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Jacob Rees Mogg

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Hopkirk | 08:32 Wed 06th Nov 2019 | News
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Is it just journalists who are affronted by his Grenfell comments?

Perhaps a little insensitive, but I can't see much wrong with his comments. To listen to the BBC this morning, you would have thought he lit the fire.
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Spath -if the fire is above me the heat from that fire is rising as are the flames and bet your bottom dollar I'm outa there PDQ

If the fire is below me then I'll have a go but make get beaten back by the smoke and flames, although I'd be covered in a duvet or blanket I'd soaked in water with a covering over my mouth to give me the bet chance.
Flat fires are not that uncommon, and fatalities are low (usually the occupant of the flat on fire, not their neighbours).
So I disagree with the assertion that they must have known that they would die if they didn’t evacuate. Past history would indicate they would be safe to stay.
Fair point Gromit. I personally, if I knew my building was on fire, would try to find out where abouts it was burning, and still probably evacuate regardless of where.
Seems all these tories are *** aint they.
//Mr Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House of Commons, said the 72 people who died in the blaze lacked the “common sense” to flee the building//

No he didn't.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/voices/grenfell-tower-fire-victims-housing-support-benefits-survivors-a8268911.html%3famp

Most flats were sublet to illegal immigrants who neither spoke or could read english & lived under the council's radar, as did the sub landlords. There was also a cannabis factory & gas cylinders.

JCR was right suggesting flee. Illegals are good at that but for having to face authority as fire brigade/hospital/public.

Similar cladding is used the world over & a blow torch could cause same if handler doesnt take precautions.
Interesting read here about a 2009 fire.
In that incident, containment failed, and the inquest said the stay put advice was wrong and resulted in more deaths. But the advice stayed everywhere else.

https://www.towerblocksuk.com/lakanal

The article says the advice that people should not evacuate is partly based on them impeding the fire brigade trying to get to the fire.
tamborine

The fire was caused by a faulty fridge/freezer. The chap growing cannabis plants did not start it, and was not an illegal tenant.
JRM was uncharacteristically imprecise in his words, for which he apologised.

That said, Grenfell was not unique and it was not unprecedented.
Ellipsis, //Grenfell was not unique and it was not unprecedented. //

Really? I don't recall anything like it. Tell us more.
its like had happened before.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakanal_House_fire

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-45982810
Catherine Hickman was on the phone when she died. It wasn't a panicked call or an attempt to have some last words with a loved one.

As a BBC Two documentary recounts, she had been speaking to a 999 operator for 40 minutes, remaining calm and following the advice to "stay put" in her tower block flat.

As smoke surrounded her, she stayed put. As flames came through the floorboards, she stayed put. At 16:30, she told the operator: "It's orange, it's orange everywhere" before saying she was "getting really hot in here".

Believing to the last that she was in the safest place, she carried on talking to the operator - until she stopped.

"Hello Catherine.

"Hello Catherine. Can you make any noise so I know that you're listening to me?

"Catherine, can you make any noise?

"Can you bang your phone or anything?

"Catherine, are you there?

"I think that's the phone gone [CALL ENDS]"

Miss Hickman was not a resident of Grenfell Tower. The fire in which she and five others died happened in July 2009, at 12-storey Lakanal House in Camberwell, south London. But that same "stay put" advice was given to Grenfell residents eight years later. Many of those who did never made it out alive.
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There were 8 years between Lakanal and Grenfell, 8 years in which the "stay put" policy could have been amended to take account of the cases in which it wasn't the best strategy. But it wasn't and, as a result, 72 people died and more than 70 others were injured in Grenfell Tower.
I think his almost immediate apology just made things worse. He mentioned 'with hindsight'. The problem with 'hindsight' is that it does what it says on the tin. You don't see the other viewpoint until the first has caused injury/harm/offence. I've said it before on here and i'll say it again now, we are all born with 20/20 hindsight.
naomi24//spath, he's right if circumstances allow. In the case of Grenfell circumstances didn't allow. Anyone leaving their flats would have had to negotiate dark stairwells filled with toxic smoke - not to mention other panicking residents - and that would not have been a common sense choice.//

You're wrong, imo, Naomi. There was a 50 minute window of opportunity to evacuate the flats safely. The senior fire officers didn't 'allow' an evacuation until it was dangerous.
The inquiry agrees with me.
What JRM said:
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The tragedy came about because of the cladding, leading to the fire racing up the building and then was compounded by the stay put policy and it seems to me that is the tragedy of it. The more one’s read over the weekend about the report and about the chances of people surviving, if you just ignore what you’re told and leave you are so much safer. And I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do. And it is such a tragedy that that didn’t happen.
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I think if he had put the word "now" after "And I think if either of us were in a fire", which is what he claims in his apology to have meant, it would have been less demeaning to the victims.
Ellipsis - // JRM was uncharacteristically imprecise in his words, for which he apologised. //

My view exactly, and I concur with Naomi's point that the accusation That JRM inferred that the residents 'lacked common sense' is not valid, because that is not what he said.

Mr Rees-Mogg pointed out that, with hindsight, in view of what occurred at Grenfel, ignoring advice to stay put was not prudent, and evacuating appeared to be common sense.

As you say Ellipsis, most unusually for Mr Rees-Mogg, he did not express his view as clearly as he might have done, and could possibly have reiterated that his view was based on hindsight.

What he clearly did not do, was infer that the tenants who stayed put lacked common sense, or that that was because they are of an inferiors social class.

That particular gargantuan leap has been made via emotional reaction caused by misunderstanding the point being made, with flames fanned by the media, the self-righteous brothers on social media.

Mr Rees-Mogg has correctly apologised to anyone upset by the misinterpretation of what he said, which is generous of him, because it is the misinterpretation that caused the upset, not what he actually said.
i agree, you would have thought he had committed arson. I despair of the BBC, i really do.
Shall we add that over two years later not all residents have been rehoused under the conservative government. Many of them are still in temporary accommodation.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/09/grenfell-victims-still-living-temporary-accommodation-two-years-later-9141649/
Agreed Gromit but a weed factory was found in Grenfell.

One would expect a taxi driver to have a fire hydrant for his dodgy freezer.
// I despair of the BBC, i really do //

The BBC are reporting the story which ALL news media channels and newspapers are also doing. It is not the BBC driving this gaffe, it the JRM’s Labour opponents.

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