Brilliant title from the wonderful Ash Sarkar.
The only thing missing was a tin of spam to replace Mr Cleverly or a full pooper scooper.
He ran away and then lied. It is what Tories do. If my MP Richard Drax sees someone coming, who has a difficult question, he literally starts running. They are all the same.
Brilliant watch.
Douglas James
Listening to James Cleverly trying to claim that Jacob Rees Mogg just made a bit of a mistake and misspoke a bit when suggesting that the victims of Grenfell lacked common sense on Radio 4 just now has made me feel physically ill. The real mistake he made was revealing his total lack of humanity in his ruthless pursuit of diverting blame away from his party. The failings were governmental and if it were in any way possible to blame a Labour administration, that is what they would be doing right now.
The cladding in question complied with the Building Regulations in effect at the time and Building Control will have approved its use. The building regs were inadequate, which is the fault of the government. The building regs at that time allowed for the use of this cladding as it passed surface flammability tests as a whole system from the outside. This is the wrong test to do of course because the fire and heat were always going to draw up behind it. The building regs were removed and replaced with a higher standard in November last year. The new document is compliant with EU standards. The old document consisted of British standards, which were lower, because despite the EU apparently controlling our every move, we have the option to do that.
The fire safety plan was written for the original concrete structure without the cladding and was not updated after the cladding was fitted, which was the fault of the council. The fire brigade and the occupants of the building did not know the cladding was highly flammable so followed what should have been an adequate fire safety plan. This does not make them stupid, culpable or lacking in common sense. Everyone was dealing with something they should not have been having to deal with so did not know what would happen. But I can see why it would be in the interests of the government to deflect blame away from themselves in this way.
Far be it from me to suggest we put Rees Mogg into a structure that contains an unknown and unquantified accelerant, set it on fire and then see how much common sense he has. Because that would be quite wrong of course.
Anyone who thinks dropping standards to make new trade deals isn’t a big deal or who still thinks the Tories will improve our lives when we leave the EU should think again.
Liz Cartmell
