I doubt families would want to remain homeless if somewhere outside of Kensington was offered.
Depends if we're talking neighbouring boroughs or out of London.
You've lost everything and then moved away from your community, your kids schools, jobs, family, etc.
The duty is to get the families as close to North Kensington as possible, not be put in St Mary's Cray or Southend. Wandsworth is probably as far you would hope, and fingers crossed housing is found in Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Brent.
Exactly. If you're rehoused in Shepherd's Bush you've got the Hammersmith and City Line and a reasonable number of bus routes to get the kids to school. Certain bits of White City and East Acton might be do-able, but any further west would be tricky. If you don't have kids then you might be able to be a bit more flexible, particularly if you already worked outside the area or had family in a different part of London, but having to navigate a completely new area is just going to add to the cognitive burden at an already stressful time.
In addition, all the support services that are going to be put in place for the survivors - counselling, support groups, special arrangements with the Job Centre or whatever - are going to be focussed on the immediate area. Shipping people out a lot further away is going to make it a lot more difficult for them to access those services, and mean it will take them a lot longer to rebuild their lives.
@Addickted, I really appreciate your posts. You're clearly someone who deals with this every day. Apologies if I've missed this, but I'd like to know what you think can be done better in future--ways to prevent something like this (as in such a terrible loss of life from fire, not fire unto itself). I say this understanding that, simply put, you cannot prevent everything.
The obvious answer would be to legislate for sprinklers in new buildings which should of happened years ago.
Retrofitting is a different animal though. This fire is a game changer though as far as I'm concerned and all the anti sprinkler voices are bound to shut up now. Even leaseholders are asking us to retrofit sprinklers now.
I'm meeting with my CEO on Monday to discuss us retrofitting sprinklers in all of our stock of six storeys or higher. I've been working on some figures all day and I reckon he's going to have to find me £4m a year for the next eight years as well as at least two new members of staff to support the programme.
If I had started this programme eight years ago and I'd just completed it now, my shiny new sprinklers would have by now not saved a single life.
This will make a significant dent into his published target of 1,500 new homes a year by 2022. Until Wednesday, numbers were the target. As I said this is a game changer.
I left my last two positions because both CEOs were about the numbers of new stock they could develop rather than looking after their existing customers.
Things are different now for me as I have almost 100,000 customers and despite my current CEO still focussed on additional stock, the current position would indicate a groundswell of support for retrofitting.
With regard to New Orleans. To be honest it's both the fault of France and the Americans. The British were well aware of the flooding risk of the New Orleans basin, which is why up until 1815 the Brits refused to develop the City other than on the high ground.
That will teach you Americans to team up with the French. I'm still shocked your Canuck neighbours still do.
@Addickted, I really appreciate your posts. You're clearly someone who deals with this every day. Apologies if I've missed this, but I'd like to know what you think can be done better in future--ways to prevent something like this (as in such a terrible loss of life from fire, not fire unto itself). I say this understanding that, simply put, you cannot prevent everything.
The obvious answer would be to legislate for sprinklers in new buildings which should of happened years ago.
Retrofitting is a different animal though. This fire is a game changer though as far as I'm concerned and all the anti sprinkler voices are bound to shut up now. Even leaseholders are asking us to retrofit sprinklers now.
I'm meeting with my CEO on Monday to discuss us retrofitting sprinklers in all of our stock of six storeys or higher. I've been working on some figures all day and I reckon he's going to have to find me £4m a year for the next eight years as well as at least two new members of staff to support the programme.
If I had started this programme eight years ago and I'd just completed it now, my shiny new sprinklers would have by now not saved a single life.
This will make a significant dent into his published target of 1,500 new homes a year by 2022. Until Wednesday, numbers were the target. As I said this is a game changer.
I left my last two positions because both CEOs were about the numbers of new stock they could develop rather than looking after their existing customers.
Things are different now for me as I have almost 100,000 customers and despite my current CEO still focussed on additional stock, the current position would indicate a groundswell of support for retrofitting.
With regard to New Orleans. To be honest it's both the fault of France and the Americans. The British were well aware of the flooding risk of the New Orleans basin, which is why up until 1815 the Brits refused to develop the City other than on the high ground.
