Let's begin by looking at the whole image (click to see a larger version)
Now let's look at each point bit by bit:
The building was designed in 1967, but construction did not begin until 1972, and it was completed in 1974. The govt in power at the time is irrelevant (Tories 1970-1974) in that they were not directly involved in the decision making process of building this tower block.
In fact, tower blocks built in London at the time were constructed under the requirements of the London Building Act 1939, specifically Section 20, which imposed extra fire safety measures on their design. You might be interested to know that laws to protect London against fire were first drafted by Sir Christopher Wren in 1667 in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London and were designed to prevent a repeat catastrophe. The LBA 1939 was amended over time until it was superseded by national Building Regulations in the mid-1980s (Tory govt under Margaret Thatcher) and Sections 20 and 21 of the London Building (Amendment) Act 1939 was repealed in January 2013 (Tory govt under David Cameron.)
The refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was agreed by the Kensington and Chelsea Council in accord with the block's management company, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation in 2012 (Tory/LibDem coalition govt under David Cameron) but work was deferred until 2014 as the original contractor tender came in over budget and a new contractor had to be found within the £10m agreed funding. The work was completed in 2016 but according to the council's own planning portal was still at not approved status, as reported by Metro on 21 June 2017.
In fact, tower blocks built in London at the time were constructed under the requirements of the London Building Act 1939, specifically Section 20, which imposed extra fire safety measures on their design. You might be interested to know that laws to protect London against fire were first drafted by Sir Christopher Wren in 1667 in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London and were designed to prevent a repeat catastrophe. The LBA 1939 was amended over time until it was superseded by national Building Regulations in the mid-1980s (Tory govt under Margaret Thatcher) and Sections 20 and 21 of the London Building (Amendment) Act 1939 was repealed in January 2013 (Tory govt under David Cameron.)
The refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was agreed by the Kensington and Chelsea Council in accord with the block's management company, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation in 2012 (Tory/LibDem coalition govt under David Cameron) but work was deferred until 2014 as the original contractor tender came in over budget and a new contractor had to be found within the £10m agreed funding. The work was completed in 2016 but according to the council's own planning portal was still at not approved status, as reported by Metro on 21 June 2017.
What the relevance of this might be to the Grenfell fire is a bit of a mystery but here we go...
In 2008 under the 2005-2010 Labour government there were three Housing Ministers:
Yvette Cooper up to 24 January 2008
Caroline Flint between 24 January & 3 October 2008
Margaret Beckett October 2008 onwards
Sadiq Khan was MP for Tooting from 2005 - 2016. At no time was he the Minister for Housing. He served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 5 October 2008.
During his time as Mayor of London (elected 2016) Khan has not produced a report saying the fire service did not need further funding. His predecessor, Boris Johnson (Tory), in February 2016 stated his intention to overule the vote by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) not to scrap thirteen London fire engines. Boris’s earlier cuts – implemented in 2014 – closed 10 fire stations, with the loss of 552 firefighters’ jobs. In August 2016 Sadiq Khan announced he was commissioning a review of London's fire service provision to assess staffing and budgetary needs, the first draft was published for consultation in December 2016.
Oh dear, guilty by association eh? Let's check the facts...
Emma Dent Coad was elected to Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council in 2006, representing Golborne ward. She is a member of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) and was a council-appointed board member of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation from 2008 to 31 October 2012 (that's two years before the contract was finalised in case you hadn't noticed.)It is worth mentioning here the makeup of the TMO's Board of Directors, which should comprise eight elected tenant and leaseholder members, four appointed Councillor members and three independent appointed other members. Interestingly, in some of the years I checked there were only two elected Councillors on the Board, the other two Council appointees being non-councillor housing consultants, whilst the most recent listing (retrieved 14 June 2017) since removed from the TMO website (but still visible on the Way Back Machine) shows just eight residents, two councillors and three independent members.
