So whats really happening in London UK?

originally posted by: audubon
a reply to: stormcell

It was the left-wing who has been pushing for Britain to take in more refugees and asylum seekers even when we have a housing shortage.

What a weird thing to say. Even if it were true (let's skip that bit), why would it be relevant?

Here are the campaigns

www.timesandstar.co.uk...

you.38degrees.org.uk...

you.38degrees.org.uk...

you.38degrees.org.uk...

Then then London councils are housing people outside of London
www.theguardian.com...

While we have over 9000 homeless ex-servicemen

www.mirror.co.uk...

a reply to: OmNiLeGIoN

Maybe people want to know just how many Immigrants were moved up the council ladder??

Joking aside... i think the Councils don't want to be blamed for anymore deaths.

Did you know there's been 3 other tower block fires since grenfell? it now seems every little fire will quickly be in the headlines!

a reply to: audubon

During the 80s and 90s it was very definitely a s*****e and was a place not many people wanted to go except to see gigs at the academy. I do see the progress in some ways but I feel for the families being forced to move away, those tend to be the hard working ones that rent privately and just can't afford it any longer so we're left with the very rich, the people that were lucky enough to be able to buy like me that exist somewhere in the middle of it all just getting by and the poor that live in council blocks soon to be shipped off en masse under the guise of safety concerns.

That's interesting about Crystal Palace, I never knew that it was part of Penge.

a reply to: stormcell

Well, what I was originally responding to was this comment of yours:

It was the left-wing who has been pushing for Britain to take in more refugees and asylum seekers even when we have a housing shortage.

And, to clarify, my principal objection was that we have the opposite of a housing shortage.

It's true that the number of homeless ex-services is a national disgrace, but refugees are a scapegoat in the argument: They aren't somehow 'displacing' anyone - HMG is simply ignoring its former soldiers for no reason at all.

The root of the problem is the decades-long house price bubble, which has encouraged people to buy houses purely as investments and let them sit empty until the time comes when they can be converted back into cash - usually at a huge profit.

Do these parasite landlords contribute anything to the nation? Well, they get to be stars of cheap reality TV shows often classed as 'property porn'. That's how back to front we have our priorities. But don't blame refugees and migrants for ex-forces sleeping rough.

Oh yeah, and the other thing is that I'm pretty sure there were no refugees/migrants (or not very many) killed at Grenfell, which made what you were saying doubly weird.

originally posted by: PrinceDreamer
The thing I find most strange about this is the evacuation of these tower blocks, to make it makes very little sense. if the cladding is so dangerous why not just remove it? that would be far cheaper than rehousing the 100 or so families from each of these blocks of flats, we will know something is up when they say it is to expensive to repair the flats and they have to be demolished, making way for developers to make luxury homes is some of the most sought after area's in London...

Legal liability. Now they know there is a health risk, the council faces a class action lawsuit if it happened again.

Removing/replacing/adding cladding costs £10,000 to £50,000 per housing unit. You are going to need scaffolding and plastic sheeting going all the way up the buildings. Each and every girder pole, clamps and walkway is going to have to placed by hand by qualified staff. This will take months to install, and probably months to do the whole building. It would also be needed if they wanted to demolish the building.

During this process, this will cause residents to lose sunlight. Removal of insulation is going to make the apartments freezing cold. They might not be able to afford the heating bills. The council is going to face a bill running into millions of pounds to pay for the contracts.

tradesman4u.s3.amazonaws.com...

originally posted by: audubon
a reply to: stormcell

Well, what I was originally responding to was this comment of yours:

It was the left-wing who has been pushing for Britain to take in more refugees and asylum seekers even when we have a housing shortage.

And, to clarify, my principal objection was that we have the opposite of a housing shortage.

It's true that the number of homeless ex-services is a national disgrace, but refugees are a scapegoat in the argument: They aren't somehow 'displacing' anyone - HMG is simply ignoring its former soldiers for no reason at all.

The root of the problem is the decades-long house price bubble, which has encouraged people to buy houses purely as investments and let them sit empty until the time comes when they can be converted back into cash - usually at a huge profit.

Do these parasite landlords contribute anything to the nation? Well, they get to be stars of cheap reality TV shows often classed as 'property porn'. That's how back to front we have our priorities. But don't blame refugees and migrants for ex-forces sleeping rough.