That will teach you Americans to team up with the French. I'm still shocked your Canuck neighbours still do.
I want to both like and lol this.
TO BE FAIR, $15m for 828,000(!!!!!!) square miles (and no I don't have to convert that into km because that land is ours THANK YOU VERY MUCH) is a fucking brilliant deal.
I've got more questions but I'm going to try to do some reading so I'm not just constantly asking base questions. It sounds like you do good work and care about the people you house. Thank you.
Get a team of civil servant volunteers together, giving them a caseload of 10 families each and a procurement office to charge things to and let them help people get back on their feet. Their Objective (there will be many civil servanyts capable of this) - 1) security - housing in comfort and to family's satisfaction locally (probably in hotels), 2) provision of £1,000 for basics - or if families are too traumitised identify what is needed and pocure for them, and ongoing provision of this 3) Ensure their food and religious needs are fully catered for, 4) Contact with updates and to answer questions two times a day,4) Arrange for any counselling that is needed, 5) Buy the children some toys, 6) In the longer term represent the families wishes in terms of re-housing.
Give support workers those objectives, which could have been given on day one and let them get on with the job.
They could also meet up for strategic meetings so they are able to respond to emerging or unforseen issues. Should have happened on day one - If I was PM I would have made sure it happened, but can still happen now,
You can't rewrite stuff on the hoof. There are, unfortunately or not, laws that govern the response to stuff like this.
That is exactly what you have to do when an unprecedented disaster happens. What laws govern emergency responses to a thankfully extremely rare issue? I heard this morning a team of civil servants are being sent in to do something similar to what I suggested. There was a great man who during the war said, don't give me the problems, find me the solutions - that is the attitude that needs adopting in these situations.
And a second to the thanks for Addicted - we can't ask any more from you that you keep the people who you are responsible for safe. It is a very responsible job that you should be rightly proud of.
I would expect that the retro fitting of sprinklers would need to be funded by central government.
@Addickted, I really appreciate your posts. You're clearly someone who deals with this every day. Apologies if I've missed this, but I'd like to know what you think can be done better in future--ways to prevent something like this (as in such a terrible loss of life from fire, not fire unto itself). I say this understanding that, simply put, you cannot prevent everything.
The obvious answer would be to legislate for sprinklers in new buildings which should of happened years ago.
Retrofitting is a different animal though. This fire is a game changer though as far as I'm concerned and all the anti sprinkler voices are bound to shut up now. Even leaseholders are asking us to retrofit sprinklers now.
I'm meeting with my CEO on Monday to discuss us retrofitting sprinklers in all of our stock of six storeys or higher. I've been working on some figures all day and I reckon he's going to have to find me £4m a year for the next eight years as well as at least two new members of staff to support the programme.
If I had started this programme eight years ago and I'd just completed it now, my shiny new sprinklers would have by now not saved a single life.
This will make a significant dent into his published target of 1,500 new homes a year by 2022. Until Wednesday, numbers were the target. As I said this is a game changer.
I left my last two positions because both CEOs were about the numbers of new stock they could develop rather than looking after their existing customers.
Things are different now for me as I have almost 100,000 customers and despite my current CEO still focussed on additional stock, the current position would indicate a groundswell of support for retrofitting.
With regard to New Orleans. To be honest it's both the fault of France and the Americans. The British were well aware of the flooding risk of the New Orleans basin, which is why up until 1815 the Brits refused to develop the City other than on the high ground.
That will teach you Americans to team up with the French. I'm still shocked your Canuck neighbours still do.
I want to both like and lol this.
TO BE FAIR, $15m for 828,000(!!!!!!) square miles (and no I don't have to convert that into km because that land is ours THANK YOU VERY MUCH) is a fucking brilliant deal.
I've got more questions but I'm going to try to do some reading so I'm not just constantly asking base questions. It sounds like you do good work and care about the people you house. Thank you.
Don't worry SD, all our road signs are in miles and nobody uses l/km. The EU hasn't managed to completely change us to metric.
