It is truly pissing me off this belief by elements on the left that cladding was put on buildings to 'gentrify' buildings and make them look nicer.
The cladding was put on so the buildings would become energy efficient and help reduce the countries CO2 emissions - if it made the buildings look nicer as a result of this great but it's all down to the UK trying to meet emissions targets. Subsequent to these decisions, anybody who wouldn't think that that the owners - mainly councils - wouldn't try and do this at the lowest price possible is living in cloud cuckoo land.
As to Corbyn's mob blaming the Tories now that doesn't fecking wash either. A a liberal (small l) I have to say that EVERY POLITICAL PARTY IN THE UK HAS SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAS HAPPENED.
Concerns were raised raised about the fire risk of cladding as far back as 2000 in a parliamentary report produced by the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee after an inquiry after a blaze tore through a 14-storey block of flats in Irvine, Ayrshire, in June 1999, killing an elderly man.
This report concluded that cladding should be non-combustible or not pose an unacceptable level of risk to tenants.
Now pardon my f*cking french but what the fuck happened to this report? Not just once either, every 5 or so years a fire happens that leads to this issue being revisited again and again. The last time in 2013 after a coroner's inquest report into a fire in Camberwell in 2009. On this occasion a report was commissioned as to what needed to be done to regulations that supposedly reported to the minister a couple of months ago.
Here is the list of shame for those responsible at cabinet level , for those who can be arsed looking it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deputy_Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_the_Environment,_Transport_and_the_Regions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_Communities_and_Local_Government
Labour: John Prescott (1997), David Miliband (May 2005), Ruth Kelly (May 2006), Hazel Blears (June 2007), John Denham (June 2009).
Conservative: Eric Pickles (May 2010), Greg Clark (May 2015).
Now they have a stack of junior ministerial assistants, including a Lib Dem for Pickles. There are a stack of MPs on local government and the regions committees that go through the departments documentation to hold the departments actions to account.
I could even include the replacement of London Building Regs in 1986 with National Regulations but that didn't have an effect till years later when cladding was slapped on the buildings to reduce CO2 emissions.
Then there are umpteen local authorities who have representation on the BRAC (Building Regulation Advisory Committe) an NGO that controls building regulations with Government, Local Authority and Building Industry representation.
In short, as a country we have slept walked into this catastrophe.
