Fire at Grenfell Tower in London

There did seem to be a lot of widespread anger at Grenfell (and again, through what medium could i possibly know that - that mixture of the people i know, my social media vectors, and the mainstream media, and what sort of objective synthesis is *that*? but anyway).

Grenfell will be back, but not yet. British media is exceptionally bad at keeping sustained attention on slow-developing things.

There are a lot of factors behind that, but two key ones are the rules around court reporting - effectively, during a trial you can only report what was said in court on the day and it's very hard to give colour/context/background = often boring stories – and the public's attention, which moves on to things with clearer edges to them and ignores the boring/confusing ones.

This isn't just a Grenfell thing, it's playing out right now in eg the Assange hearings, and people paying close attention to them have despaired at the paucity of coverage it's getting. However, I'd expect them to go big on Jan 4 when the hearing returns and they can add in all the other stuff. (Although Brexit might well take up all the oxygen at that point).

Governments know all this, which is why they drape an inquiry over things they want to buy time on, or get the public to stop caring about. Even though inquiries don't have quite the same reporting restrictions, there's still this sense of "we'll talk about this when the inquiry reports back".

80% of the time, by the time the inquiry reports back, the public doesn't care any more and the government gets away with it. 20% of the time it doesn't. (And if they're certain it's going to fall into the 20%, they do other things to nobble it, like with Chilcott. Hillsborough is a special case but cuts similarly – the Taylor report bought them a bit of time, and did lead to real change, it just avoided actual justice)

I think Grenfell is in the 20% camp. Not just because of the genuine outrage and anger at the events, and the clear villains of the piece, but more coldly because its impact cuts across a lot of society. There are a lot of better-off people in cladded buildings unable to sell their dangerous homes – 20,000 buildings directly, more indirectly. There are very well-off people realising quite how shoddy construction standards have become, too. Sunday Times did a big piece just the week on a big Richmond estate that had a building burn down rapidly and it was all down to shit building regs and inspections, and one of the country's biggest builders was at fault.

I've been trying hard to avoid fire metaphors here, but this has all the hallmarks of something big biding its time.

great post stet, and of course - smacks forehead - i'd forgotten about the court reporting. it was interesting watching the attacking the devil documentary on the Insight team's investigation into Thalidomide, the gyrations they had to perform to manage that sustained campaign. And indeed my point about campaigning came directly from Harold Evans saying in that documentary that the moment when people internally are potentially getting bored with a campaign is exactly the moment you shouldn't give up.

aside from Hillsborough, the other example that springs to mind- for a number of reasons- is bloody sunday tbh

at the end of a marathon effort lessons will have been learned and apologies will issue, the structural (and indeed deliberate/necessary) underpinnings of why these things happen to the people they happen to, where they happen will have transformed sufficiently such that the govt of 2045 can confidently say "never again" and no individuals will be to blame because the situational aspects will have been ignored, disputed or obfuscated for long enough for time and distance to have done their work.

Yes I have a lot to say on that too ofc but I’m lacking Stet’s faith in the process given the government are trying to make Bloody Sunday retroactively legal and the press are doing a lot of work to cover it for them.

yeah I've got no faith in the process — it has evolved as if by design to help cover things up and smother outrage. But that only works if people allow it, and I have a degree of hope that this won't happen in this case.

stonking package on the 10 debunking the social housing “charter” but weirdly nothing about the current inquiry. couldn’t find a link to the video on the BBC News site.

very good and angering summary of the corporate and regulatory responsibility for grenfell by anoosh chakelian in the NS.

Lunchtime update from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry:

Cavity barrier manufacturer says installation of barriers on Grenfell was "some of the worst I have ever seen" pic.twitter.com/L39pnd07dR

— Peter Apps (@PeteApps) March 9, 2021

Chris Mort carried out an examination of the way his product had been installed after the fire in 2018. Says he believes there were areas where the products either weren't fitted at all or stuck on with sillicone instead of fixed with a bracket

unfuckingbelievable. You don't need to be a barriers expert to know that sticking important safety components with fucking silicone is rough as.

well of course hes going to say that, its his product.

I wouldn't expect lying at a public inquiry is beyond the realms of possibility but if the barriers really were stuck on with silicone rather than with the brackets, then he'd right calling it a cowboy installation.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVUn3zMVoAAEw9n?format=jpg&name=small

lives could have been saved -- but at what cost?

see also, from today

This is such a powerful first-hand account from ⁦@MichaelSchuman⁩. “The state may have prevented COVID deaths better than many liberal democracies. But that success has come at great cost—to human dignity and to the human spirit.” https://t.co/YUZVxydtLC

— Josh Lipsky (@joshualipsky) June 14, 2022

drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,

— wint (@dril) May 9, 2014

strong essay by peter apps on the grenfell enquiry so far:

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/the-grenfell-tower-inquiry-has-painted-a-vivid-picture-of-the-world-we-must-leave-behind-76600

Excellent, especially the last few remarks.

This also seems relevant.

How did one of the world’s wealthiest economies end up with housing so unfit for extreme weather? I wrote about how Edwardian moralising, cheap coal and Thatcher's bonfire of housings standards has left British homes unprepared to weather climate change. https://t.co/2eDJLlHb5R

— Phineas Harper (@PhinHarper) July 20, 2022

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/multiple-firefighters-who-saved-lives-28941465

"Up to a dozen firefighters who saved lives at the Grenfell Tower have been diagnosed with cancers; the majority of which are understood to be digestive cancers and leukaemia, for which there is no cure"

:-(

this is doubly grim bcz attached to this particular event but i assume the issue is baked in to all modern fire-fighting