I couldn't post much this week on here - it's too upsetting. The idea of being trapped on the 20th floor watching the flames come up, and knowing through no fault of your own you will shortly die, either by jumping to your death or being roasted alive is appalling. To be in that situation with your family is just unbearable. RIP to all those who died in this situation. I can offer a view from the construction industry. My point of view may be invalid as it is based in Spain, but a lot of the thinking in these situations tend to permeate through industries regardless of borders. I went into construction as a painter back in 1999. I went through the boom years when prices were out of control, and even then, the corporate view was that a slightly worse finish was perfectly okay if it enlarged the profit margin. One builder we worked for had possibly the worst plasterer in the world , and his defects were what we were expected to remedy, despite our Budget not allowing for this. We confronted the foreman who signed up the sub contractors on one job when we got a bollocking from the boss for spending three days filling in holes in one flat that was recently plasterd. He said that he knew the guy was crap, but everytime he was given a total Budget, that guy was so cheap he balanced the total out. When the crisis really bit and the property bubble burst, we ended up working for a large construction Company owned by two rich guys. One was a lawyer and knew where he could bend or cross laws without any serious conseuences - we later got flow to Switzerland to refurbished flat he bought in order to continue to hide profits there to avoid paying taxes in Spain when the Swiss agreed to hand over details of bank accounts of non residents. From the start, the idea was to provide cheap housing for those who still wanted to buy. Budgets were slashed and I knew electricians who were on site 16 hours a day seven days a week at times. The budgets were very straightforward - a flat would be paid for two coats of paint plus the minor repairs. However, the jobs were so rushed that the flats were a disaster, all the other on site workers such as kitchen fitters, plumbers etc were constantly in and out as pipes burst and door fell off, which damaged the Paint, and some flats ended up being ainted four or five times. The rush to get the floor levels up meant we were often working in áreas where the structure hadn't dried properly, and huge cracks formed after completion which we had to repair (again for free). I watched four electrician companies and three lots of plasterers go to the wall trying to meet the terms they had agreed to before my boss went under. By the time that happened, we were working with materials that were barely deserving of being sold for cash in a desperate effort to cotrol costs. One ítem I will never forget was the day we painted the linse and numbers in five subterranean car parks in one day. It rained for 48 hours previously, and the parking spaces were under wáter. We pointed out it was daft to apply Paint to a wet Surface, which earned a torrent of abuse from one of the rich guys that either we painted the fucking lines or pack up and not be paid for work done. We painted the lines and repainted them three more times before completion - paint won't stick to a wet surface no matter how much you abuse it. In the last few weeks of my time as a painter, I was still being sent back to numerous Jobs we had done. Apart from the rusting iron (cheap iron painted with cheap paint) there were some real horror show. In one block a sheet of glass from the balcony became dislodged and fell five floors to a terrace área below - fortunately the owner was out. Had there been children playing there, they would have died. Now here's the crack. While we were building these flats, the two owners sold the yatchs they owned in favor of bigger models, all the while telling anyone who complained about life on the job that there were queue's of people on the dole who would happily come and work for less. The buildings don't have cladding, though they may need it soon, but they were defective in many ways, some dangerous. But you can bet the two owners (and they were very hands on types) will have a nice firewall to seperate themselves from the consequences of any decisions they made, and as I saw, some of the cut corners were made by the sub contractors being unable to do the work in Budget. Most of the threats and other problems such as painting on wet surfaces (to cite but one) were entirely verbal, and in a court of law, no one could find proof (apart from witnesses, who would probaby find it hard to get future employment if they testified) to explain what actually happened. All this is to say blame spreads like wáter, but the ultimate resposibility is often with those who make most money and can afford to legally seperate themselves from the results. My boss at the time sacked us without paying the end of conract payment or the last two wage packets, and immediately bought a new car. The current view on the Grenfell flats is that the cladding could have been more fire resistant for as Little as two pounds per sheet. I've seen the types on site who would snarl and say - 'hey, so are you going to pay the difference arsehole?' The construction company is being sued for a number of blocks it built, but as they keep sending painters and sparkies back without charge or payment, they keep slipping through the net. Finally, for those who decry political point scoring - the block of flats which burnt last week is not in a safe bubble apat from the rest of the country. It is governed by the laws applicable to buildings in the UK, and if the governments who make laws regarding this allow for deregulation and shoddy work which causes deaths there is a legitimate demand to know who voted and why. The gutter press are already trying to attach blame to the EU or whatever other daft ideology they support, and it's perfectly legitimate to refute this, If we don't the lies published in the Express and Mail will be broadcast as truths in six months time, but I don't see too many arguing about that.
