Westministenders: The bookends to a year of political chaos. Just how far have we come?

[RedToothBrush]

The 15th June 2016.

The Thames was filled with a flotilla of boats in a publicity stunt for the Leave campaign to draw attention to fisheries. Nigel Farage and Kate Hoey in their heads thought they were Leonardo and Kate, but the moment was rather more titanic in nature and could not have been more Alan Partridge if they had tried. Coming up behind was Bob Gedolf in a shameful and cringeworthy display of swearing and abuse that really didn’t help the Remain camp in anyway. Largely unnoticed was a small boat with a family following it all unfold…

The next day things went from fiasco to horror.

Farage unveiled the Dog Whistle Poster and Jo Cox was murdered. And the UK seemed set on its course for 7 days later when the world was turned upside down by the referendum itself.

14th June 2017.

Fast forward 365 days later and another tragedy unfolded. This time of a very different nature but with no less political significance.
Grenfell.

A moment of national shame. A symbol of so many things that had come to pass in the previous twelve months.

The election just the previous week had changed the direction of travel we seemed to be headed and left the Prime Minister exposed and looking wildly out of touch. The Maybot was given one more chance.

And the Maybot seems to be failing the test of her party who had the grace to grant her a second chance.

The Queen dressed in the same shade of blue, May delivered her ‘victory speech’ in, ignored the security threat and visited the ranks of the poor and the forgotten. A deliberate message to May not to forget who she serves? A Queen who feels aggrieved and angry by May’s behaviour? Who knows.

As for Brexit. The government looks lost. Adrift. The ‘Fight of the Summer’ over the EU’s plan for talks sounds out the window despite the denials from the Brexit Department. Hard Brexit is still on the cards. Apparently. But what does anyone believe now? May’s and the Brexiteers domination of the agenda is shattered, its power starting to be questioned.

What next?

This evening the anger is building.

Who knows, what will happen. Some of it might be predictable, but the future is far from certain and we have definitely entered a new era. We just don’t know who will lead it, or what its ambition or what the end goal now is.

What we do know, more acutely than ever is that we are all human and the wise words of Jo Cox about having ‘More in Common’ ring though ever more strongly.

Once again we feel ‘on the brink’.

On the subject of austerity, I worked in the Transformation team for a large county council for a while (and still work in the council in another team). It is Tory led and has had to save well over £300 million since the austerity agenda kicked in. This is expected to continue. While I can certainly be very critical of some of the decisions made, they have avoided large scale outsourcing in favour of selling core services to other public services. However, after a few rounds of cuts you start to run out of the easy stuff. It is a relatively wealthy area, but even so has now reached the point where the easy stuff has been done. From now on people will feel it, and not just the poor.

The idea that you can cut back office functions and this will not impact on people, the hatred of "pen pushers", is simply false. A lot of the people who should have been dealing with this disaster would be classed as back office. It is emergency planners, communications teams, web teams. All these are areas which have faced serious cuts in a lot of councils due to not being public facing.

Nobody protests when you sack the people in the comms team in the way they do when you close a library or rubbish dump, but this is the result. When there is a crises you need to have people who can coordinate complex comms, you need someone who has sat in a room with maps for 2 years working out what to do in any number of unlikely events, your need people who can build a website on a Friday night in an emergency. These things have been taken from councils in the name of austerity. It has always been an ideological agenda and it has been costing lives for a while now, this is the latest death toll and it is time people woke up and put a stop to it.

Thank you bigchocfrenzy exactly what I meant. I apologise for clumsy explanation on my part and wording. Xx

And thanks to pinkpeppers. Xx

From the BBC

Government statement on cladding
Posted at
12:31
There has been speculation over whether the cladding used to cover Grenfell Tower contributed to the speed at which the fire spread.

BBC Newsnight has reported that the exterior cladding on Grenfell Tower, added in 2015, had a polyethylene - or plastic - core instead of a more fireproof alternative.

Now comes a statement from the Department for Communities and Local Government: "Cladding using a composite aluminium panel with a polyethylene core would be non-compliant with current Building Regulations guidance.

"This material should not be used as cladding on buildings over 18m in height.

"We cannot comment on what type of cladding was used on the building - this will be subject to investigations."

Well, the composition of the cladding needs to be investigated very quickly.

As K&C LA seem to be not fit to look after the co ordination of care of survivors etc,

the next line of command is Sajid Javid at The Department for Communities and Local Government.

The Civil Contingencies Secretariat should have taken control and appointed a spokesperson, as I understand it from this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Contingencies_Secretariat

Why is the Civil Contingencies Secretariat not in locus right now establishing numbers?

As the property was mainly rented, the list of tenants should be available in an instant.

Using social media, those who have survived must be traceable.

If there are questions over the death toll, one has to ask questions over the intentionality of this chaotic organisation.

K&C certainly seem to be doing a very poor job of managing this. I totally understand why the residents would like to bypass the council.

Mrs May arrived in Downing Street on Saturday where she is chairing the Government task force on the disaster. She will meet victims, volunteers and community leaders afterwards, No 10 said. A Downing Street spokesman said:

The Prime Minister is this morning chairing a cross-Government meeting to ensure everything possible is being done to support those affected by the Grenfell tragedy.

I don't understand why May is chairing a Government task force on the disaster Why would the PM be chairing this, especially May?

As I understand it there's clear protocol in the CCS to co ordinate a response.

It's as if they are deliberately fudging a systematic response.

