I saw a number of 400 reported missing, but my assumption is that figure will drop. There is always a lot of confusion in these situations. People get split up, lost, lose contact. Missing people get reported multiple times. People get reported as being there who may not have been. Of course, there may have been people there who no one has reported yet. It takes time to sort all that out. That explains why the estimated death toll just doubled - police are finally getting a handle on who can & can't be found. Sadly this won't be the end of it. If this comes in under three figures it will be very fortunate indeed.
400 hundred missing would fit in with around 100 plus 78 in hospital but of course people have been found and possibly some of these people were reported more than once. It is though a bit shifty the way they are going about reporting these numbers and wanting to know the number of bodies in the tower and the council refusing to talk was one of the things which made people very angry a few days ago. A few days ago when they said 17 they said we should expect dozens more. When they said 58, the policeman said that is the number they know of dead and missing so one would think that was the final tally but that does not make so much sense when straight after they are saying that people need to be prepared there will be more and people have been talking about 70 and a100 for a few days. I am beginning to get a bit suspicious they could have been afraid to let it be known how large the number was all at once. When you think of it, in this situation you would think they would say there are whatever number known survivors but this has not happened except what I think I heard and only once. I am not suggesting a conspiracy just that possibly they were concerned about a possible backlash if people knew straight away whereas when people gradually get to know the real number it is less of a shock. Let's hope it is no more than 70 or 100 - or maybe just that they have not been able to get to the top floors as yet it still being too dangerous. Still would be good to have the number of survivors.
I have found an article discussing this http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/what-official-death-toll-grenfell-10641711 Seems like a pretty good explanation but does not tell very much and as they say the final number may never be known but not impossible, god forbid could even be in the thousands.
News item- "The brother of the first named victim of the Grenfell Tower fire has said repeated concerns from residents over the gas works and lack of smoke alarms in the building were ignored." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The tenants should have bought smoke/gas alarms themselves, they only cost peanuts..
Nobody wants to live 'ten to a room' but if you want work, London is the place to find it. Property rentals in central London are insanely high, so multiple occupancy is one solution to being able to be closer to your place of work without enduring a lengthy, and expensive, commute from the outer suburbs. The council house buy-out was a Thatcherite scam. Yes, you could buy your own house, but councils were forbidden to use the revenue thus earned to build new social housing. How was that helping anyone? On the contrary homelessness increased as a result with many fewer social housing projects.
Great, and how is a smoke alarm in your 24th floor flat going to alert you to a fire on the ground floor?
T hose who were able to own their own homes made no effect on the availability of housing. It went from government ownership to private ownership, and people always prefer to own their own homes. You don't explain how being able to own your own home was a "Thatcherite scam" And why should these councils use the money to get more in debt and further into the landlord business? Certainly you should now by now how incompetent, and corrupt, these people can be.
They expect the government to do everything for them so this sort of independent thinking tends to evaporate over time. The consequence is prolonged adolescence.
If you buy your council house but the council doesn't build any more to replace it, that's where the scam lies. Councils are in the business of providing social housing for those who need it. No money, no new homes. This may help you understand:https://www.theguardian.com/society...argaret-thatcher-david-cameron-housing-crisis
There is no doubt this will be exploited politically, in fact that began before the fire was out. . Once you start left the decline begins and only more leftness can solve the deepening social problems. This disaster makes for some great metaphors about where society is heading.
Enjoyed your post, Thanks, but will only respond to a part of it and as you suggest, dig into it later. In order for any government to 'offer equal opportunity to all its citizens' they only have to pass laws where everyone is treated equally and then get out of the way. I don;t know what you mean by 'society' but feel culture is more important. It is the culture which provides laws which are unwritten but which everyone is expected to obey, with social shunning being the worst sort of punishment. And unless there are cultural values which everyone is expected to follow 'societies' will eventually disappear. Instead of this fire being noted for the disaster it was people have become more interested in finding blame, not why people are living ten to a room or why councils are paying for hotels and meals for new arrivals in their area. Once you accept that the government can be held responsible for all these things, rather than you, your neighbors and society itself, then there is no direction, no common interest but only self interest. You can let the government handle it and your responsibility as a human being, a friend and neighbor, is over. Your conscience will be clear until the next fire occurs and you can again publicly parade your superior virtues by shouting from the soap box that 'the government should do something'.We see that played out repeatedly in any adolescent society.