The man who's fridge it was, I just cannot start to imagine the guilt he must feel. Some papers are blaming him which is disgusting.
Not read papers this weekend but Surprised he was giving newspaper interviews the other day. His neighbour also said when he knocked on her door to alert her of the fire he had packed some bags of belongings before warning his neighbors.
I couldn't post much this week on here - it's too upsetting. The idea of being trapped on the 20th floor watching the flames come up, and knowing through no fault of your own you will shortly die, either by jumping to your death or being roasted alive is appalling. To be in that situation with your family is just unbearable. RIP to all those who died in this situation. I can offer a view from the construction industry. My point of view may be invalid as it is based in Spain, but a lot of the thinking in these situations tend to permeate through industries regardless of borders. I went into construction as a painter back in 1999. I went through the boom years when prices were out of control, and even then, the corporate view was that a slightly worse finish was perfectly okay if it enlarged the profit margin. One builder we worked for had possibly the worst plasterer in the world , and his defects were what we were expected to remedy, despite our Budget not allowing for this. We confronted the foreman who signed up the sub contractors on one job when we got a bollocking from the boss for spending three days filling in holes in one flat that was recently plasterd. He said that he knew the guy was crap, but everytime he was given a total Budget, that guy was so cheap he balanced the total out. When the crisis really bit and the property bubble burst, we ended up working for a large construction Company owned by two rich guys. One was a lawyer and knew where he could bend or cross laws without any serious conseuences - we later got flow to Switzerland to refurbished flat he bought in order to continue to hide profits there to avoid paying taxes in Spain when the Swiss agreed to hand over details of bank accounts of non residents. From the start, the idea was to provide cheap housing for those who still wanted to buy. Budgets were slashed and I knew electricians who were on site 16 hours a day seven days a week at times. The budgets were very straightforward - a flat would be paid for two coats of paint plus the minor repairs. However, the jobs were so rushed that the flats were a disaster, all the other on site workers such as kitchen fitters, plumbers etc were constantly in and out as pipes burst and door fell off, which damaged the Paint, and some flats ended up being ainted four or five times. The rush to get the floor levels up meant we were often working in áreas where the structure hadn't dried properly, and huge cracks formed after completion which we had to repair (again for free). I watched four electrician companies and three lots of plasterers go to the wall trying to meet the terms they had agreed to before my boss went under. By the time that happened, we were working with materials that were barely deserving of being sold for cash in a desperate effort to cotrol costs. One ítem I will never forget was the day we painted the linse and numbers in five subterranean car parks in one day. It rained for 48 hours previously, and the parking spaces were under wáter. We pointed out it was daft to apply Paint to a wet Surface, which earned a torrent of abuse from one of the rich guys that either we painted the fucking lines or pack up and not be paid for work done. We painted the lines and repainted them three more times before completion - paint won't stick to a wet surface no matter how much you abuse it. In the last few weeks of my time as a painter, I was still being sent back to numerous Jobs we had done. Apart from the rusting iron (cheap iron painted with cheap paint) there were some real horror show. In one block a sheet of glass from the balcony became dislodged and fell five floors to a terrace área below - fortunately the owner was out. Had there been children playing there, they would have died. Now here's the crack. While we were building these flats, the two owners sold the yatchs they owned in favor of bigger models, all the while telling anyone who complained about life on the job that there were queue's of people on the dole who would happily come and work for less. The buildings don't have cladding, though they may need it soon, but they were defective in many ways, some dangerous. But you can bet the two owners (and they were very hands on types) will have a nice firewall to seperate themselves from the consequences of any decisions they made, and as I saw, some of the cut corners were made by the sub contractors being unable to do the work in Budget. Most of the threats and other problems such as painting on wet surfaces (to cite but one) were entirely verbal, and in a court of law, no one could find proof (apart from witnesses, who would probaby find it hard to get future employment if they testified) to explain what actually happened. All this is to say blame spreads like wáter, but the ultimate resposibility is often with those who make most money and can afford to legally seperate themselves from the results. My boss at the time sacked us without paying the end of conract payment or the last two wage packets, and immediately bought a new car. The current view on the Grenfell flats is that the cladding could have been more fire resistant for as Little as two pounds per sheet. I've seen the types on site who would snarl and say - 'hey, so are you going to pay the difference arsehole?' The construction company is being sued for a number of blocks it built, but as they keep sending painters and sparkies back without charge or payment, they keep slipping through the net. Finally, for those who decry political point scoring - the block of flats which burnt last week is not in a safe bubble apat from the rest of the country. It is governed by the laws applicable to buildings in the UK, and if the governments who make laws regarding this allow for deregulation and shoddy work which causes deaths there is a legitimate demand to know who voted and why. The gutter press are already trying to attach blame to the EU or whatever other daft ideology they support, and it's perfectly legitimate to refute this, If we don't the lies published in the Express and Mail will be broadcast as truths in six months time, but I don't see too many arguing about that.
