We return today to Brassett Point, the waterlogged Newham council block where the pipework down one whole side of the building is so wrecked that daily life for residents is an actual shower of shit.
Wet ceilings, leaking sewerage and water pipes, and buckets and towels all over – see residents’ vids below. Doesn’t look good. I admit I’m no engineer, but I don’t think you have to be. Can’t bode well when your building turns into a sieve.
Bucket collecting water in Brassett Point
You also start to wonder if the council has given up when you tell them that pipes over your loo are bust – and their suggestion is that you pee in a bucket.
Readers of this site will remember a recent story about the council giving a Brassett Point resident a portaloo to use when the leaks raining down on her toilet became tricky to swerve while perched.
The resident wasn’t thrilled with this arrangement. I think we can all agree that having to sit on a bucket next to your friends in your lounge is socially kind of blunt.
Really – MPs and the council need to get onto this in a big way before the whole sodden building collapses with everyone in it, etc.
The council fixes one leak here, only for another couple of leaks to spring over here. Can’t see this lasting for long.
Water coming through the ceiling
More on this soon, but for now – and I do mean now – let’s get moving on this before whatever is still holding the building up finally dissolves.
And the portaloo, just as a reminder of scenes late last year at Brassett Point. I took this picture when I visited:
Portaloo in Newham council flat
And one more video. Why not:
Unbelievable. When you think about it the Working Class haven’t really progressed all that much since Victorian times. All those official Reports, Commissions and investigations of the 1860s/70s into living conditions of the poor that resulted in the banning of back-to-back houses,vthe building of which continued under ‘Bylaws’ and were still occupied by people I knew as late as the 1980s/90s although some had been fitted with indoor toilets by then, and the overcrowded tenements that were eventually demolished in the 1930s but where thousands had died of Cholera and Typhoid in the 1860s. The new Council estates, and high rise flats, were to be the answer, until they stopped building them altogether and stopped maintaining the existing ones, still occupied of course by the great unwashed.
Yep these places are increasingly a major problem. Real structural issues methinks because as you say – lack of major maintenance. They fix one leak in this place and then another one starts spurting and you get the feeling that the leaks are winning the race. This place is really wet. It concerns me.
And seemingly no plan, no oversight, no budget, no responsibility… just sticking plaster fixes as with everything else.
Indeed. Though I can’t help feeling that Sunak and his charming cabinet would find the collapse of a building full of poor people either a minor item, or actually entertaining.
No doubt Right-wingers everywhere. There were actually people prosecuted for posting a disgusting video online of their sick Grenfell celebrations complete with cardboard model and bonfire. I have to remind myself of such things and such people whenever I’m feeling disillusioned with Socialism, y’know regain perspective.
Just one party after another for that lot
Ronan Point was a 22-storey tower block in Canning Town in Newham, East London, that partly collapsed on 16 May 1968, only two months after it had opened.
So many tower blocks, schools, hospitals, care homes, new apartment blocks still have the same not banned but banned cladding as Grenfell Tower. It is costing too much for the Councils to remove it. Tory Britain in full swing. The mould inside the Tory Cabinet & Parliament with rodents running around the chamber & buckets catching the water pouring through the Parliament building is what normal people should suffer like us MP’s sitting in Parliament with all these bad conditions. Shall we fix the Tory side of the roof first for Levelling Up Policies !!
Why people aren’t in jail over Grenfell I can’t begin to understand. How many people do you have to burn alive to get locked up? I personally would have thought the answer to that was One, but now suppose it is a figure north of several hundred, or even several thousand. Or million. Who can really say. Guess they’ll just have to keep killing people in council blocks until we find out.
That lot better hope there isn’t a god.
Grenfell is a cover-up, it has to be, someone must be ultimately responsible, or a group of people, which is a Conspiracy. If and when the truth ever comes out it will rock the Establishment like the Poulson affair did in the early 70s, architectural/Planning short cuts for large backhanders.
Asbestos, at least when it gets wet it won’t be dust bits in the air, just asbestos mould. It’s too expensive for councils to remove asbestos because of Government cuts.
Welcome back Liz Truss, Boris Johnson & Nadine Dorris. Rishi is in trouble.
Liz Truss Returns…?
Say it isn’t true.
Yes it’s true. Liz is saying everyone was wrong & she is right. It was the Tories being too left wing against her. She still believes in her policies & will prove people wrong. The scapegoat is back & running.
Liz Truss: I was never given realistic chance to enact tax cuts
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64527252
BRING ME MY GUILLONTINE
Liv Struss’ REAL Resignation Speech (A Liz Truss Parody)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–P3GdP1HIw
She needs to be restrained in a straight jacket.
I would have thought that the mere mention of her return to front line politics would be enough to upset the Markets and cause the Pound to fall a point or two.
One from 7 years ago – Sounds about today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLGG5UGEKw
Some things just never change, same shit different day, and Politicians are full of it. Kick the poor, blame the vulnerable, demonise those in need, divide and rule, make empty promises, pocket all the wealth. Next…