the snap general election thread

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

I am trying to show fire is a negligible risk its such a low risk that people are 3 x as likely to die from a domestic fall than a fire. Trying to mitigate such negligible risks with high cost countermeasures will do more harm than good

It's a fairly low risk, but it's a horrific way to die and can be fairly easily mitigated if some basic safety standards are adhered to.

Preventing falls is harder (but railing have been a requirement for decades, for instance).

Who are you to say to a council tenant who pays their own rent they they HAVE to have a rent increase of £25 per month to pay for counter measures which are probably only worth £1pm to them?

We're saying housing should be as safe as possible, and that the cost is nowhere near the £25/month you're claiming.

Who are you to say society must provide costly counter measures to the poorest when Soviet isn't willing to provide this to themselves.

Someone who cares about other people. Are you essentially saying the poor shouldn't have basic safety provisions because they are poor? We're (as a society) better than that.

GreatApe

CKhalvashi wrote: »

You've conveniently quoted for a system costing 3 times as much as reality, so there is your saving

I give you a range of £3k-£9k for a system and chose the mid point. You just pretended you knew exactly the cost of a fire sprinkler system and chose a figure so low I couldn't find any company quoting a system for that low a price.

We've also not talked about the disrupted lower quality of lives while you are fitting these systems.

CKhalvashi

GreatApe wrote: »

Who are you to say society must provide costly counter measures to the poorest when Soviet isn't willing to provide this to themselves.

What (if this is such a dig, as I think it may be) does my background have to do with anything? My views on the USSR have been made perfectly clear; the later version had many things very good about it.

If it's a typo, I take the part about the digging back, but the rest of what I said above still stands.

GreatApe wrote: »

I give you a range of £3k-£9k for a system and chose the mid point. You just pretended you knew exactly the cost of a fire sprinkler system and chose a figure so low I couldn't find any company quoting a system for that low a price.

We've also not talked about the disrupted lower quality of lives while you are fitting these systems.

I Googled the cost of a system. I had plumbing work done a few years ago and estimated the cost of connecting it up from that work. I've tried to overestimate where possible to give an idea of the 'average' 2 bedroom flat.

If contractors are quoting more than about £1700 for what should essentially be a (max) 2 day job per flat plus connecting it up to whatever fire system is in place, then I've chosen the wrong career path.

steampowered

Sapphire wrote: »

So who's to fund that? There's all this talk about 'government money'. This is taxpayers' money, which means that people like you (presumably, if you are a taxpayer) and I would have to pay for such 'solutions'. I'm sure that would go down well with taxpayers.

There is too much overcrowding and there are too many people, especially in London, for taxpayers to support all the 'improvements' that would be needed to enable everyone to live in relative luxury (compared with most of the rest of the world), many of them for free.

As a society, we've managed to maintain social housing in reasonable condition since much of it was build after the second world war. I don't see why we should be incapable of doing that now.

There is a giant gap between the rather shocking condition of many tower blocks and the "relative luxury" you describe.

It may well turn out to be the case that the cuts of 40% in local authority budgets (meaning cuts to social housing, cuts to elderly care, cuts to care for people with learning difficulties, effectively abolishing libraries in most parts of the countries along with other things) have been too much.

To answer your question, I am indeed a taxpayer earning well into six figures - and would be very happy to pay a bit more tax to fund a decent society. Or for cuts to be made in other public services to fund taking care of our country's social housing stock a bit better.

Yes, there are cuts that could be made, for example to the salaries of highly paid executives in public services such as the BBC and the NHS (along with the curtailment of such practices as 'the revolving door'), and to the use of management consultants who work according to a formula and charge millions for this – and halving the House of Lords could also save money. However, this would help little in the constant and increasing demands on public services, which are also affecting those who do work and have done so for decades, many of whom are not wealthy. Taxing businesses and millionaire bankers would be very desirable – but the fact is that they would just up sticks and go to a country that would be more profitable for them personally, in the process removing wealth from Britain. Globalists who command much of the world's wealth (and therefore power) – and who can spend hundreds of thousands of pounds, or millions, on an 'artwork' – do not care about the populations of individual countries, or about humanity in general.

This is all an entirely different point that has nothing to do with housing.

I think you are wrong to suggest that there are massive savings to be made from cutting highly paid people from the public sector. If you want to deliver a good service you need good people, and these people could as a general rule be earning much more in the private sector. I am also not sure why you think that advice management consultants should not apply in the public sector - most of their work is in the private sector, so it must have economic value.

If you dislike highly paid executives and management consultants, I think you'd have a fit if you saw some of the FTSE 250 companies I work with. Presumably you must also think that the private sector is woefully inefficient, based on your comments? But that's starting to take us off-topic.

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

I give you a range of £3k-£9k for a system and chose the mid point. You just pretended you knew exactly the cost of a fire sprinkler system and chose a figure so low I couldn't find any company quoting a system for that low a price.

We've also not talked about the disrupted lower quality of lives while you are fitting these systems.

Are you looking at systems split across multiple flats, or for individual dwellings?

Why not look at what experts are saying in interviews, like here (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-40293035):

The British Automatic Fire Sprinkler Association (BAFSA), the trade body for the fire sprinkler industry, said retrofitting Grenfell Tower with sprinklers might have cost £200,000. This is the figure for installing a sprinkler system but does not include potential maintenance fees or costs associated with the wider redevelopment of a building.

That's about £1500 per flat. A quarter of what you're claiming, and is based on the trade body for the industry. Lets use that figure?

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

It's a fairly low risk, but it's a horrific way to die and can be fairly easily mitigated if some basic safety standards are adhered to.

