As this tragedy unfolded I became more and more angry. I used to work in the fire alarms sector so was used to the appalling behaviour of contractors. I had also spent 8 years as an independent District Councillor on a predominantly tory council. I'd seen their disdain for 'poor people', who they regarded as 'undeserving' and 'a nuisance' to be ignored.
I'd seen the deregulation of everything begin under Thatcher, carried on under Blair and accelerated under Cameron. I'd listened first hand to the endless, gormless witterings of tory ideology around 'cuts' masquarading as 'efficiency savings'. You are right, it is simply a matter of tory dogma. They have no comprehension of how this dogma plays out in the real world of consequences and they simply don't care anyway. Witness Rees Mogg's appalling comments after the event. He blamed the victims for being 'stupid' enough to listen to the advice they were given to remain in place.
Regulations have been presented by these people for decades as somehow a bad thing. A restriction on their desire to exploit for profit, again masquerading as 'freedom to innovate'. The public has bought into this, wholesale.
Regulations need to be reframed in the public consciousness as what they really are; *protections*. Protections against the kind of people who contaminate our food, fill our rivers with shit, pollute our atmosphere, abuse us at work erode our freedoms and wreck our environment. Look what they have done!
Excellent article. My minor quibble: we shouldn't use their terminology of "state interference". The government's first duty is to protect its people. The actions of these markets are interfering with that duty, so the government is duty-bound to intervene. I don't think that should be called interference.
Agreed. "State interference" has an unfortunate overtone of unwelcomeness, unwantedness. "State intervention" mightn't be well received either. "State regulation" would be better, although those ideologically opposing regulation have progressed their argument widely enough to discredit even that phrase. "State protection" might be optimal, I suggest. Language matters, because words don't come without overtones, baggage, assumptions, subconscious association, triggering.
Privatisation and deregulation go hand in hand. Whilst I can think of areas where some deregulation may be beneficial without social or economic downsides, I can think of not a single case where the privatisation spree started by Thatcher has had a beneficial impact on society at large. It has simply enriched those that are in least need, and in most cases had a net negative impact on people's lives overall.
Somehow the electorate needs to wise up when hearing the clarion call of ‘More freedom!’.
Freedom for the business and property-owning classes means the freedom to spend less and increase profits.
Freedom for those of us with no or little power and only our own daily labour to sell means an increased risk of physical and psychological harms.
I think of the Georgians who risked life and limb before standardised staircase regs came into being.
I think of the Victorians who bought bread and medicines adulterated with all sorts of harmful shit and whose children were deafened and maimed in the “dark, Satanic mills”.
Learning from harm and regulating to prevent is a feature of modern thinking to be celebrated and appreciated, so to all the cunts who contributed to Grenfell: what happened to you to make you into such sociopaths?
Every proponent of this deregulations should be made to live on the top floors of a tower block with this sort of cladding. And every water company executive should be forced to drink their own water.
Excellent article. Most of our societal problems have stemmed from Thatchers years when she allowed the banks into the mortgage market removing the need for Building Societies who contolled mortgage availability and affordability which in turn kept house prices affordable. This also led to the 2008 financial collapse
Ian, you are dead right. This is exactly what happens when governments in thrall to 'small state' ideology simply decline to govern and abandon the levers of power to big business.
You will no doubt remember one of the main ways in which this was legitimised - endless tirades against 'elf and safety in the right-wing press (it was also a speciality of John Humpheys on the Today programme). Thus were people persuaded to put the interests of big business above their own.
But let me make a pessimsistic prediction - unless this situation changes radically, if prosecutions are eventually mounted against the companies responsible for the fire, they will employ vast batteries of highly expensive lawyers to defend themselves, and they will simply run rings round the under-resourced (in every respect) public bodies responsible for the prosecution.
This is exactly what happened when Murdoch threw his vast resources behind defending Rebekah Brooks over the phone hacking scandal. Her defence succeeded precisely because it was bought at vast expense and the resources available to the proecuting authorities were totally inadequate by comparison.
If this happens, the processes that led to Grenfell, that you describe so vividly, are likely to be replicated in court and to result in those charged escaping scot free (with, of course, the public bearing the costs of the prosecution, however inadequate it may be). We need to be thinking about, and preparing for, this eventuality right now.
The UK is quite incapable of prosecuting companies (unless they are very small). This is because of the Identification Principle. Thus these companies and directors will escape the justice you seek, it is built into our criminal justice system. The Law Commission recently reviewed the Identification Principle, decided it was fine and the government did some absurd posturing by introducing more "failure to prevent" corporate crimes.
