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RochdalePioneers said:

TOPPING said:

atia2 said:

TOPPING said:

RochdalePioneers said:

atia2 said:

Concerning, and not surprising.

First world country?

We can't afford the Fire Brigade. Or Police. Or Hospitals. Or Armed Forces. Or Human Dignity. We have to live within our means. With the emphasis on mean.

We choose it @RochdalePioneers. Sorry but we do.

This is trivially true. You can close down every policy argument by noting that we chose the current policies. It's not particularly illuminating.

How else would you describe our political system? We vote for the one we want. Is it a dreadful way to do things? Yep. Is it the least bad of the alternatives? Yep.

We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.

to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".

So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?

The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.

There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.

Mr. Bobajob, could you elaborate further please?

Their currency, their rules.

As long as we were part of the EU it wasn't a problem for them.

One reason it does become a problem for them after we're outside their jurisdiction is that it would create a potential position where London would be able to decide when to pull the plug on a European financial institution in a crisis situation. They need to take back control.

Well quite.

Casino_Royale said:

CarlottaVance said:

Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.

"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.

"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election-eu-verhofstadt-idUSKBN1950QW

Entirely expected.

Edit: do Remainers still want to re-join that, with even bigger budget contributions, and no Schengen opt-out?

Surley wejust rescind article 50 pay them something for their inconenience and expended costs and carry on as normal.

TOPPING said:

IanB2 said:

TOPPING said:

IanB2 said:

TOPPING said:

IanB2 said:

TOPPING said:

IanB2 said:

Casino_Royale said:

IanB2 said:

I am also now convinced that election canvassing (both doorstep and phone) samples a very skewed proportion of the population, biased towards the more elderly, the less socially active, and homeowners.

.

Except David Herdson did find it. Very late in the day.

I was sent to highly-targetted waverers and probable/firm Con households.

In hindsight, I was probably sent to broadly the right households, and the Tory vote went up, but CCHQ didn't notice that there was a huge groundswell of support for Labour in the homes and flats I didn't visit.

Every canvasser in every election has a night when they get a bad street, and are suddenly convinced of imminent defeat. When it's the candidate they need lots of tea and reassurance.

Statistically it is fad indicating a late swing. Particularly since the best analysis we have right now doesn't reveal any evidence of a late swing - the result was nailed on for a fortnight during which Mr H was out visiting lots of other streets and coming home happy of victory.

As humans we see patterns in and links between things, and work hard to find them even when they don't exist.

I found it throughout canvassing all over the constituency. Not a one-off. As it proved on the night.

I must have missed your predictions that the Tories were to lose their majority.

I posted several times that I had backed NOM and Lab Maj.

OK, kudos. I trust you enjoy this year's luxury holiday!

In the short term I would have been *a lot* better off with a Lab OM but the winnings on NOM (5.8 on BF) will at least fund some drinks on holiday.

Seriously, why do you think you picked up what almost every canvasser seems to have missed?

I did comment on this earlier just after the election, so briefly, I was in a Remain super-marginal and the Cons voters were furious at Brexit.

OK. Very hard to project from that to the national result (which tbf is a problem for any canvasser given that no seat is truly typical). The Tory vote didnt actually go down, nationally, after all?

You also have the advantage that such people are likely to be in to canvassers when they call, which doesn't negate my original assertion.

People will be furious at Brexit, but it will take time to build. Right now we're simply in the position where the shine has been taken off the original mandate and a high level of political uncertainty has muddied the water as far as where Brexit might be going.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.

Mr. Bobajob, could you elaborate further please?

Their currency, their rules.

As long as we were part of the EU it wasn't a problem for them.

So can the EU also stop € clearing in say New York?

RochdalePioneers said:

TOPPING said:

atia2 said:

TOPPING said:

RochdalePioneers said:

atia2 said:

Concerning, and not surprising.

First world country?

We can't afford the Fire Brigade. Or Police. Or Hospitals. Or Armed Forces. Or Human Dignity. We have to live within our means. With the emphasis on mean.

We choose it @RochdalePioneers. Sorry but we do.

This is trivially true. You can close down every policy argument by noting that we chose the current policies. It's not particularly illuminating.

How else would you describe our political system? We vote for the one we want. Is it a dreadful way to do things? Yep. Is it the least bad of the alternatives? Yep.

We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.

to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".