Oh yeah, and the other thing is that I'm pretty sure there were no refugees/migrants (or not very many) killed at Grenfell, which made what you were saying doubly weird.

There's a perception that everyone living in council housing in London is on benefits - maybe that's a Conservative thing like "cutting the red tape of bureaucracy".

After the various raids on pensions (getting the actuaries to underestimate life spans and "skimming off pension fund
surpluses" then "wealth redistribution"), individuals were cashing in their private pension funds, buying up a house as an "investment" and holding onto them, then renting them out when they go into a care home, then passing them on as an inheritance. Everywhere has become an investment from old farm houses to Victorian apartments converted into student buy-to-let units.

originally posted by: MaestroMind
a reply to: OmNiLeGIoN

Land grab

They pulled a Katrina and now they can tear it down and build something expensive.

a reply to: OmNiLeGIoN

Of one thing we can be reasoanbly sure of two things which is the possibility that the Grenfell Tower was intended to displace a large number of people onto the streets for whatever purpose, can not be discounted.

The possiblity they are deliberately over compensating so they can portray themselves as very caring, responsive and socially reponsbile corproate citzen for the forthcoming court case, cant be discounted either.

a reply to: CulturalResilience

Foot and Mouth created the opportunity for numerous entrepreneur led workgangs to independently learn through experience the most efficient ways of burning large numbers of corpses using commonly available fuels. A nondescript little man in a small white van went around obseving their progress and taking his obsevations back to his masters.

We would have been suspicious if groups of squaddies had been set to work on Salsibury plain burning piles of corpses.

a reply to: OmNiLeGIoN

I was involved in a dangerous structural issue a few years ago.

We were repeatedly told the structural engineer was going to visit. He only appeared once, and the council official with him was smirking.

Not long ago My wife and I looked at the website for that structural engineer's company. We were gobsmacked. The photograph of the boss was not the man we had met. That explained the smirk. Not only did he not turn up numerous times when we were told to expect him, he sent a junior colleague posing as him and the council were in on it.

Judging by Grenfell that is standard, and the whole system will be trying to cover-up the scam. Expenses, expenses, expenses.

a reply to: stormcell

The price difference was about £2/square foot for a cost of £45 panel. More likely someone didn't know the difference.

More likely they were trying to save a few quid in my view, trying to deal with the government cuts at the cost of the poor as usual. If they did not know the risks this material posed then they are open to criminal negligence so either way they are responsible. They were also warned by local residents that this building was a huge fire hazard but the locals were ignored.

It was the left-wing who has been pushing for Britain to take in more refugees and asylum seekers even when we have a housing shortage.

What utter crap!

So its the lefts fault?

Let me debunk this nonsense right now.

Twice in the last few years the Tories (on the right) have blocked bills presented by Labour (on the left) to introduce legislation to force landlords to make rented accommodation safer Link. Might be worth remembering that about 70 Tory MPs are also landlords, they blocked these bills for their own financial protection. If you want to blame anyone that might be a good place to start.

Blaming the left and refugees for this disaster only highlights that you have a alternative agenda, the Toryie (on the centre right) have been in power since 2010, trying to blame the leftist opposition is political ignorance at its worse.

originally posted by: Kester
Judging by Grenfell that is standard, and the whole system will be trying to cover-up the scam. Expenses, expenses, expenses.

I think you have it right there.

Covering up a scam yes but I think it goes further than expenses. I think the scam is Tory economic policy, shifting public money into private hands via PFI and outsourcing.

The cladding works were carried by a subsidiary company that has gone bust and been reincorporated into the company that created the subsidiary. The company (sub-contractor to the main refurbishment contractor) sat at the bottom of the food chain in these outsourced works and probably only got the contract by bidding too low and at unprofitable levels.

If the low bid had been questioned by the council/landlord that commissioned the contract, they would have just accepted whatever nefarious response provided. Truth is, the only way the sub-contractor could have completed the work and made any kind of profit would have been through much mentioned corner/cost-cutting (substituting the cheaper product for the one agreed upon) and also never mentioned use of self-employed secondary sub-contractors and employees on zero hours contracts.

The Establishment do not want any public discourse on the fact Tory trickle down capitalist theory does not work. Mass pubic awareness of their twin mechanisms of PFI and outsourcing (to shift public money into private hands) and how that actually works could bring down their house of cards and expose their policies for what they really are, tax thievery.