Interesting, Thank you, but once the facts have been presented the conclusions don;t necessarily follow. When the Thatcher government decided to sell off the government properties, (as was originally intended and contemplated by several previous governments) Britain was able to control its own borders and have a handle on costs and who came into the country. Of course that all ended and now we see mass immigration(and "White Flight" also) which has strained the housing market considerably. If you think that more public housing is the key to solving today's problems while ignoring issues such as immigration, you may want to read that link yourself and see what the long term costs of these quick fix plans might be.
No equality of opportunity is far harder than that. We are not born equal. There was a study done a few years ago in the UK of children under 5 from different backgrounds. I think it was by about three there was a one year difference in their ability from the top to the bottom. This came from a lot of things ranging from being given more nutritious food, the educational attainments of the parents which they were able to pass on and the ability those with more money had to give their children both more educational toys and a far broader experience. It is actually one of the hardest things to get right and is essential for social mobility. Labour had under Brown started a sure start scheme and it was showing promise but was one of the first things the Tories closed down. It was a quote of Thatcher's. There is no society. She went on to say https://iea.org.uk/blog/there-is-no-such-thing-as-society Like I said, I think you would agree with her position. I feel quite happy with this description of society I found here http://people.howstuffworks.com/what-is-society.htm There is a massive amount of blame here. Massive. Now how many people have died we do not know but it could easily end up being around 400. The person saying it possibly was thousands was someone working on the council who presumably had the same view as you. My knowledge has been that you generally do not get that over crowding in Council homes but with the shortage perhaps things have changed but if it is, if it happens that thousands of people were living in that building and have died it will have a strong effect on the country. So we have the deaths of probably hundreds of people. These people had been demanding help on safety matters for years and the council had been ignoring them - indeed even threatening to take to court 2 people who so complained for that complaining who are known to have died because their worst nightmare happened. We now know that the cladding which almost certainly is a major contributor was against the law in the UK just like it is in the US and Europe though only on high rise. We also know that the community had put in several requests for the gas to be looked at and again the council had refused to take action - and that may be another thing which contributed strongly to the deaths. In addition the people are thinking 'how many people are dead in that building and why are we not being told' which they have every right to want to know as they suspect it is pretty high. I left a Mirror article on that.http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/massive-fire-in-london.507392/page-7#post-1067633511 Another thing which will have resulted in what is probably going to be a massive loss of life is that they were told to stay in their homes. Those that did this died. There are several other safety measures which need to be addressed. In addition there are many other people living in flats which are in a similar situation and they understandably are **** scared. Further it appears that recommendations for safety precautions which came from looking into other fires were not put into affect. People have every right to be angry and I am sorry but your attitude is making me think that you believe these people are subhuman and have no rights. Further the people are totally traumatised, have lost everything including friends and need help. I was reading that some had been offered temporary homes in high rise flats. These are human beings. Rich or poor we are not that different and if you have just been in an inferno in a high rise flat you very likely are well traumatised and the last place you want to be is in another. There are laws and these people will be brought to account.
I agree with both definitions and don't see any real conflict. But neither mentions government taking over the responsibilities of individuals or volunteer groups which can help the whole. And there we have it. Instead of organizing work parties, volunteers, tenants, money, etc. these people sent fruitless letters and emails to an ineffective and incompetent council. This would be called ' a sin of omission' if sin was still an understood concept anymore. Why blame these councils when they'll never do anything anyway? That horse died long ago. Yeah, why didn't the government do something? Why look to the people who always create problems and can never solve them. You're a good example of hope triumphing over hard experience. Of course. And this is the time when volunteers should step forward and help these people, if volunteerism is still as popular in Britain as it once was. There are plenty of villains in this case and to point fingers only at the bureaucracy or other villains is largely a waste of time. People should be asking themselves what sort of hands-on things they might actually do which have direct benefits rather than sending out emails or preaching on street corners. That is shirking our responsibilities as human beings.
I don't agree with your views. I particularly find it in the poorest taste to be gloating over the fact that these people died because they did not act as you would. They followed procedure which they had with the council. Most of the bodies are not even out of the building but here you are gloating that they have died and you do not understand why people are angry. As I said I do not agree with your views but the lack of humanity means I am out of this discussion..
To fall back on the excuse that "they followed procedure" has a whiff of familiarity about it than can excuse and rationalize even the most evil of deeds. Meanwhile hundreds of people died while these ineffective and clearly useless'procedures' were being followed and yet you accuse me of 'gloating' and having 'a lack of humanity'?? Why didn't decent people act before the fact rather than expecting an obviously clueless council to do anything? Why didn't they demonstrate some humanity for these people? Any moderately intelligent person who reads my post will know these charges of "gloating" and "inhumanity" to be false and very foolish. .