The treatment of disabled people is a stain on the government. fitness to work interviews and PIP assessments conducted by people not qualified to make an assessment are wicked and actively harmful. And I do speak with experience on this subject. It is not for the government to determine what constitutes dignity for the disabled, it's something that varies on a case by case basis and the government should actively assist bespoke solutions to dignity and quality of life not assume that bullying the disadvantaged into inappropriate jobs provides anything but abject misery in many cases and worse in some. The position of cutting the benefits bill whilst protecting the wealthy from taxation burden is just wrong. It's indefensible on a human level and plain wrong on an economic one.
Time we stopped setting spending to the tax take and started adjusting the tax take to meet required spending. And when things are falling short term then excess wealth needs to be taken back into public use.

Hertsmere_Pubgoer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.

Mr. Bobajob, could you elaborate further please?

Their currency, their rules.

As long as we were part of the EU it wasn't a problem for them.

So can the EU also stop € clearing in say New York?

No point. Given the size/volume of the trades and that most American institutions use their London offices/subsidiaries to do it.

TheScreamingEagles said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Techy question - has anyone got a link to a site that lists seats ranked by majority (and preferably by winning party)?

I've been using this. Is by the people behind Britain Elects

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SGkPQqosDbVL9tSX_uMNaXPGiW2z02z2fchDezlyNss/htmlview

Thanks - that's definitely handy, though not exactly what I was looking for.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.

My point is that the EU authorities don't need to force business movement. It's going to happen anyway. They can slow it down by extending certification to the UK and they can speed it up by announcing that any bank that doesn't move the bulk of its operations will fall outside its regulatory regime.

Edit The link Mr Eagles posted suggests they will do the second just as quickly as it doesn't cause sudden dislocation. Which is understandable. Several EU countries, particularly France, want a slice of the lucrative London business. The cost of Brexit includes the loss of London as a predominant world financial centre under all scenarios I believe.

AlastairMeeks said:

Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.

YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.

"How can pollsters improve their results? One possibility could be to ask each respondent how politically engaged they are, how often they watch QT, Newsnight, News at Ten etc and weight their responses accordingly, skewed heavily towards the politically disinterested. Maybe they should exclude the politically engaged from political opinion polls altogether.

It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"

http://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/the-problem-with-opinion-polls-polls.html?m=1

YouGov did this apparently. The chatterati didn't like it

How the hell did Jonny Bairstow get away with that?

Charles said:

RochdalePioneers said:

We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.

to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".

So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?

The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.

There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.

We need to cut the deficit. To do that we need to expand the economy. To do that we need to invest in the things that will allow it to expand.

Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.

As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.

Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.

bigjohnowls said:

Labour MP accuses the government of resisting calls to install sprinkler systems in high-rise blocks

Talk about kicking a man when he's down

From 2015:

A proposed law that would require landlords to make homes fit for human habitation would be an unnecessary regulatory burden, a Conservative MP has argued.

Go on, have a guess which MP that was.

Hertsmere_Pubgoer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Hertsmere_Pubgoer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.

Mr. Bobajob, could you elaborate further please?

Their currency, their rules.

As long as we were part of the EU it wasn't a problem for them.

So can the EU also stop € clearing in say New York?

No point. Given the size/volume of the trades and that most American institutions use their London offices/subsidiaries to do it.

Ok, so say GS or whoever decide to move that work back to NYC.
Can the EU prevent this?

This is where it gets messy. Depends on what the likes want to do as part of their wider banking/financial services operations

Casino_Royale said:

In hindsight, I was probably sent to broadly the right households, and the Tory vote went up, but CCHQ didn't notice that there was a huge groundswell of support for Labour in the homes and flats I didn't visit.

That's a classic problem of canvassing returns - you get a reasonably good idea of your own support, but not of the opposition's support. Given that the Conservative vote went up in most seats, it's perhaps not surprising that they thought they were doing better than turned out to be the case.

What's more surprising is that it appears that Labour also greatly under-estimated their own support. (I know one analyst who works with Labour and who was expecting a bigger Tory majority than most of the models listed in Mike's header piece.) The explanation might very simply be that it wasn't the traditional voters who bumped up the Labour total, so Labour's own canvassing also missed them.

Lennon said:

isam said:

How the hell did Jonny Bairstow get away with that?

'cos he's lucky. Unlike Roy at the moment for whom that would have been a couple of mm closer to the stumps and be given out.

