Sunday 2 July 2017

Congratulations to black Labour MP David Lammy on being racist, sexist and classist

The only thing Lammy failed to use to attack Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the judge appointed to head the Grenfell Tower inquiry was...

... the fellow's age (he's 70). Imagine if the government had decided to appoint an ethnic minority female from a humble background and a Tory MP had complained about her colour, gender, and lower-class origins.  The Today Programme, Newsnight, the BBC News Channel, Sky News and the whole of social media would now have started a month-long conniption fit, ending with the resignation of the MP in question, and their imprisonment on hate crime charges.

What Lammy appears not to have grasped is that the point of a judge is that they're able to rise above emotionalism, partisanship and party politics in order to weigh the evidence and reach a conclusion based on the facts. This holds for court cases as well as public inquiries. Sir Martin Moore-Bick isn't there to feel the pain of Grenfell Tower residents: his role is to consider the available evidence impartially and to reach rational conclusions as to who and what was responsible for the conflagration, and what might be done to prevent similar tragedies.

What next? Demands that only judges who have been raped can preside over rape trials? Or that, if a murder has been committed in a stately home, only a judge who grew up in one should be allowed to hear the case?

Bloody silly, irresponsible, identity politics nonsense from a serial offender.

And there was more:

No, we didn't, actually. The incompetent handling of the survivors is indeed surprising - but I'm not quite sure why it's an indictment of, say, Mrs. Cynthia Snetherton of Acacia Avenue, Nuneaton - or of me, for that matter. It seems more likely to represent a shocking example of administrative incompetence at local government level: after all, only a few hundred victims needed to be fed, clothed and rehoused in a rich city of nearly 8.9m, and there wasn't exactly a dearth of  helpers and volunteers only too willing to lend a hand. Maybe it would have been handled better if there had been fewer left-wing troublemakers eagerly exploiting the pain, shock and grief of those directly affected by the blaze in order to undermine a Tory government. Malevolent compassion incarnate. Sickening.

Meanwhile, as the "failed" nation awaits the start of the inquiry to find out exactly why this tragedy happened, Christopher Booker presented some interesting information in today's Sunday Telegraph:
The real story began back in 2000, when a Commons committee held an inquiry into the fire risks of cladding on multi-storey blocks, following a fatal fire in Scotland the previous year. The MPs were particularly impressed by the evidence of Peter Field from the Building Research Establishment (BRE), who told 
them that the existing fire standard, EN 13501, was seriously inadequate, because it required only a “single burn” laboratory test of each separate material used in “cladding” operations.
What was needed, said Field, was a much more realistic test of how all the materials involved might behave when installed together. This is crucially relevant to Grenfell and many other towers because, contrary to what everyone has assumed, it was not the thin outer skin of external decorative cladding by itself that caused the fire.The problem was a combination of the 6in of combustible Celotex plastic foam insulation behind it, next to a void which, once the plastic was set alight by the fire from a flat, created an updraught, sending the flames roaring upwards. In fact, the BRE had already devised a new British standard, BS 8414, which the MPs recommended should replace the wholly inadequate EN 13501. But the latter had come from the EU, making it mandatory. So, under EU law, the new British standard could only therefore be a voluntary (and more expensive) option.
The relevant minister who could have gone to Brussels to call for a much more effective EU standard along British lines was John Prescott. But his officials at the time were concerned only with new regulations to improve insulation required under the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings directive. This was designed to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on global warming (signed for the UK by Prescott in 1997). The need to deal with fire risk seems not to have entered their heads.
Unfortunately, Christopher Booker comes from a rather privileged background, so David Lammy will probably dismiss his conjectures out of hand. After all, if you didn't grow up in a council-run tower block, why should you be allowed to write articles about why one of them was engulfed by fire?

3 comments:

  1. David Lammy descends directly from the 1987 Class of Black Labour MPs - Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng, Keith Vaz and Diane Abbott.

    Grant marked the murder of PC Blakelock at the 1985 Broadwater Farm Riots by saying that " the police deserved a bloody good hiding." Boateng was accused of abusing his staff when he was British High Commissioner in South Africa and imbued his son with an eccentric attitude towards women. Keith Vaz enjoys the company of young men from Eastern Europe and Diane Abbott [pause, close eyes, secretive smile] is soon to be our Home Secretary and cannot open her mouth without speaking complete balls. A real bunch of socialist sweet-hearts.

    The Comments sections in the Daily Telegraph have some disgraceful suggestions about who should head the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, but I would suggest Sir John Chilcot - he is experienced, fast, careful with the taxpayer's money and delivers actionable results. Perhaps to assuage Mr Lammy he could live in a tower block for some months to help him grow into the role? Just a thought.

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    1. I agree with you regarding the suitability of Sir John Chilcot - the judiciary's answer to Usain Bolt.

      I hadn't realised just how utterly ghastly Labour's House of Commons BME contingent was and is - you could add Chuka Umunna, our very own Rupa Huq, and Clive Lewis to the list of deplorables. Meanwhile, the Conservatives can boast the likes of Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng, Sajid Javid and James Cleverly - every one a winner. So race isn't the problem - it's socialism.

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  2. The Great Racial Replacement , for which apologies must surely be owed by the present holders of the description of 'English', in the ethnic sense,to the genetic future of their unfortunate Third World - enhanced descendants, continues apace and Lammy doubtless rejoices.

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