You are trying to destroy this thread with your baiting. You are the one trying to make political points about the remains of an unknown number of men, women, babies and children who have not yet been retrieved from what probably is the biggest disaster the UK has seen since WW2 and one which a couple of army people involved said was worse than they have seen in war zones. To this your main interest is trying to use this to spread your own political views. No one gives a damn for your views and they have no relevance here. This sort of thing no doubt is based on your insisting on taking this thread off topic This has zero to do with the thread but to your insistence despite being asked again and again not to take it off topic and continuing to do so - to then try to equate that with this fire or what anyone is saying about the fire is dishonesty. You, no one else was the person interested in taking the thread there. To pretend such talk was about the fire when you were consistently told you were taking it off the topic which was the fire is dishonest. again clearly showing that it is yourself who is exploiting the catastrophe for your own political interest. I gave you details of the disaster. You replied with your political opinions which had nothing to do with reality. You are the one incapable of looking at this disaster and what is particular to it. Blaming the council would be because the council had a duty to make sure its homes are safe and comply with building regulations and as I said they will face the law. People are talking of charges of Corporate Manslaughter. You are talking about your imagination not reality. Equally seen by how you suggest that rather than dealing with the situation in Grenfell Tower and what has happened there You claim You clearly have no idea what is happening. The donations of food, clothing, toys and bedding, mobile phones and on and on have been so many they have had to tell people they need no more - along with this volunteers to distribute and mosques and Churches, community halls and so on to hold them in. People have come from far and wide to help. One problem mentioned in the video rhetoric of life left is that there appear to be very few survivors compared to the number of people who lived in the Tower and the deaths declared. You know nothing about the situation that is clear but here you are mouthing off about how awful people are saying what they should be doing when they started the moment things happened and have been working ever since. Where there has however been issues is with the statutory authorities not putting their oar in - something which Hammond and May have now recognised. In a major catastrophe which this is people with the knowledge to deal with such things are needed. Though they are now involved, until recently this was left to the public to do what they could which they put everything they could into. It was the people, the ones you suggest are doing nothing, who were there for the survivors - the people you try to belittle by pretending they did no such thing. Your interest is political and only political. You have no respect for these people and for the unknown but very possibly in the hundreds dead but still in the tower. What is your motivation for this? Is it the same as others who have tried similar - that the majority of those dead are browned skinned and many Muslim. If they were all white people would you be so interested in trying to present a picture where the full force of the law should not be brought on those who have contributed to this situation through their negligence. These people had a right to be living in safe accommodation. This catastrophe was avoidable. That seems to be agreed by everyone. It never should have happened. If you cannot have respect for the dead, probably most of whom have not yet been recovered, the survivors, those who have lost loved ones and those still waiting to hear of friends and family confirmed dead, please keep out of this thread.
It seems like this fire really is a failure of government. The green intentions cladding recently added to this building was not fire safe, and it's not permitted in the US. It literally created a chimney effect for the fire to rage through. This is terrible. I hope the authorities that caused this unfortunate mass death are held accountable. I knew something was odd when we watched in on TV. You just don't see fires rage that hard, generally speaking.
I am afraid it is also illegal on high rise flats in the UK. The police have updated the deaths to 79 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40327357
Man...this is just so sad. It really makes it so much worse though, that it could have been avoided. The real tear jerker was that poor woman who tossed her baby out the window, on the off chance it could live. Just...I don't even... I don't have a source but, I also heard something on the news that the contractor was allowed to do something about this at a later date, by the government? Is that right? Was there supposed to be additional steps taken that never materialized?
I also heard of a baby being thrown out the window. I am not sure if this is the story or another because this is of a four year old being thrown out. Those on the ground encouraged Mum to do it. A few seconds later her flat was in flames. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...er-caught-four-year-old-girl-like-rugby-ball/ Not sure what you are talking about there. It is believed the cladding was put on to make the building look more acceptable to the rich neighbours. Apparently the contractor was allowed to choose the best one and the one lacking fireproof properties is the one he chose although the one which was fireproof would only have cost an extra £5,000 for the whole building. The residents had been concerned about many safety issues. There is a criminal investigation going on. It is probably going to be some time till we have the final number of the dead.