Preventing falls is harder (but railing have been a requirement for decades, for instance).



We're saying housing should be as safe as possible, and that the cost is nowhere near the £25/month you're claiming.


Someone who cares about other people. Are you essentially saying the poor shouldn't have basic safety provisions because they are poor? We're (as a society) better than that.

Nothing, including houses, should be as safe as possible

Everything, included houses, should be safe enough such that the incremental cost of incremental safety is not so high as to detract peoples quality of life elsewhere.

Fore is such a negligible risk that additional risk mitigation like sprinklers is too costly to justify the reduced risk. It doesn't matter if you agree if my estimate of £25pm cost is reasonable. We can do it the other way around, if we value each life at £1 million we would need the fire mitigating technology to cost less than 75p per month. While I might be wrong on my £25pm calculation I'm sure both of us will probably agree I can't be that wrong. That we both agree sprinklers can't be installed for a cost less than 75p per month per property.

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

While I might be wrong on my £25pm calculation I'm sure both of us will probably agree I can't be that wrong. That we both agree sprinklers can't be installed for a cost less than 75p per month per property.

I disagree, I think your numbers are hugely wrong.

Given we have a good estimate of £1500/flat.
Assuming it needs replaced every 50 years, that's a monthly cost of £2.50. On a flat with a monthly rent of £2000.

Add in few quid annually for an inspection, and you're still an order of magnitude out.

Anyway, legislation has changed in 2007 requiring sprinklers, so we'd only need to retrofit any high-rise built before then.

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

Are you looking at systems split across multiple flats, or for individual dwellings?

Why not look at what experts are saying in interviews, like here (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-40293035):


That's about £1500 per flat. A quarter of what you're claiming, and is based on the trade body for the industry. Lets use that figure?

Let's go further and say it would only cost £1k per property and we want to safe guard everyone so we install a system in every property in the country.

The cost would be just under £4 per month in perpetuity
Doesn't sound a lot but it means you would be paying £5 million for each life saved

I know people are arguing no need to install it in every property only on high rises. But they are doing this with the assumption that high rise buildings are more at risk with no evidence for that assumption. As I've said before in the USA (no UK data I could find) fires are 1/3rd as likely to spread beyond the room and 1.3rd as likely to spread beyond the floor if the fore is in a high rise vs a house. So while its possible that if a fire happens then its more likely you will be injured in a high rise its also possible that fires are a good deal less likely to spread in a high rise building (from the room it starts in)

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

But they are doing this with the assumption that high rise buildings are more at risk with no evidence for that assumption

Where do you get that from?

They are doing it because high rises don't have the same alternatives. Anyone in the building when the fire happens is pretty much stuck in the building until the fire stops. Fires in high rises (presumably) have much higher fatality rates than in low rises, because it's so much harder to escape.

Sapphire

As a society, we've managed to maintain social housing in reasonable condition since much of it was build after the second world war. I don't see why we should be incapable of doing that now.

There has been and continues to be a frightening rate of increase in the population in London. The more people with few (or no) job prospects arrive in this country, the more the problems and resentments will grow. Taxpayers cannot sustain this influx, especially when it is detrimental to themselves. (You only have to research the conditions in Georgian and Victorian London, when people were literally living and dying in the streets due to sudden explosions in population and a lack of work, to see what can happen under such circumstances.)

There is a giant gap between the rather shocking condition of many tower blocks and the "relative luxury" you describe.

The 'relative luxury' I was describing is comparative to conditions in much of the world, not those applicable to people (and hedge funds, etc.) who have bought so-called 'luxury apartments' all over London.

It may well turn out to be the case that the cuts of 40% in local authority budgets (meaning cuts to social housing, cuts to elderly care, cuts to care for people with learning difficulties, effectively abolishing libraries in most parts of the countries along with other things) have been too much.

Agreed – but do you suggest that taxpayers fork out more tax for these services? What do you think would be the response of those who are not wealthy, but so far doing OK after a lifetime's hard work, to such a suggestion?

To answer your question, I am indeed a taxpayer earning well into six figures - and would be very happy to pay a bit more tax to fund a decent society.

So would I, gladly – if I was earning such a sum – but very many taxpayers are not.

I think you are wrong to suggest that there are massive savings to be made from cutting highly paid people from the public sector. If you want to deliver a good service you need good people, and these people could as a general rule be earning much more in the private sector. I am also not sure why you think that advice management consultants should not apply in the public sector - most of their work is in the private sector, so it must have economic value.

The point is that executives in the public sector (like bank managers) never used to command nearly the sorts of salaries that they do now. Moreover, they are not all efficient (I've worked in a hospital, so am aware of this). When it comes to management consultants, my cousin is one and they do get paid an absolute fortune for work that should be in the capacity of said executives to do – their work is formulaic.

If you dislike highly paid executives and management consultants, I think you'd have a fit if you saw some of the FTSE 250 companies I work with. Presumably you must also think that the private sector is woefully inefficient, based on your comments? But that's starting to take us off-topic.

Probably, but the FTSE 250 companies are not subsidised by taxpayers. Having worked in private companies (small, then big), I do feel that big corporations tend to be massively inefficient. I remember, for instance, 'important' meeting upon meeting, with people droning on for hours just so that they could stand out from the crowd, and with an enormous amount of time being wasted just in this activity (especially when you get to managerial level). Small companies were much, much better (to their employees and in terms of the work they produced), but unfortunately the successful ones were mostly taken over by large global corporations from the 1980s onwards, or they just couldn't compete with them. Shame, as far as I'm concerned. OT, yes, but interesting.