I wonder if there’s a good comparison with the Good Chaps theory of Parliament. The market is great for everything… as long as everyone behaves.
The naïveté of it in politics is a little more understandable, and was shattered by Boris, but to think there’s a serious intellectual school that believes in this for business is completely nonsensical. How can anyone treat these people seriously?
i don't know about that. it implies that the invisible hand or the mystical market pixies are remotely interested in good outcomes for humans or humanity.
how many other areas of our lives would we just let nature take it's course? human progress has been about taming our environment and bending it to a point where we can live decent lives. but somehow we have been persuaded to just trust 'the market' as if it was a god we serve and not a tool that should be serving us.
The political defenders of neoliberalism and deregulation do so because their masters require them to. This is an tied to money going into parties and jobs at places financed by the ones that benefit from deregulation. That's where all this comes from. Stop that flow of money and maybe you can start to see some contrition or changes of position on these issues.
Of course, the Tories are deep into this. Not only do they take the money from the owners of the right wing media, but they also take it from Russia and Russian oligarchs. They are all corrupt to the core. No intelectual honestly left.
The aim of Special Economic Zones like Teeside is to get rid of regulations and government. Labour and SNP appear to be supporting these as much as the Tories.
Yes, quite. But the conversion of labour from following this right wing path was no accident. The members could see where the path led and voted in someone who would steer them and the country away from it. You don't give any credit to corbyn because you don't like him, but you should for this is the key point- his opposition to austerity and right-wing "the markets know best" propaganda.
How many lessons to be learned from this latest enquiry? And how long before victims and survivors of all these disasters get the justice they deserve?
There's just one paramount lesson - enquiry recommendations get parked on the shelf unless governments have their feet held to the fire so firmly that the pain outweighs the delights offered by their donors. In this case most recommendations affect the private sector, so there's little or no cost to the public purse. However, the planning and building regs departments up and down the country have to be funded enough to be able to prevent these kinds of abuse, and Labour will have no excuse not to ensure that this happens (I write as a Labour member and voter).
As this tragedy unfolded I became more and more angry. I used to work in the fire alarms sector so was used to the appalling behaviour of contractors. I had also spent 8 years as an independent District Councillor on a predominantly tory council. I'd seen their disdain for 'poor people', who they regarded as 'undeserving' and 'a nuisance' to be ignored.
I'd seen the deregulation of everything begin under Thatcher, carried on under Blair and accelerated under Cameron. I'd listened first hand to the endless, gormless witterings of tory ideology around 'cuts' masquarading as 'efficiency savings'. You are right, it is simply a matter of tory dogma. They have no comprehension of how this dogma plays out in the real world of consequences and they simply don't care anyway. Witness Rees Mogg's appalling comments after the event. He blamed the victims for being 'stupid' enough to listen to the advice they were given to remain in place.
Regulations have been presented by these people for decades as somehow a bad thing. A restriction on their desire to exploit for profit, again masquerading as 'freedom to innovate'. The public has bought into this, wholesale.
Regulations need to be reframed in the public consciousness as what they really are; *protections*. Protections against the kind of people who contaminate our food, fill our rivers with shit, pollute our atmosphere, abuse us at work erode our freedoms and wreck our environment. Look what they have done!
Enough, I say. Basta!
Excellent post.
Excellent article. My minor quibble: we shouldn't use their terminology of "state interference". The government's first duty is to protect its people. The actions of these markets are interfering with that duty, so the government is duty-bound to intervene. I don't think that should be called interference.
Agreed. "State interference" has an unfortunate overtone of unwelcomeness, unwantedness. "State intervention" mightn't be well received either. "State regulation" would be better, although those ideologically opposing regulation have progressed their argument widely enough to discredit even that phrase. "State protection" might be optimal, I suggest. Language matters, because words don't come without overtones, baggage, assumptions, subconscious association, triggering.
Privatisation and deregulation go hand in hand. Whilst I can think of areas where some deregulation may be beneficial without social or economic downsides, I can think of not a single case where the privatisation spree started by Thatcher has had a beneficial impact on society at large. It has simply enriched those that are in least need, and in most cases had a net negative impact on people's lives overall.
Somehow the electorate needs to wise up when hearing the clarion call of ‘More freedom!’.
Freedom for the business and property-owning classes means the freedom to spend less and increase profits.
Freedom for those of us with no or little power and only our own daily labour to sell means an increased risk of physical and psychological harms.
I think of the Georgians who risked life and limb before standardised staircase regs came into being.