Another astonishingly nonsensical claim is this one about the cladding on the outside of the tower. Where do I begin with this one?! Ed Miliband did hold the new post of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change from 2008 to 2010, and his department's brief was to look at how to protect against climate change. The EU's Climate Change requirements resulted in the UK's Climate Change Act 2008, which is part of the government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The two main government departments responsible are the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) – leading on the policy for reducing emissions (mitigation) and the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) – leading on the adaptation policy. The departments' brief was to provide broad outlines on how to achieve the emission targets, not to specify individual actions down to the level of selecting what type of insulation to fit to a tower block!
As this cladding is banned in both the EU and the USA, and in the UK as well as confirmed by the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, speaking to Andrew Marr, the proper question should be why was it used at all, especially given that its manufacturers themselves say it should not be used on a building over 10 metres (32 feet) high. Rather than aim ridiculous accusations at Miliband, why not ask the TMO, the Council, the Contractor and the Installer why they allowed the use of this material? Are the UK's Building Regulations fit for purpose? It has been reported recently in the media that the last review of them was over 11 years ago, and a call was made just two days ago by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for the government to begin immediately its much-delayed review of Approved Document B on fire safety in the building regulations following the Grenfell Tower fire.
Yes, it said "much-delayed". The review which was promised 4 years ago by the then Secretary of State, after a previous fire in the Lakanal House tower block in Camberwell where 6 people died, has since been deferred again, most recently last year by Gavin Barwell who lost his seat in the recent General Election and who is now the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff. As recently as March 2017 the Fire Risk Management Journal carried an article stating that, "Experts have warned that a government delay in reviewing building regulations could be endangering tower blocks throughout the UK." So more questions need to be asked of this government as to why this review has not been carried out yet!
This comment beggars belief... the fire itself may have been an accident, but the conditions which allowed it to happen were not. They were deliberate decisions taken to fit a type of cladding which was highly flammable, which is allegedly banned for use in the UK, and in the resulting fire people died. As yet we still do not know how many people have died in total, and indeed due to the severity of the conflagration we may never actually know the final total. In a building containing 124 flats, most of which appear to have housed more than one person, the estimates are for a total occupancy level of between 400-600 people. What we do know so far is the number of fatalities announced and the number of families in temporary housing, but that does not appear to account for all those who occupied the building. That Kensington and Chelsea council were singularly inept in their handling of the immediate situation and that the government's response was no better, are both issues which have caused righteous anger amongst both those directly affected and those of us observing from afar.
People affected by a civil disaster who are then apparently abandoned by the council and the government have every right to be angry, they have every right to expect better support, and they have every right to demand answers to what went wrong and why they lost their homes and their loved ones. The emergency services response was beyond reproach, and the volunteers who stepped up were stalwarts, providing support, essentials, shelter, clothing and food in the aftermath. But there needs to be hard questions asked of the council and the government. Why, for instance, was military support not offered? The UK's army have vast experience in helping with disasters around the world, they have administrators, engineers, temporary accommodation and vital skills that could have been used to help ease the situation for many of those who survived. Yet people were left to cope by themselves or help each other with no other authority to turn to.
As to the comment about the hard left motivating people, this is utter fantasy. It is a construct of the establishment and media designed to frighten people who really ought to know better. It is a revisiting of the sort of McCarthyism rife in the 1950's in the USA, where witch-hunts against alleged communism abounded. It is as ridiculous an idea now as it was then, probably more so, given that all political parties have moved to the right since the 1950's, and what is now regarded as left-wing in the UK is actually middle of the road normal policy in many other European countries and would have been here in previous decades. (No I will not develop this further here, but it may be the subject of a future blog post when I have nothing else to do on a future Sunday evening!)
Oh dear! This is just such a silly comment that it hardly warrants a response. Clearly the person making it has no real understanding of fascism, nor of the way in which the media (broadcast and in print) attempts to manipulate the way that people think. To consider those who are righteously angry against a great wrong having been done to fellow citizens as fascists shows how successful media brainwashing actually is.
Well, if you have read this far, I hope you found it useful in providing information to rebut the false claims in images like the one I started with. If you want to read another rebuttal of a different set of equally stupid claims you can find one on the Another Angry Voice blog here. Meanwhile, I do hope that the person who challenged me to prove the image was codswallop is reading this.