Thanks for this honest and thought provoking account.
Thanks for posting this brilliant picture - I tried earlier but without success.
Sadly there will always be the need for the incredible talents of wonderful guys like these, but there is an interesting article today on the BBC about the astonishing advances in robotics. Hopefully machines can take over the hazardous tasks very soon, doubtless just before they take over the rest of the world !!
Said each household to receive £5.5k each from gvt fund
Do you need to buy house insurance in council properties? That figure sounds incredibly low compared to what you'd get if your privately owned place got destroyed by fire.
Yes it is very very low. Each flat if they chose insurance would be covered under the fire peril up to a certain contents value. That is of course they did have contents insurance. Insurance would cover you only for the contents NOT the building structure itself. I would hazard a guess that a lot of of them may not have had any insurance.
Said each household to receive £5.5k each from gvt fund
Do you need to buy house insurance in council properties? That figure sounds incredibly low compared to what you'd get if your privately owned place got destroyed by fire.
Councils offer the facility for contents insurance to be paid with the rent. Sadly most households can't afford this.
Philip Hammond seemed to me to be suggesting on the Andrew Marr show this morning that the materials used did not meet the British standards. He was quite clear on this. I would imagine that would give the residents grounds to sue the proverbial out of the council. Given what he said though, I am a bit confused that no arrest/s has been made!
that is unreal NorthStand Ultra Rent £495 per week... £2145 a month?? WTF So some of these properties could we sub-letting and not the original council tenant?
that is unreal NorthStand Ultra Rent £495 per week... £2145 a month?? WTF So some of these properties could we sub-letting and not the original council tenant?
This is a legitimate let. The leaseholder, who was probably the the original council tenant from 1974, would have bought the property under right to buy.
You normally find the property gets left to family after they pass on and then let the property through an agency, like this one.
A Council tenant sub letting their property is illegal and Councils do a lot to prevent it, though undoubtedly it still happens.
That's one of the leaseholders flats, who with true community spirit doesn't want DSS or Housing Benefit applicants.
To be fair, I suspect they will have to continue paying their mortgage until K&C TMO insurance pays them out.
In fairness to the leaseholder, as I understand it it's a condition of many landlord insurance policies that you don't let to HB claimants. And given the massive jump in rent arrears since the introduction of Universal Credit, that's not entirely surprising.
That's one of the leaseholders flats, who with true community spirit doesn't want DSS or Housing Benefit applicants.
To be fair, I suspect they will have to continue paying their mortgage until K&C TMO insurance pays them out.
In fairness to the leaseholder, as I understand it it's a condition of many landlord insurance policies that you don't let to HB claimants. And given the massive jump in rent arrears since the introduction of Universal Credit, that's not entirely surprising.
Very few exclude insurance policies exclude DSS tenants (but you may pay more), a lot of landlords will avoid DSS if they can, ever since the government stopped paying landlords directly (it's up to the receiver of the benefit who it is paid to I believe).
I know a number of people who've had real issues over rental payments (or lack of) thats cost them 1'000's sometimes a 5 figure sum.
