Battery Fires

[Ghost1951]

Just listening to Angela Rainer speaking in reaction to the Grenfell report on the Today Programme.

I am surprised and impressed.

Reasonable, articulate, fully on top of her brief. Good knowledge of the numbers and percentages of affected buildings, how many remediation orders are in place and not what I expected, given her previous history and my previous dislike of her fish wife approach of previous times. Not a second of bluster and prevarication. Pretty unusual in these kinds of hard interviews of ministers.

She resisted pressure to be pushed into announcing instant decisions and off the cuff announcements about prosecution and jail. It would have been easy take off into emotional talk about punishment. She resisted repeated pushes that way and perfectly properly said it was a matter for the police, the CPS, and the courts to make such decisions.

If you want to hear her she was speaking from about 8.15 on the programme. You can hear it on BBC Sounds. I am REALLY surprised. This woman has depths I was unaware of.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

I think she is a remarkable politician - no wonder Murdoch set the price of the Sun's support in the GE was that Starmer get rid of her

 

[Woosh]

She resisted pressure to be pushed into announcing instant decisions and off the cuff announcements about prosecution and jail.

contrast that with her conservative peer, Kemi Badenoch, favourite to take over from Sunak.
She said government "should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance".Looking at what the last 14 years of conservative goverments, they do less and lessbut nothing with brilliance.

 

[Ghost1951]

contrast that with her conservative peer, Kemi Badenoch, favourite to take over from Sunak.
She said government "should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance".Looking at what the last 14 years of conservative goverments, they do less and lessbut nothing with brilliance.

Did you mean this?

Watch: Badenoch called for rich pensioners to lose winter fuel payments in 2022

Tory leadership contender argued during previous bid to lead the party that benefit should be ‘means-tested’

www.telegraph.co.uk

Or was it this?

Kemi Badenoch: Conservatives need to stop acting like Labour

The Tory leadership candidate says her party "talked right but governed left" when it was in power.

www.bbc.co.uk

I like Badenock. She is an intelligent, and sensible woman.

In a democracy, you need an effective, intelligent opposition, otherwise people don't actually have a choice. It is in everybody's interest that the shambolic, past few years of government is sorted out. The Tory party is in a complete mess, riven by pompous and narcissistic stupidity. It needs good leadership to remake it over the next period - just as Labour did after the disaster of Corbyn.

 

[Woosh]

Did you mean this?

no. I mean that Badenoch reverts to Thatcherism's small goverment. However, how small do you want our government to be? We have already privatised electricty, gas, telephone, post office, rail, buses, doctors, small operations. All we have left is hospitals and the army. Do you feel our government is still too big?

Tories need to stop acting like Labour

That's what I like in Sunak. The only sensible tory in the last 14 years. He put country before party and got punished by his party.

I like Badenock. She is an intelligent, and sensible woman.

She is an average tory politician and opportunistic, has done nothing of significance. She was given the job of negotiating trade treaties. Nothing came of it.

 

[Ghost1951]

no. I mean that Badenoch reverts to Thatcherism's small goverment. However, how small do you want our government to be? We have already privatised electricty, gas, telephone, post office, rail, buses, doctors, small operations. All we have left is hospitals and the army. Do you feel our government is still too big?

That's what I like in Sunak. The only sensible tory in the last 14 years. He put country before party and got punished by his party.

She is an average tory politician and opportunistic, has done nothing of significance. She was given the job of negotiating trade treaties. Nothing came of it.

Hmmmm - maybe I'll think about bigger government - maybe like during the 1970s when Labour governments and Conservative ones were running huge nationalised industries in vast and disparet swathes of the economy, and doing it REALLY REALLY badly.

They ran, and controlled much of the car industry, ship building, iron and steel making and steel product making, heavy engineering, railways, telecoms, primary energy, power generation, postal service, and a host of others. One feature that went right through this was that ALL of it ran at huge losses. They were selling cars for less than they cost to make, and they were the very worst cars I ever owned. The industrial relations in these industries were horrifically confrontational. The Unions brought the country to a standstill, time and again in demands for excessive pay rises. Inflation by the end of the period had reached 28%.