I don't understand it.

Locally football and rugby clubs are now coordinating with each other and with those involved directly to get the right help where it is needed. If sportspeople can do it but government can t?

Bigly - your experience is the same as mine in central government.

The first wave of cost saving made sense to me: it was right that we looked more closely at what we were spending, and thought about new ways of delivering. The second wave was tough, and things like recruitment freezes had different impacts in different places. But to take the knife to already pared down functions... Well, as you say, this is the result.

Having said that, this is a failure of leadership. London is a city full of bright, versatile skilled people. If K&C council needed a new website setting up for, say, people to check in as safe and to report missing friends and family, all they had to do was ask and I would bet that there could be one up and running in a few hours. But this needs someone in a position of authority to be engaged and responsive, and that just doesn't seem to be happening

Guidance: Preparation and planning for emergencies: the National Resilience Capabilities Programme
www.gov.uk/guidance/preparation-and-planning-for-emergencies-the-capabilities-programme

Bigly I looked at our boroughs website. It says that we have a "small" emergency team. If they say small, I bet it is one and the admin fuctions are merged with the next borough so that means half.....

bigly I am only partly buying the central government austerity excuse from Tory councils. Kensington has the highest incomes in the country and the highest property values. However average Scots pay annual council tax approx £1,000 higher despite their property value and wages being about 25% of Kensington levels. The locals and the Council could have made different decisions.

Similarly the Surrey pensioners baulking at 15% council tax increase for social care would still have been paying less than most Scots pensioners do already. Again they have higher incomes and house prices.

I think well heeled locals should be looking closer to home for answers.

Yes, I have heard similar from people I know in central government and also from the NHS Olennas. I would also agree that there has certainly been a failiure of leadership, but good leadership has to be encouraged and nurtured with the right values. If the core focus for an organisation is saving money and cutting costs, it's leadership will reflect that and tend to be people who are focused on what they can avoid doing rather than on how to provide what their citizens need.

I think well heeled locals should be looking closer to home for answers

I was completely shocked how little my London friends pay in council tax. My council tax is about £2000 a year (I'm up North)

I would also agree that council taxes should have been put up howabout, as I have mentioned in earlier posts. However, this has been very strongly discouraged by central government in the past to the extent that any rise over 5% must be agreed by a local referendum. This is obviously a costly and risky thing for any council and their elected councillors to do. When Surrey decided to hold one earlier this year for a planned rise of 15% there was much noise from central government and I believe they ended up changing their mind after pressure was out on them and some deal with business rates was offered instead.

Yy bigly. I have worked in local government too, including in tory run authorities where the onus was on cutting everything possible. Back office staff were fair game because you wouldn't have the outcry that you would if you eg. Closed a library or a housing office. These people would be doing essential work, behind the scenes, but by the time people noticed that the work wasn't being done it would be too late. The private sector was held up as a shining example of efficiency, and everything that could be outsourced, was. But the savings would be made by cutting corners and not paying staff properly-things which are harder to get away with unionised council staff.

Someone asked about histories of the trade union movement. There's some on the tuc website here www.unionhistory.info/matchworkers/matchworkers.php

In fact I shave just double checked and for many smaller authorities including Greater London they can only rise their council tax by 2%

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05682

I have to say I've never understood that obsession with the idea that the private sector is always more deficient than the public sector TBH.

After an initial round of looking for genuine waste, then
You get what you pay for

Tory pressure forcing down council tax - at least in England - has led to many councils choosing to cut what is normally not noticed

==> So disaster planning is an obvious target,
because politicians gamble that with lives that nothing will happen while they are in office - and they don't give a shit what happens after they leave

Anyone in Scotland, Wales, NI
If you lay higher council tax, do you know if you have more council infrastructure / personnel for disaster management ?
Or is the extra only spent on more visible services in daily use ?

lay pay higher council tax

Private is great for goods and services that aren't essential, just enjoyable.
Those where it's not dreadful if people are priced out, or don't live in an area covered properly by private firms.
e.g. most consumer goods like electronics & designer clothes, holidays etc

Public - at least some element supplementing private - is essential when the service is essential, nationwide geographically and wrt incomes.
e.g. nhs, utilities, post offices, buses, trains, health & safety regulations, environmental laws, disaster relief agency

I am not absolutely against the use of private sector in very specific cases when they clearly can provide expertise that would be prohibitive for a council to build up. This is usually in quite niche areas where I have seen it work well. However, in a lot of cases a terribly friendly guy in a shiny suit turns up and offers management the moon on a stick with bells on all for the cost of peanuts. Anyone who knows anything about the subject can see it is tosh, but these poeple are generally overruled.

Once the private firm has the council all signed up to a badly written contract they then tend to fail to deliver on key requirements, the shiny things promised often don't exist, if the council wants a small change something or needs to adjust requirements the costs will be huge. I have spoken to people in the private sector who supplied to councils and it is their business strategy to offer lots at tiny prices and ramp up the costs as soon as they hook them in. They have targets on how much they have to add to the contract price within 6 months of sign up.

Bigly you mean that the private sector is there to make as much money as possible regardless of the Impact on the population? They are not all nice and ready to go the extra mile wo pay (unless most of the public service employees)
Who knew...

Wouldn't it be nice if some of the absentee billionaire landlords of empty Kensington flats were to offer their properties to those made homeless, for 6 months or a year, till they can be found homes? Just to prove their humanity.

Oh, is that a pig flying I see?