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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) has closed after a fire at an electrical substation in east London. |
Has anyone blamed Russia yet?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I doubt it's going to be Russia, Boro, as lots of their folks still have their children living in London, given that we don't fall under US protection, long may this continue.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | I doubt it's complacency, the dominant safety culture is to over-worry, so it's normally........ everyone thinks it's someone else's job, cf Grenfell. |
Grenfell was nothing to do with complacency or 'someone else's job'. It was due to ignorance of the effect of cladding.
| Borry wrote: | It seems to me you're all arguing for complacency.
No. I'm starting by illustrating how this kind of complacency - or sloppy management - creeps in |
Let me stop you there. Complacency and sloppy management are two completely different things. Complacency arises when something that might happen doesn't happen for so long, people assume it won't ever happen. I argue that is fair enough. It costs a lot of money to guard against unlikely events so 'not happening for a long time' probably means that even if it does happen it wasn't worth guarding against.
Sloppy management is sloppy management.
| It's endemic across all industries and businesses. |
This is the kind of statement that is totally forbidden under AE rules.
| Management and accountants never want to pay for things that "might" happen, especially when they are "unlikely". |
That's why we pay management and accountants to make exactly these kinds of decisions.
| That "unlikely" is used as a trump card for all kinds of things. |
I sense a bogus list coming.
| Like Local Authorities that allow new housing estates to be built on flood plains. Because they want the cash and floods are "unlikely". Which just means they don't want to engage with the chance of the "1 in a 100 years" event coming sooner rather than later. |
It was a list of one and that one doesn't apply. It refers to the days before global warming when this was an extremely sensible policy. It has been a matter of intense discussion since we have discovered that the hundred-year rule no longer applies. We might not do the right thing but it won't be because of complacency.
| I've had this battle with management and accountants while designing computer systems. A good thorough system design will include contingency and resilience. Like backup and fail-safe. But management and accountants never want it, unless you can prove to them that its their jobs on the line if things fail. |
That's not complacency, is it?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Some may prefer "incompetence".
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Grenfell was nothing to do with complacency or 'someone else's job'. It was due to ignorance of the effect of cladding.
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I don't think so. The report into Grenfell did not conclude that.
| BBC wrote: |
The Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people in 2017 was the result of a chain of failures by governments, "dishonest" companies and a lack of strategy by the fire service, the final report of the six-year public inquiry has concluded.
The damning report sets out a "path to disaster" at Grenfell stretching back to the early 1990s over how fire safety in high-rise buildings has been managed and regulated.
The coalition and Conservative governments “ignored, delayed or disregarded” concerns about the safety of industry practices, the inquiry said.
The report highlighted the "systematic dishonesty" of manufacturers as a reason for the tower block being clad in combustible materials.
One manufacturer was also found to have “deliberately concealed” the fire risks its cladding posed. |
The inquiry found fault and incompetence among almost every company involved in the refurbishment.
Among the key findings of the report were:
"Systematic dishonesty" by the manufacturers of cladding and insulation
US firm Arconic, manufacturer of the Reynobond 55 cladding which experts at the inquiry said was "by far the largest contributor" to the fire, deliberately concealed the true extent of the danger of using its product
Manufacturers made "false and misleading claims" over the safety and suitability of insulation to the company which installed it on Grenfell
Failures in London Fire Brigade's training and a lack of a strategy to evacuate the building
Successive governments missed opportunities to act
The local council and the Tenant Management Organisation had a "persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people"
How building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective” | |
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| The inquiry report, published in September 2024, found that the Arconic cladding in the form used at Grenfell Tower was "extremely dangerous". |
But who knew beforehand?
| It noted that Arconic was aware of this, having commissioned fire tests on the product, ... |
No ignorance there.
| ...but had since 2005 "deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger" |
Concealment?
| According to the inquiry report, the company aimed to exploit what it saw as regulatory weaknesses in countries such as the UK and it concluded that "Arconic ... promoted and sold a product knowing that it presented a significant danger to those who might use any buildings in which it was used | |
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Plus some linguistic ironies.
| Deborah French, the salesperson in the UK, did not highlight the change to her client for the Grenfell cladding either. In fact, she sent them a copy of the existing BBA certificate. |
French selling for a French firm.
| Arconic's failure to notify the UK regulator, the British Board of Agrément, about the tests was a "misleading half truth |
British Board of Agrément
| The forerunner of the BBA, the Agrément Board, was modelled on an arrangement operating in France, hence the French word agrément, which translates literally as 'approval'. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Some may prefer "incompetence". |
So why not call it that?
| I don't think so. The report into Grenfell did not conclude that. |
I never thought I'd hear this as a justification on the AEL
| But who knew beforehand? No ignorance there. Concealment? |
Precisely so. As I pointed out at the time, whenever an enquiry is mounted into a complex disaster, any number of shortcomings will always be uncovered. This is because it is the only way complex projects can be undertaken--if every official rule was obeyed to the letter, nothing would ever get done. Not by competitive tender anyway. The enquiry will make dozens of recommendations, which adds more of them.