Cant understand why they didn't introduce the rule that a side doesn't lose a review when it is Umpires Call for this tournament rather than wait until afterwards. Joke really

RochdalePioneers said:

Charles said:

RochdalePioneers said:

We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.

to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".

So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?

The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.

There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.

We need to cut the deficit. To do that we need to expand the economy. To do that we need to invest in the things that will allow it to expand.

Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.

As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.

Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.

People should get their Thermos flask from the back of the cupboard and make their coffee/tea at home to take with them when they go out, thus saving on expenditure and making Starbucks unnecessary.

Alternatively why not drink the more healthy option - water. Let them drink water.

Beverley_C said:

Casino_Royale said:

CarlottaVance said:

Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.

"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.

"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election-eu-verhofstadt-idUSKBN1950QW

Entirely expected.

Edit: do Remainers still want to re-join that, with even bigger budget contributions, and no Schengen opt-out?

Yes. There would be short term pain, but the long term gain would be worth it.

My point is this would be a permanent long-term arrangement. But with even less immigration and border control, and even higher budget contributions. Forever.

Interestingly, your words reflect exactly mine on leaving the EU.

isam said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.

YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.

"How can pollsters improve their results? One possibility could be to ask each respondent how politically engaged they are, how often they watch QT, Newsnight, News at Ten etc and weight their responses accordingly, skewed heavily towards the politically disinterested. Maybe they should exclude the politically engaged from political opinion polls altogether.

It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"

http://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/the-problem-with-opinion-polls-polls.html?m=1

YouGov did this apparently. The chatterati didn't like it

Yes, right after the election I got a YouGov poll that, as well as asking how I voted, asked a shedload of Qs clearly designed to measure political engagement - what news programmes I watched, what aspects of the campaign I was aware of, etc, whether I had ever visited a long list of news/political websites. Some of the Qs I cant remember right now were clever, coming at engagement in directions I wouldn't have expected.

My guess is that they have some sort of "engagement index" made up of a composite of all these answers.

The Survation out yesterday had to double-weight the Sun readers to get a balanced sample, which is a fairly big clue as to which paper the unengaged read, if they read one. Indeed, surely the days of weighting by newspaper preference are over? It used to be a good metric on which to categorise people - YouGov still regularly asks which newspaper websites I have visited, but since I end up visiting most of them now and again, the data must be a lot less revealing.

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/874696464383045634

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/874696464383045634

So by Nigel's reasoning, it's PM Jezza next time?

TwistedFireStopper said:

calum said:

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/874917789420728321

Refurbs always compromise compartmentation. Fire, like most things in life, takes the path of least resistance. So fire spreads through holes and voids created by retro fitted services.

All true.

However, there is a report in the Guardian of a resident who escaped from the 17th floor, with his 68 year old mother:
“I went back inside the house, looked out the window. I started looking down the window – I had to really pull myself out to look down the window, from the 17th floor, and I see the fire blazing, and coming up really fast, because of the cladding – the cladding was really flammable, and it just caught up like a matchstick.”...

Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system:
“We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."

Had there been smoke detection on escape routes, and a central fire alarm system, it seems plausible that most people would have got out in time.

bigjohnowls said:

After WW2 UK debt was 250% of GDP. How did Labour reduce it? By SPENDING on homes, NHS, public services

Austerity doesnt work

There was an awful lot of austerity after WWII, and rationing of food lasted until the mid-1950s.

Plus Labour had to cut back on the NHS to fund defence.

Beverley_C said:

Casino_Royale said:

Beverley_C said:

Casino_Royale said:

CarlottaVance said:

Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.

"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.

"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election-eu-verhofstadt-idUSKBN1950QW

Entirely expected.

Edit: do Remainers still want to re-join that, with even bigger budget contributions, and no Schengen opt-out?

Yes. There would be short term pain, but the long term gain would be worth it.

My point is this would be a permanent long-term arrangement. But with even less immigration and border control, and even higher budget contributions. Forever.

Yes. You are quite correct. It is not as good a position as we now have, but I still think it would be better than the position we will shortly be in.

Casino_Royale said:

Interestingly, your words reflect exactly mine on leaving the EU.

That was not accidental

Yes, and I respectfully disagree.

IanB2 said:

isam said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.

YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.