That's one of the leaseholders flats, who with true community spirit doesn't want DSS or Housing Benefit applicants.
To be fair, I suspect they will have to continue paying their mortgage until K&C TMO insurance pays them out.
In fairness to the leaseholder, as I understand it it's a condition of many landlord insurance policies that you don't let to HB claimants. And given the massive jump in rent arrears since the introduction of Universal Credit, that's not entirely surprising.
The biggest problem being the simply absurd decision to remove direct payment of rent to landlords. There may be logic to it i dont know of but it made often already reluctant landlords very wary. They often still have to pay mortgages.
The lack of clarity about the number of deceased is confusing. Is it being withheld to prevent further unrest?
Possibly but then I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Much better to have a final definitive number than to continue to add to the tally every single day.
Definitely agree that the authorities need to be exact in their investigation. There is a sense in the locals' interviews I have seen that the confusion is adding to the anger though.
Comments
In addition, all the support services that are going to be put in place for the survivors - counselling, support groups, special arrangements with the Job Centre or whatever - are going to be focussed on the immediate area. Shipping people out a lot further away is going to make it a lot more difficult for them to access those services, and mean it will take them a lot longer to rebuild their lives.
Harshly drawn too I'd say!
Theresa May is spot on though!
Retrofitting is a different animal though. This fire is a game changer though as far as I'm concerned and all the anti sprinkler voices are bound to shut up now. Even leaseholders are asking us to retrofit sprinklers now.
I'm meeting with my CEO on Monday to discuss us retrofitting sprinklers in all of our stock of six storeys or higher. I've been working on some figures all day and I reckon he's going to have to find me £4m a year for the next eight years as well as at least two new members of staff to support the programme.
If I had started this programme eight years ago and I'd just completed it now, my shiny new sprinklers would have by now not saved a single life.
This will make a significant dent into his published target of 1,500 new homes a year by 2022. Until Wednesday, numbers were the target. As I said this is a game changer.
I left my last two positions because both CEOs were about the numbers of new stock they could develop rather than looking after their existing customers.
Things are different now for me as I have almost 100,000 customers and despite my current CEO still focussed on additional stock, the current position would indicate a groundswell of support for retrofitting.
With regard to New Orleans. To be honest it's both the fault of France and the Americans. The British were well aware of the flooding risk of the New Orleans basin, which is why up until 1815 the Brits refused to develop the City other than on the high ground.
That will teach you Americans to team up with the French. I'm still shocked your Canuck neighbours still do.
TO BE FAIR, $15m for 828,000(!!!!!!) square miles (and no I don't have to convert that into km because that land is ours THANK YOU VERY MUCH) is a fucking brilliant deal.
I've got more questions but I'm going to try to do some reading so I'm not just constantly asking base questions. It sounds like you do good work and care about the people you house. Thank you.
And a second to the thanks for Addicted - we can't ask any more from you that you keep the people who you are responsible for safe. It is a very responsible job that you should be rightly proud of.
I would expect that the retro fitting of sprinklers would need to be funded by central government.
I can offer a view from the construction industry. My point of view may be invalid as it is based in Spain, but a lot of the thinking in these situations tend to permeate through industries regardless of borders.
I went into construction as a painter back in 1999. I went through the boom years when prices were out of control, and even then, the corporate view was that a slightly worse finish was perfectly okay if it enlarged the profit margin. One builder we worked for had possibly the worst plasterer in the world , and his defects were what we were expected to remedy, despite our Budget not allowing for this. We confronted the foreman who signed up the sub contractors on one job when we got a bollocking from the boss for spending three days filling in holes in one flat that was recently plasterd. He said that he knew the guy was crap, but everytime he was given a total Budget, that guy was so cheap he balanced the total out.
When the crisis really bit and the property bubble burst, we ended up working for a large construction Company owned by two rich guys. One was a lawyer and knew where he could bend or cross laws without any serious conseuences - we later got flow to Switzerland to refurbished flat he bought in order to continue to hide profits there to avoid paying taxes in Spain when the Swiss agreed to hand over details of bank accounts of non residents.
