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athousanderrorsvia http://ift.tt/2sERs8e:
blamebrampton:
When I was young we had a woman Prime Minister who many of us deeply disliked. Irish radicals played an awful, central role in British government. And people died because other people couldn’t be arsed building structures to regulation, or indeed basic standards.
I could put up with having the first two back if it meant we never had to go through the third again.
We followed the news of the Grenfell Tower fire on Twitter, all the Brits in the office, some getting details from Facebook, all of us updating when there was actual news at first, then not, when there was no news, because the fire was too big and people could not get out, firefighters could not get in.
It took about an hour for the idiots to start tweeting. “How did they do this so efficiently?” a woman named Kathleen asked, hashtagging terror.
‘They’ got a lovely profit on the building work, Kathleen, by doing things like not installing decent fire alarms, or fire suppression systems, or adequate evacuation pathways. ‘They’ may even have made the building more flammable by installing a £10 million cosmetic upgrade rather than a £300,000 sprinkler system, though that part is still speculation. The previous sentence is fact, though.
A chap named Ciaran declared that if Muslims dunnit, he was gonna deport all of them out of Europe by himself. When asked if he planned to embark on a mass transportation of shit builders, though, he was struck with a sudden sore thumb and stopped tweeting.
Another chap, whose name I didn’t note, tweeted that the Muslims would have been awake because of Ramadan, and we all know what that means. Yes, thank goodness, some were and they were able to raise the alarm and rescue many people who would otherwise have been trapped. A small mercy!
Another chap whose bio describes him as MAGA, said it was clearly just too big a coincidence that the whole building caught fire like that. Absolutely true! several of us replied. It required a complex set of fuckups from the people in charge of that building to have left it with such piss poor safety mechanisms.
And look, it’s been 12 hours. The fire brigade haven’t said what started it. It may not have been the wiring. But even if Dave in flat 23 was engaged in a quick Satanic ritual that got out of control, that so many people have reported a lack of fire alarm, a single inaccessible escape route and a total lack of sprinklers still means the blame ultimately lies with the people in charge of the building. Who had been dismissing resident concerns about the dangers of the building for over four years.
Amid the idiots, some of Twitter reminded me not to turn into a raving misanthrope. The people offering shelter, lifts, food, clothing. The churches, mosques, synagogues, Sikh temples, small hotels and community centres opening their doors to both take people in and gather supplies for those who have lost everything.
And the prayers, to God, to Allah, to G_d, to hope, all of them the same: Please save them. Please keep the firefighters safe. Please let everyone be all right.
I love those people. Each of them chose to hope instead of hate. Because that’s what a prayer is. A wish for the most awful thing to not be true. A wish that somehow it can all be all right. If only they could be answered.
(Your picture was not posted)
blamebrampton:
When I was young we had a woman Prime Minister who many of us deeply disliked. Irish radicals played an awful, central role in British government. And people died because other people couldn’t be arsed building structures to regulation, or indeed basic standards.
I could put up with having the first two back if it meant we never had to go through the third again.
We followed the news of the Grenfell Tower fire on Twitter, all the Brits in the office, some getting details from Facebook, all of us updating when there was actual news at first, then not, when there was no news, because the fire was too big and people could not get out, firefighters could not get in.
It took about an hour for the idiots to start tweeting. “How did they do this so efficiently?” a woman named Kathleen asked, hashtagging terror.
‘They’ got a lovely profit on the building work, Kathleen, by doing things like not installing decent fire alarms, or fire suppression systems, or adequate evacuation pathways. ‘They’ may even have made the building more flammable by installing a £10 million cosmetic upgrade rather than a £300,000 sprinkler system, though that part is still speculation. The previous sentence is fact, though.
A chap named Ciaran declared that if Muslims dunnit, he was gonna deport all of them out of Europe by himself. When asked if he planned to embark on a mass transportation of shit builders, though, he was struck with a sudden sore thumb and stopped tweeting.
Another chap, whose name I didn’t note, tweeted that the Muslims would have been awake because of Ramadan, and we all know what that means. Yes, thank goodness, some were and they were able to raise the alarm and rescue many people who would otherwise have been trapped. A small mercy!
Another chap whose bio describes him as MAGA, said it was clearly just too big a coincidence that the whole building caught fire like that. Absolutely true! several of us replied. It required a complex set of fuckups from the people in charge of that building to have left it with such piss poor safety mechanisms.
And look, it’s been 12 hours. The fire brigade haven’t said what started it. It may not have been the wiring. But even if Dave in flat 23 was engaged in a quick Satanic ritual that got out of control, that so many people have reported a lack of fire alarm, a single inaccessible escape route and a total lack of sprinklers still means the blame ultimately lies with the people in charge of the building. Who had been dismissing resident concerns about the dangers of the building for over four years.
Amid the idiots, some of Twitter reminded me not to turn into a raving misanthrope. The people offering shelter, lifts, food, clothing. The churches, mosques, synagogues, Sikh temples, small hotels and community centres opening their doors to both take people in and gather supplies for those who have lost everything.
And the prayers, to God, to Allah, to G_d, to hope, all of them the same: Please save them. Please keep the firefighters safe. Please let everyone be all right.
I love those people. Each of them chose to hope instead of hate. Because that’s what a prayer is. A wish for the most awful thing to not be true. A wish that somehow it can all be all right. If only they could be answered.
(Your picture was not posted)