Errrmm - let me think......

No thanks.

EDIT: I just remembered government was also running British Airways - we were on the way to Soviet style economics back then. Everything was terrible. I remember it well. I especially remember when I bought my first house in 1975 telephoning BT or the Post Office or whoever it was that ran the telephone system to get my new built house connected. It was all wired up, and only needed someone to connect a link in the local distribution box , and plug a phone into my socket. They told me I would have to wait three months before the phone would be connected. It took every bit of that.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

Grenfell United's reaction

https://x.com/GrenfellUnited/status/1831270993144189426

"The system isn't broken, it was built this way"

 

[Ghost1951]

Anyone can express a pointless political remark such as that.

The evidence shows malfeasance on a grand scale and negligence and incompetence in the supervision at every level. To suggest it was designed that way is baseless.

No matter what kinds of systems you have put into regulation and enforcement, if the people who manage and enforce adherence to rules and processes are systematically negligent, lazy, and corrupt, the wonderful world you thought you had designed will never come to pass.

It is certainly true that the system is broken. It is patently false that anyone designed it that way.

The answer is I believe that people whose job it is to make building regulations work must be held accountable for their failures.

Politicians are utterly unable to govern the construction industry or any other. They are completely dependent on well paid experts and civil servants. These people must be carefully chosen. If people like Brian Martin are in charge of building regulations they are not going to work. He was careless, hubristic and utterly negligent.

Remember - there were clear signs as early as 2002 during the Labour government's long period in office that dangerous material was being incorporated into buildings. Did the Labour ministers of the time know this and had it been made clear to them by the civil service? I doubt it. I don't think they knew or were even competent to understand the implications any more than those of other parties who subsequently were in power. Ministers are VERY busy people. They are not going to pick up hints unless it is made clear to them by their civil service advisers.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

I'm certainly not excusing the Labour government - it was explicitly criticised in the inquiry report, but the harshest criticism was levelled at the Coalition government and it's bonfire of red tape. The inquiry found that the government was “well aware” of the risks posed by highly flammable cladding “but failed to act on what it knew”.

"Pickles, Cameron’s housing secretary until 2015, had “enthusiastically supported” the prime minister’s drive to slash regulations and it dominated his department’s thinking to the extent that matters affecting fire safety and risk to life “were ignored, delayed or disregarded”, the inquiry concluded.
Pickles also failed to act on a coroner’s 2013 recommendation to tighten up fire safety regulations after a cladding fire at Lakanal House, another London council block, killed six people. It was “not treated with any sense of urgency”, the inquiry found and the tightening up had not happened by the time Grenfell went up in flames on 14 June 2017.
In cross-examination under oath, Pickles vehemently insisted the anti-red tape drive had not covered building regulations. But the inquiry said this evidence was “flatly contradicted by that of his officials and by the contemporaneous documents”

 

[Woosh]

Hmmmm - maybe I'll think about bigger government - maybe like during the 1970s when Labour governments and Conservative ones were running huge nationalised industries in vast and disparet swathes of the economy, and doing it REALLY REALLY badly.

They ran, and controlled much of the car industry, ship building, iron and steel making and steel product making, heavy engineering, railways, telecoms, primary energy, power generation, postal service, and a host of others. One feature that went right through this was that ALL of it ran at huge losses. They were selling cars for less than they cost to make, and they were the very worst cars I ever owned. The industrial relations in these industries were horrifically confrontational. The Unions brought the country to a standstill, time and again in demands for excessive pay rises. Inflation by the end of the period had reached 28%.

Errrmm - let me think......

No thanks.

