, of safe public housing; and that facilitates a positive future for our children and grandchildren, free of fear, chauvinism and crippling debt, in a society that is open to the world, to its people, and to new ideas.
You can see why this is all too much for May and her hard Brexit chums. The idea of truly acting upon a national consensus – indeed, the idea of following the settled national will – is far too democratic for people weaned on adversarial, winner-takes-all politics, class warfare, an enduring sense of entitlement, and longcoddled, gut prejudices about race, gender and religion. These are the base instincts of the past. Elements of our rightwing press revel in nourishing them – preferring discord over tolerance, anger over moderation, bile over guile, and mean-spiritedness over generosity. It’s a Manichean worldview that ends up hurting, not healing. But Britain’s instinct is not, on the whole, to be nasty, and these incitements (Enemies of the People, Crush the Saboteurs) are increasingly seen for what they are – unpleasant, unhelpful, unacceptable.
Post-Brexit Britain, in whatever shape it comes, does not and will not belong to a narrow constituency, however loud they shout. For it to work for Britain, it will have to be a vision based on consensus. An acceptance that the referendum vote of one year ago never mandated the Conservative party’s hard Brexit Tory faction to author the manner of our leaving the EU.
Post-Brexit Britain, in order to stay economically and societally healthy, needs a sensible degree of freedom of movement of labour. It needs students. It needs nurses.
Post-Brexit Britain needs as full as possible membership of the European single market – not mere “access”. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party must get off the fence on this vital issue. Building a free, inclusive and prosperous society is not compatible with trade protectionism or rampant, unregulated markets – and Labour should say so plainly and with one voice.
And post-Brexit Britain must accept the rules and rights guarded by the European Court of Justice if it is to achieve its aims, especially in protecting the employees and their families who are most vulnerable to market upsets and business downturns. PostBrexit Britain needs the diversity, the flair and the inspiration only unrestrained, pan-European social and cultural exchanges can bring.
This is the shape of the Brexit package our country must seek. Is such a consensus possible? Its main elements are all within reach. Reluctant and divided though it clearly is, May’s cabinet must be led to understand that only a consensual Brexit package that works for all our society’s disparate groups, and the EU too, will be acceptable if and when negotiations conclude.
May or her successor must understand that any such final package must first pass the test of thorough parliamentary scrutiny and a free, unwhipped vote of MPs making their choice not according to party diktats but as a matter of conscience, in the interests of the country as a whole. This agreement can not be seen to be imposed, but freely, willingly embraced. A narrow margin of victory a year ago is not a licence to railroad, or silence. The post-Brexit Britain is one that everyone has a stake in. It’s not a carve-up. The alarming spectacle of the leader of the House of Commons, Angela Leadsom, suggesting last week that British broadcasters are being unpatriotic for raising questions about the government’s Brexit negotiating strategy reveals how dangerous the government’s isolation has become. It’s time the grown-ups took over. It’s time to talk about citizens, not saboteurs."

Another interesting commentary is :

That jeering sound you can hear is Europe laughing at Britain
Andrew Rawnsley
Andrew Rawnsley

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/24/brexit-europe-laughing-britain-unstable-government

The Graun full tilt an all that.

I don't think the movers an shakers of €uroland are laughing, far from it.

They are looking into the abyss, cos Ma Merkel et al cant keep this show on the road unless she hands over the golden key, the goal of goals.. and make the eurobun a transfer union.

Then they might have some chance..

Is it worth it? I don't know, but that's the price they have to pay if they want a true €uropean Union.

corbyn and labour mps condemning con/dup deal because of their views on
gay marriage and rights . well mr corbyn you have more mps because of their religion also condemn gays rights their religion want them killed
so are you going to sack those mps

it's certainly a case of pot and kettle when you consider labour's (corbyn's) stance and inaction on anti-semitism within the party

cynic the fact why has no one put the question to corbyn we no the bbc never will

you've already heard the answer
corbyn will reiterate that anti-semitism will not not be tolerated and strong action will be taken, unless your name is ken livingstone blah blah blah :-)

corbyn weekend speech to people at music fes was incite to riot

he should be charged with incitement to course a riot

Manuel,

If you are referring to comments made recently by Livingstone I think what he stated was factually and historically accurate.

Also considered it "fair comment" in the circumstances.

I think that was accepted by many Jews other than those hypersensitive or interested in political gain.

I think May shaking hands with Trump or Netanyahu was more offensive than Corbyn being prepared to talk about peaceful resolution of the Irish or other conflicts.
.
That is not trying to support terrorism, but pursuing the peaceful resolution of problems.

Not what the up and at "em" brigade can understand.