"How can pollsters improve their results? One possibility could be to ask each respondent how politically engaged they are, how often they watch QT, Newsnight, News at Ten etc and weight their responses accordingly, skewed heavily towards the politically disinterested. Maybe they should exclude the politically engaged from political opinion polls altogether.

It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"

http://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/the-problem-with-opinion-polls-polls.html?m=1

YouGov did this apparently. The chatterati didn't like it

Yes, right after the election I got a YouGov poll that, as well as asking how I voted, asked a shedload of Qs clearly designed to measure political engagement - what news programmes I watched, what aspects of the campaign I was aware of, etc, whether I had ever visited a long list of news/political websites. Some of the Qs I cant remember right now were clever, coming at engagement in directions I wouldn't have expected.

My guess is that they have some sort of "engagement index" made up of a composite of all these answers.

The Survation out yesterday had to double-weight the Sun readers to get a balanced sample, which is a fairly big clue as to which paper the unengaged read, if they read one. Indeed, surely the days of weighting by newspaper preference are over? It used to be a good metric on which to categorise people - YouGov still regularly asks which newspaper websites I have visited, but since I end up visiting most of them now and again, the data must be a lot less revealing.

If the unengaged views are becoming more important, then the pollsters job is getting more difficult. The unengaged are more likely to vote only when something particular gets their attention and that is difficult to predict.

Mr. Eagles, really?

So... if I got paid for some writing in euros that could become subject to EU regulation/oversight?

It was often said that if Scotland left the UK they could use the pound, not in a currency union but as a tradeable commodity. What's the difference here?

[Not arguing, I'm just after clarification because it sounds really odd to me].

More Brexit stuff, but this article by Rafael Behr has interesting and different insights. Some snippets:

Theresa May's job was to let the British public down gently on the undeliverable promises made by Leave. Instead she doubled down on the rhetoric:

The more common position was the one cultivated by Boris Johnson – blithe pretence that economic benefits of EU membership would still be available; that a cost incurred by departure was really a prize; that the cake could be had, eaten and given to the NHS all at once.

May’s task was to explain to the British public that this option did not exist, but she ducked the challenge. Instead she concocted a hard and impenetrable Brexit line [...] EU leaders were not forewarned. They have taken May at her word, and are now ready to negotiate on the assumption that the UK is still wedded to the wild course of action advertised by its prime minister last autumn. A hung parliament suggests that the UK is not.

Corbyn is one of very few politicians who doesn't care one way or the other about Brexit, but he won't get the Conservatives and the country out of its hole

Labour has benefited from studied avoidance of Brexit detail. This was one of many areas where Corbyn’s capabilities were misjudged by his critics. Before the general election, it looked as though his acquiescence to article 50 would alienate remainers without seducing leavers. Instead, he avoided meltdown in areas where the appetite for Brexit was strong, while persuading anxious pro-Europeans that he shared their emotional recoil from May’s nationalistic culture-warrior alignment with Ukippery.

[...] Labour has become the repository for hopes that May’s brand of Brexit can be removed from the shelves, but the party’s manifesto commits to quitting the EU on terms scarcely less severe. Meanwhile, the Conservative position is spongier than it seems.

Leavers find it difficult to accept a soft Brexit because it implies no Brexit is better

The case for any kind of semi-detached compromise is politically awkward for leavers. It smuggles in recognition that Britain’s interests are served by intimacy with the giant trading bloc on its doorstep. But then it would be madness to surrender a seat at the table where the terms of trade are settled. The logic of less Brexit being good is that no Brexit is even better.

"first brexit sowed division then it made it ungovernable"

New York Times.

This tower block fire is going to be very bad for the Conservative government...

TwistedFireStopper said:

Nigelb said:

TwistedFireStopper said:

calum said:

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/874917789420728321

Refurbs always compromise compartmentation. Fire, like most things in life, takes the path of least resistance. So fire spreads through holes and voids created by retro fitted services.

All true.

However, there is a report in the Guardian of a resident who escaped from the 17th floor, with his 68 year old mother:
“I went back inside the house, looked out the window. I started looking down the window – I had to really pull myself out to look down the window, from the 17th floor, and I see the fire blazing, and coming up really fast, because of the cladding – the cladding was really flammable, and it just caught up like a matchstick.”...

Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system:
“We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."

Had there been smoke detection on escape routes, and a central fire alarm system, it seems plausible that most people would have got out in time.

it'll be a number of things that add up to make things worse.

An old rule of thumb is it usually takes at least three things to crash a plane.....

