In the news

Comments from neighbours after the attacker at Finsbury Park was named

Dave Ashford, 52, said: ‘Someone called me and said it was him and I said ‘It can’t be’. Then I saw the picture on the news and said ‘Shit, it’s him’.’ Another neighbour said: ‘He had lived on the estate for a few years. He’s always been a complete cunt but this is really surprising.’

On a side note, this forum copes really badly with asterisks.

Amazing.

Son of the bloke who owns the van hire place says "shame he didn't use a steamroller"

https://twitter.com/RegalDoobs/status/876741922320207872

What is wrong with people?

Re the Finsbury park driver 'attack' what would be the difference in law between this and a driver with road rage, not race rage, mowing down a pedestrian/cyclist?

And could punishment passes be construed as attempted murder?

Indeed.

Motivation seems similarly, hatred of a group exercised on a random member of said group. Using a vehicle as a weapon.

I think the main difference in law would be race or religion are protected characteristics, being a cyclist is not.

So we need to found a cycling religion, like Jedi at the 2001 census?

Could we have Sheldon Brown as our Deity?

And could punishment passes be construed as attempted murder?

No, as there's no intention of killing someone--with a bit of bad luck, that might be the outcome, but it's still a different thing.

I suggested a couple of weeks ago on the report bad drivers thread that we should report drivers as mouthing "dirka dirka mohammed mohammed jihad jihad".

Yes this is something I've been thinking about comparing the state's response to London/Westminster bridges (immediate Cobra meeting etc) compared to the poor response to grenfell from authority.

In the bridge attacks the establishment was attacked directly because the perps represented an ideology that is anti-our establishment. The victims of the Grenfell tower who would have really benefitted from a strong and coordinated response, an immediate look at the death tally etc were so not establishment that it really took a while for the state to move

I don't think that comparison works. As one former police officer said after the London Bridge incident, in London or Manchester you can still have that kind of police response, but elsewhere police cover for that sort of thing is 'threadbare', caused by police cuts.

Council cuts have devastated local authorities, or, perhaps, given a wealthier authority like K&C an excuse to scale services back--I'm sure they haven't suffered financially as badly as somewhere like Hackney, but perhaps they've taken other measures that have weakened their services. (In Hackney, I watched the Council rebuild itself after the financial crisis of 1999/2000 over a period of more than ten years before that 'austerity' arseholery destroyed so much again.)

While K&C seems to have had very poor management on this, I can't really imagine other authorities to have coped much better with the need to immediately rehouse hundreds of people while they undoubtedly already have extremely long and non-moving waiting lists.

Council cuts have devastated local authorities, or, perhaps, given a wealthier authority like K&C an excuse to scale services back

While K&C proudly maintained an underspend to distribute back to council tax payers who could afford to pay the annual bill in one payment.

So if I fired a gun close to the head just to scare someone, and it blew their brains out, what would I be guilty of?

I obviously have no idea. Ask a lawyer. :)

Council cuts have devastated local authorities, or, perhaps, given a wealthier authority like K&C an excuse to scale services back

While K&C proudly maintained an underspend to distribute back to council tax payers who could afford to pay the annual bill in one payment.

I don't think that you had to pay it all in one go, just pay it all. On the other hand, Councils are allowed to offer a discount for a single payment, the suggestion being that they will then get the interest on the money, and know that they don't have the cost of chasing you for it.

I will second that motion :)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/19/kensington-chelsea-council-has-274m-in-reserves-grenfell-tower-budget-surplus

In other news, it's going to be interesting to see what Macron does with his majority. If status-quo liberal centrism is the solution to the world's problems we're about to see it first hand.

I just saw that it was on a depressing 43% turnout. That's not a mandate, really.

Well, unlawful act manslaughter would be my first guess.

If the cladding was cleared for use by building control would the council not be covered for any liability?

I assume they would be cleared from an initial court case, but that an inquiry would look into how appropriate granting that clearance was - although then the liability might move up to government more generally for writing lax building control guidelines.

But we still don't know enough about its fitting to speculate

If the cladding had to be installed in a certain way to meet the regulations and it turns out it wasn't then building control should have picked up on it. I don't know much about building control but I'm sure they have liability insurance partly to cover them for the fact that they are not going to remove and inspect every installed panel.

I've worked for contractors on council projects before, the contract usually gets parted out to less and less experienced and reputable companies who employ increasingly casual and inexperienced labour and demand unreasonable targets, encouraging the workforce to "just get it done" because the tenants of social housing are looked down on by the foremen. Quite often these companies will fold at the end of the project and leave the tradesmen short a few weeks pay.

Going back to the 70's there were concrete panel high-rises that were missing half of the bolts that were supposed to hold them together, saving time and money for the contractors. I won't be surprised if this turns out to be a similar story, some part of the system was possibly routinely compromised to save time/money as well as the terrible decision not to use a fire-proof material.

I'll try and find the link but I remember reading somewhere that one of the companies in relation to the refurb had folded.

Here: http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2015/09/14/cladding-firm-harley-curtain-wall-pre-packed/

The general level of technical detail and professional insight in this thread is awesome. Keep it up.
#unconditionallovefortheforum