EDIT: I just remembered government was also running British Airways - we were on the way to Soviet style economics back then. Everything was terrible. I remember it well. I especially remember when I bought my first house in 1975 telephoning BT or the Post Office or whoever it was that ran the telephone system to get my new built house connected. It was all wired up, and only needed someone to connect a link in the local distribution box , and plug a phone into my socket. They told me I would have to wait three months before the phone would be connected. It took every bit of that.

Up to UK joined the then EEC, UK was the sick man of Europe. It had to cope with the aftermath of WW2. Until Cameron took over, UK was doing fine, I never felt the need to return to France.
Now, UK is pretty much treading water economically with public services in dire condition. My wife had recently a referral to see a specialist, the same who saw her two years ago. So she rang for an appointment. After a couple of hours on the phone, she's connected to the specialist's secretary. 'I would like to book an appointment to see Mr ...', 'Sure, I can arrange that for you but I can't say when'. 'How long before you can let me know?', '3 months, I'll give you a date then. When you come for the appointment, you won't see Mr... though, because the appointment is for triage'.

 

[Ghost1951]

Up to UK joined the then EEC, UK was the sick man of Europe. It had to cope with the aftermath of WW2. Until Cameron took over, UK was doing fine, I never felt the need to return to France.
Now, UK is pretty much treading water economically with public services in dire condition. My wife had recently a referral to see a specialist, the same who saw her two years ago. So she rang for an appointment. After a couple of hours on the phone, she's connected to the specialist's secretary. 'I would like to book an appointment to see Mr ...', 'Sure, I can arrange that for you but I can't say when'. 'How long before you can let me know?', '3 months, I'll give you a date then. When you come for the appointment, you won't see Mr... though, because the appointment is for triage'.

Yeah - its government run. What do you expect. If you were using the French system, it would be different.

 

[Woosh]

Yeah - its government run. What do you expect. If you were using the French system, it would be different.

My wife is treated in France.

 

[saneagle]

Up to UK joined the then EEC, UK was the sick man of Europe.

Are you sure about that? When I was at school we celebrated Empire Day, when UK owned Australia, India, Burma, Canada, New Zealand, half of Africa and more. I don't remember anybody calling UK the sick man of Europe then, especially as there were UK military bases in most of it.

 

[Ghost1951]

My wife is treated in France.

I am glad to hear that. She will most likely receive timely attention. In this country, unless you have an imminently life threatening issue, you will likely wait many months for attention.

The NHS seems now to be a crisis oriented service. You can't even get an appointment to see a GP unless you go through some sort of nurse led triage system to filter out the cases which might not result in major issues happening imminently.

This situation is not about money. The NHS has never had so much money spent on it ever in history. Of course thanks now the success of the vile Dr Lawrenson and his ilk who have just been bribed by Starmer with a massive pay rise - the waiting lists are hugely increased with tens of thousands of treatments put back through industrial action, and much more money will have to be thrown into the black hole.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

Are you sure about that? When I was at school we celebrated Empire Day, when UK owned Australia, India, Burma, Canada, New Zealand, half of Africa and more. I don't remember anybody calling UK the sick man of Europe then, especially as there were UK military bases in most of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe

Throughout the 1960s to the 1980s, the term was also most notably used for the United Kingdom when it lost its superpower status as the Empire crumbled and its home islands experienced significant deindustrialization, coupled with high inflation and industrial unrest – such as the Winter of Discontent – including having to seek loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Since the mid-2010s and into the 2020s, the term being used for Britain began to see a resurgence after Brexit, a cost-of-living crisis and industrial disputes and strikes becoming more commonplace.

 

[Woosh]

I am glad to hear that. She will most likely receive timely attention. In this country, unless you have an imminently life threatening issue, you will likely wait many months for attention.

Thank you. It was 6 months ago and she's now recovered.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

This situation is not about money.