I think of the Victorians who bought bread and medicines adulterated with all sorts of harmful shit and whose children were deafened and maimed in the “dark, Satanic mills”.
Learning from harm and regulating to prevent is a feature of modern thinking to be celebrated and appreciated, so to all the cunts who contributed to Grenfell: what happened to you to make you into such sociopaths?
Every proponent of this deregulations should be made to live on the top floors of a tower block with this sort of cladding. And every water company executive should be forced to drink their own water.
Excellent article. Most of our societal problems have stemmed from Thatchers years when she allowed the banks into the mortgage market removing the need for Building Societies who contolled mortgage availability and affordability which in turn kept house prices affordable. This also led to the 2008 financial collapse
Ian, you are dead right. This is exactly what happens when governments in thrall to 'small state' ideology simply decline to govern and abandon the levers of power to big business.
You will no doubt remember one of the main ways in which this was legitimised - endless tirades against 'elf and safety in the right-wing press (it was also a speciality of John Humpheys on the Today programme). Thus were people persuaded to put the interests of big business above their own.
But let me make a pessimsistic prediction - unless this situation changes radically, if prosecutions are eventually mounted against the companies responsible for the fire, they will employ vast batteries of highly expensive lawyers to defend themselves, and they will simply run rings round the under-resourced (in every respect) public bodies responsible for the prosecution.
This is exactly what happened when Murdoch threw his vast resources behind defending Rebekah Brooks over the phone hacking scandal. Her defence succeeded precisely because it was bought at vast expense and the resources available to the proecuting authorities were totally inadequate by comparison.
If this happens, the processes that led to Grenfell, that you describe so vividly, are likely to be replicated in court and to result in those charged escaping scot free (with, of course, the public bearing the costs of the prosecution, however inadequate it may be). We need to be thinking about, and preparing for, this eventuality right now.
The UK is quite incapable of prosecuting companies (unless they are very small). This is because of the Identification Principle. Thus these companies and directors will escape the justice you seek, it is built into our criminal justice system. The Law Commission recently reviewed the Identification Principle, decided it was fine and the government did some absurd posturing by introducing more "failure to prevent" corporate crimes.
These people should never again be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.
I wonder if there’s a good comparison with the Good Chaps theory of Parliament. The market is great for everything… as long as everyone behaves.
The naïveté of it in politics is a little more understandable, and was shattered by Boris, but to think there’s a serious intellectual school that believes in this for business is completely nonsensical. How can anyone treat these people seriously?
i don't know about that. it implies that the invisible hand or the mystical market pixies are remotely interested in good outcomes for humans or humanity.
how many other areas of our lives would we just let nature take it's course? human progress has been about taming our environment and bending it to a point where we can live decent lives. but somehow we have been persuaded to just trust 'the market' as if it was a god we serve and not a tool that should be serving us.
The political defenders of neoliberalism and deregulation do so because their masters require them to. This is an tied to money going into parties and jobs at places financed by the ones that benefit from deregulation. That's where all this comes from. Stop that flow of money and maybe you can start to see some contrition or changes of position on these issues.
Of course, the Tories are deep into this. Not only do they take the money from the owners of the right wing media, but they also take it from Russia and Russian oligarchs. They are all corrupt to the core. No intelectual honestly left.
The aim of Special Economic Zones like Teeside is to get rid of regulations and government. Labour and SNP appear to be supporting these as much as the Tories.
https://open.substack.com/pub/europeanpowell/p/brexits-race-to-the-bottom-corporate?r=1v05l4&utm_medium=ios
Yes, quite. But the conversion of labour from following this right wing path was no accident. The members could see where the path led and voted in someone who would steer them and the country away from it. You don't give any credit to corbyn because you don't like him, but you should for this is the key point- his opposition to austerity and right-wing "the markets know best" propaganda.
How many lessons to be learned from this latest enquiry? And how long before victims and survivors of all these disasters get the justice they deserve?
There's just one paramount lesson - enquiry recommendations get parked on the shelf unless governments have their feet held to the fire so firmly that the pain outweighs the delights offered by their donors. In this case most recommendations affect the private sector, so there's little or no cost to the public purse. However, the planning and building regs departments up and down the country have to be funded enough to be able to prevent these kinds of abuse, and Labour will have no excuse not to ensure that this happens (I write as a Labour member and voter).
A very good summary of a horribly damming and long overdue report. This sums it all up for me "It ends with the fire. It begins with deregulation".
Great article - now apply the same argument to the catastrophic failures that unregulated markets are visiting on planetary boundaries.
Thanks Ian. Excellent perspective.