Lucian_Fletcher said:

Running the economy into a wall isn't virtuous, it's stupid.

Precisely what we've been saying for the last seven years.

GIN1138 said:

This tower block fire is going to be very bad for the Conservative government...

Certainly makes London look bad

David_Evershed said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Charles said:

RochdalePioneers said:

We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.

to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".

So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?

The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.

There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.

We need to cut the deficit. To do that we need to expand the economy. To do that we need to invest in the things that will allow it to expand.

Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.

As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.

Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.

People should get their Thermos flask from the back of the cupboard and make their coffee/tea at home to take with them when they go out, thus saving on expenditure and making Starbucks unnecessary.

Alternatively why not drink the more healthy option - water. Let them drink water.

I shudder to think what dire state our economy would be in if people didn't spend money unnecessarily on all manner of overpriced tat at every available opportunity.

Nigelb said:

Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system:
“We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."

Tory ideology in a nutshell. It's pervasive.

Mr 619,

"Despite his other faults, Corbyn does not play to the tune of Murdoch or Dacre. To his credit."

Very true. However hr retains his Trotskyite beliefs. Snowball was the nicer of the two pigs in Animal Farm but ...

I voted Labour when Foot was the leader - he was sometimes away with the fairies (as all politicians are), but he was pragmatic and a patriot. Jezza is neither. I liked Neil Kinnock, he faced them down when necessary. I only switched to the LDs when Blair came in, but at least, he was a very competent politician.

Labour is now virtually a party for the young and the middle-class 'intellectuals' who can sometimes look down on others. the Tories eat babies occasionally but have outbreaks of guilt about it from time to time.

The LDs are floundering in an identity crisis.

I will survive a Jezza government, but I fear his self-righteous fervour. When and if it goes wrong, they will demonise anybody handy - the gnomes of Zurich, Brexit, the voting system, Farmer Jones, and because they know that only they are right, it will be right to punish the miscreants.

Boxer, the horse, had better watch out.

AlastairMeeks said:

I sometimes wonder about all these pbers who get repeatedly asked to complete opinion polls. I was going to say that I'd never been asked, but in truth no pollster would get as far as asking before being brought to an abrupt halt.

I am the same.

Casino_Royale said:

bigjohnowls said:

After WW2 UK debt was 250% of GDP. How did Labour reduce it? By SPENDING on homes, NHS, public services

Austerity doesnt work

There was an awful lot of austerity after WWII, and rationing of food lasted until the mid-1950s.

Plus Labour had to cut back on the NHS to fund defence.

The post war government was ruthless about cutting spending to try and run a surplus to pay down the debt.

Brom said:

GIN1138 said:

This tower block fire is going to be very bad for the Conservative government...

Certainly makes London look bad

Letting loose the lunatics - wasn't the greatest of ideas
Giving them plans and money to squander -
Should have been the worst of our fears
The dream life luxury living was a pleasant No. 10 whim,
But somewhere down the line of production
They left out human beings

They were gonna build communities
It was going to be pie in the sky -
But the piss stench hallways and broken down lifts
Say the planners dream went wrong

If people were made to live in boxes
God would have given them string
To tie around their selves at bed time
And stop their dreams falling through the ceiling

And the public school boy computers -
Keep spewing out our future -
The house in the country designs the 14th floor
Old Mrs. Smith don't get out much more -
Coitus interruptus 'cause of next doors rows
Your washing gets nicked when the lights go out -
Baby's scream in the nightmare throng
But planners just get embarrassed when their plans GO WRONG!

RochdalePioneers said:

We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.

to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".

You sound deranged.

I'm amazed at how quickly some posters can confidently diagnose the underlying causes while this awful fire is still burning.

AlastairMeeks said:

TwistedFireStopper said:

Roger said:

"first brexit sowed division then it made it ungovernable"

New York Times.

Roger, it grieves me immensely, but I'm coming round to the idea that Brexit is going to turn into a clusterfuck.
I still believe it would have been the right thing for us, full EU was never a good fit for us, but due to the sheer incompetence of politicians on all sides, it's just undeliverable. We're governed by aresholes.

That was obvious in advance though, surely?

Yes and no. They're tribal politicians, so I expected some wankery, but it is blatantly obvious now that there was never any plan, on any side,as to what to do if Leave won. Plus, our politicians left, right, and centre are fucking useless.