No doubt some useful reforms will be in there, various examples of undue complacency will be identified. But public enquiries are for political purposes (and I am not saying they shouldn't be held for that reason). That is why they are chaired by a lawyer. The real ones--the ones about cladding, fire brigade response times or whatever--will be behind closed doors and with an expert in charge.
Even held in the letters pages of the specialist press. Nobody in the construction industry would plough through the official report. A thousand pages long and five years too late.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the US. For nearly 160 years, the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution has established the principle that anyone born in the country is a US citizen. Now, as part of his crackdown on migrant numbers, Trump is seeking to deny citizenship to children of migrants who are either in the country illegally or on temporary visas.
We tried this in 1981, chucking out (reforming) common law first established in 1608. Now 44 years later, virtually all folks still believe that they are British because they were born in Britain. Any folk that points out they are not, is regarded as racist, barking mad, or not understanding that we Britons have natural born rights. It has no impact on cutting migration, it has resulted in endless wasting of time, trying to stop folks from being entitled to services such as NHS, it has resulted in endless wasting of time with folks having to provide multiple IDs rather than just, say, a birth certificate.
Still most Americans think it is a great idea. Good luck my friends across the pond. Good Luck.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But surely times have changed. Does birthright citizenship carry the same weight in these days of waves of illegal migration? I'm not saying it's worth changing the law, or doing it the way--and for the reasons--Donald Trump is doing it, but doing so is not to be ruled out from first principles. Or early principles in this case.
PS Remember 'patrials'? That was a doozy. You don't hear about it much nowadays but I don't think it should lapse entirely from the rulebook vocabulary.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Regarding the much-chattered “30-day ceasefire” and "peace talks". If these seems vaguely familiar, it is because we've been here before.
As the BBC reported on April 4 2022:
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has said peace talks will continue with Russia despite accusing Moscow of war crimes and genocide. Mr Zelensky was speaking in Bucha, near the capital Kyiv, where bodies of civilians were found strewn on the streets after Russian troops withdrew. ...
Responding to a question from the BBC on whether it was still possible to talk peace with Russia, Mr Zelensky said: "Yes, because Ukraine must have peace. We are in Europe in the 21st Century. We will continue efforts diplomatically and militarily." |
Ref: [BBC, 4 April 2022]
What happened next?
Boris Johnson made his unannounced visit to Kiev on 9th April 2022.
Ref: [Guardian, 9 April 2022]
The Ukrainian Pravda reported the results in May 2022:
According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.
The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.
And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.
Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to "press him."
Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end". |
Ref: [Ukraine Pravda, May 2022]
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Who remembers "Protect And Survive"?
It appears all the citizens of France are to be sent an equivalent. Leaflets on “The Next Emergency”.
They will be told to prepare, with a survival kit. But prepare for what? We’re not told.
Is it a PsyOp to condition people to expect a war? But what kind of war? We’re not told.
Link: The Next Emergency
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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These are always interesting exercises from an AE point of view. These seem to be the salient facts:
1. Governments tend to go in for this kind of mass leafleting whenever national nuclear policy is in the news. 'Protect and Survive' was (from memory) during the era of cruise missiles being stationed at Greenham Common. France's is no doubt because of Macron offering the Force de Frappe as an ingredient in post-American Europe.
2. They are always on the borderline between sensible advice and high comedy because the idea of doing anything in the four minutes available to withstand a nuclear holocaust is borderline. (There will be people who survive because they took refuge under a solid oaken table.)
3. The leaflets themselves are viewed in the light of the recipients' political opinions. Some believe them to be expressions of prudent concern on the part of the government, some believe them to be political stunts.
4. AE-ists agree.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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According to BBC:
| The president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, has repeated his call for the US to base nuclear weapons on Polish soil. |
And
| President Duda also welcomed proposals made by France's president, Emmanuel Macron, to extend the French nuclear weapons umbrella to other Nato states. |
Does he want both US and French weapons?
| When asked how the presence of nuclear weapons would make Poland safer, Duda said it would deepen America's commitment to Polish security. |
No doubt trying to lure Trump into more commitment to NATO.
I'm still waiting to see how Poland will reassert its historical claim to parts of Ukraine.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I'm still waiting to see how Poland will reassert its historical claim to parts of Ukraine. |
Poland has always embraced the Putinesque policy of 'might is right'.
* It acquired the Ukrainian real estate (capital: Lviv aka Lvov aka Lemburg) following war with the nascent Soviet Union in 1920
* It occupied part of ex-Austrian Teschen by force in 1921.
* It occupied the Czechoslovakian part of Teschen under Hitler's auspices when Germany occupied rump Czechoslovakia in 1939
* It ceased to exist when Nazi Germany and Communist Russia partitioned Poland later in 1939
* The legal government (exiled in London) broke off relations with the Soviet Union because Stalin insisted on getting the Ukrainian parts back. The Americans and the British acquiesced and the exiled government ceased to exist.
* The new (Communist) regime in Poland accepted the Yalta/Potsdam settlement whereby Poland was compensated for losing Ukrainian territory by forcibly occupying eastern German territory.
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