France spends 26% more per capita on healthcare than the UK
Germany spends 55% more per capita on healthcare than the UK.
The USA spends 300% more per capita on healthcare as the UK.
(2022 figures were the latest I could find)

Of course, you need to take into account the age profile of the population, ours has been getting more elderly (needing more healthcare) very rapidly

 

[saneagle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe

Throughout the 1960s to the 1980s, the term was also most notably used for the United Kingdom when it lost its superpower status as the Empire crumbled and its home islands experienced significant deindustrialization, coupled with high inflation and industrial unrest – such as the Winter of Discontent – including having to seek loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Since the mid-2010s and into the 2020s, the term being used for Britain began to see a resurgence after Brexit, a cost-of-living crisis and industrial disputes and strikes becoming more commonplace.

I'm talking about the time before the big boss decided to dismantle the social and economic structures of the Western world for their Great Reset. The first part of their plan was to destroy the UK as it was the most powerful, then they started on USA, the next most powerful. At the moment they're working on Germany, which was "the powerhouse of the European economy" and was basically paying for the EEC. Germany is rapidly becoming an also ran with their economy going into deficit for the first time since the rebuild, then the EEC will be unsustainable and they'll attempt to fix it by moving to their "One World Government".

 

[Ghost1951]

RE: Sick Man of Europe -

I don't disagree with the use of that term. The UK did become the sick man of Europe back then, but it was largely due to serious mismanagement of vast areas of the economy which were increasingly falling under the control of politicians.

If you look at the experience and academic qualifications of our political class and our media class, they have next to no history at all of working or managing the industries that they had then taken over. I am mystified at just how it is that they think they are remotely qualified to manage the steel industry, or ship building, or British Airways, or Telecoms or the car industry. I bet of the whole mass of people in parliament, not more than one percent of them know what a torque wrench is, and probably not more than four percent of them have a graduate qualification in engineering or science - not that these alone would qualify them to actually run major industrial concerns.

THIS is why we became the sick man of Europe - oh - and the useless politicos, were very ably assisted by a malign communist fifth column led by the likes of Scargill and Red Robbo, who actually made sure that the jobs of their union members were lost when competition came along from enterprises in which the prime agenda of the workers was not 'When can we walk out on a wild cat strike'.

Today we see a hang over from those days with that hapless fool Miliband, going about dribbling in excitement that he is going to entirely decarbonise the electricty system by 2030.....

He has NO IDEA what he will do to rebuild and restructure the grid in order to bring the required wind energy south from Shetland and elsewhere to the cities and the industries (such as they are now) of the UK. There are wind farms right now ready and spinning their generators that will not be connected to teh grid for as many as fifteen years. So bad is the sclerotic planning system that every nimby second home owner can object to the fact that they might have to look out over their wonderful view and see a set of wires going along the horizon. Apart from his A' level physics and maths qualifications Miliband studied PPE at Oxford..... He has no practical experience of engineering or industry at all. He has no idea how he will achieve the target he has set, and if he does have an idea, he is probably hopelessly wrong.

Let me be clear: I am all in favour of wind energy and solar and any other non carbon emitting way of generating it, but I am MORE IN FAVOUR of ensuring that we have reliable, guaranteed supply. There is NO WAY AT ALL that the lunatic who can't even eat a bacon sandwich, without half of it trailing down his chin, is going to succeed in creating an entirely decarbonised power generation system by 2040 - let alone ten years earlier.

We need better politicians, and having listened to the Today Programme this morning, I am once again going to say how impressed I was at the way Angela Rainer conducted herself. I have been completely wrong about her. She utterly refused to make stupid promises, no matter how hard Emma Barnet tried to get her to do so. Milliband should take lessons from her.

 

[Ghost1951]

France spends 26% more per capita on healthcare than the UK
Germany spends 55% more per capita on healthcare than the UK.
The USA spends 300% more per capita on healthcare as the UK.
(2022 figures were the latest I could find)

Of course, you need to take into account the age profile of the population, ours has been getting more elderly (needing more healthcare) very rapidly

Really?

Per capita health spending by country 2022 | Statista

The U.S. had the highest per capita healthcare costs in 2022. Per capita health costs in several high-income nations were half or less of what the U.S. spent.

www.statista.com