From the start, the idea was to provide cheap housing for those who still wanted to buy. Budgets were slashed and I knew electricians who were on site 16 hours a day seven days a week at times. The budgets were very straightforward - a flat would be paid for two coats of paint plus the minor repairs. However, the jobs were so rushed that the flats were a disaster, all the other on site workers such as kitchen fitters, plumbers etc were constantly in and out as pipes burst and door fell off, which damaged the Paint, and some flats ended up being ainted four or five times. The rush to get the floor levels up meant we were often working in áreas where the structure hadn't dried properly, and huge cracks formed after completion which we had to repair (again for free). I watched four electrician companies and three lots of plasterers go to the wall trying to meet the terms they had agreed to before my boss went under. By the time that happened, we were working with materials that were barely deserving of being sold for cash in a desperate effort to cotrol costs.
One ítem I will never forget was the day we painted the linse and numbers in five subterranean car parks in one day. It rained for 48 hours previously, and the parking spaces were under wáter. We pointed out it was daft to apply Paint to a wet Surface, which earned a torrent of abuse from one of the rich guys that either we painted the fucking lines or pack up and not be paid for work done. We painted the lines and repainted them three more times before completion - paint won't stick to a wet surface no matter how much you abuse it.
In the last few weeks of my time as a painter, I was still being sent back to numerous Jobs we had done. Apart from the rusting iron (cheap iron painted with cheap paint) there were some real horror show. In one block a sheet of glass from the balcony became dislodged and fell five floors to a terrace área below - fortunately the owner was out. Had there been children playing there, they would have died.
Now here's the crack. While we were building these flats, the two owners sold the yatchs they owned in favor of bigger models, all the while telling anyone who complained about life on the job that there were queue's of people on the dole who would happily come and work for less. The buildings don't have cladding, though they may need it soon, but they were defective in many ways, some dangerous. But you can bet the two owners (and they were very hands on types) will have a nice firewall to seperate themselves from the consequences of any decisions they made, and as I saw, some of the cut corners were made by the sub contractors being unable to do the work in Budget. Most of the threats and other problems such as painting on wet surfaces (to cite but one) were entirely verbal, and in a court of law, no one could find proof (apart from witnesses, who would probaby find it hard to get future employment if they testified) to explain what actually happened.
All this is to say blame spreads like wáter, but the ultimate resposibility is often with those who make most money and can afford to legally seperate themselves from the results. My boss at the time sacked us without paying the end of conract payment or the last two wage packets, and immediately bought a new car. The current view on the Grenfell flats is that the cladding could have been more fire resistant for as Little as two pounds per sheet. I've seen the types on site who would snarl and say - 'hey, so are you going to pay the difference arsehole?'
The construction company is being sued for a number of blocks it built, but as they keep sending painters and sparkies back without charge or payment, they keep slipping through the net.
Finally, for those who decry political point scoring - the block of flats which burnt last week is not in a safe bubble apat from the rest of the country. It is governed by the laws applicable to buildings in the UK, and if the governments who make laws regarding this allow for deregulation and shoddy work which causes deaths there is a legitimate demand to know who voted and why. The gutter press are already trying to attach blame to the EU or whatever other daft ideology they support, and it's perfectly legitimate to refute this, If we don't the lies published in the Express and Mail will be broadcast as truths in six months time, but I don't see too many arguing about that.
Thanks for posting this brilliant picture - I tried earlier but without success.
Sadly there will always be the need for the incredible talents of wonderful guys like these, but there is an interesting article today on the BBC about the astonishing advances in robotics. Hopefully machines can take over the hazardous tasks very soon, doubtless just before they take over the rest of the world !!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-40306617/five-robots-that-are-changing-everything
Sub-letters paradise
To be fair, I suspect they will have to continue paying their mortgage until K&C TMO insurance pays them out.
You normally find the property gets left to family after they pass on and then let the property through an agency, like this one.
A Council tenant sub letting their property is illegal and Councils do a lot to prevent it, though undoubtedly it still happens.
I know a number of people who've had real issues over rental payments (or lack of) thats cost them 1'000's sometimes a 5 figure sum.
https://google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/17/george-orwell-idea-of-better-britain-stirring-again
What do you think is left of a body in that environment?