Schools closed over structural safety issues... another labour legacy!

Councils across the country are being urged to check the safety of school buildings after sudden closures in Edinburgh on safety grounds.

Officials ordered the closure of 17 schools and a community centre on Friday.

It is not yet known when they will re-open.

It is now feared that all schools built under the same private finance contract could pose a safety risk to children and staff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36005962



They were all built under labours dodgy PFI contracts!!!

Who cares about the safety of the kids, this issue is for scoring political points, dammit!

If labour had cared more about the kids and the taxpayers when signing off massive cheques in dodgy deals then PFI wouldn't be such a huge and long running scandal...!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:


Of labour had cared more about the kids and the taxpayers when signing of massive cheques in dodgy deals then PFI wouldn't be such a huge and long running scandal...!!!

So you're saying that it was a bad idea for the government to use private contractors to construct these schools? How very left-wing of you

Funny, all those schools had to be signed off by building inspectors, so wonder where the 'dodgy' bit actual was.  And I absolutely agree, should never have been done by private companies lol

Don't use that kissy thing at Tommy. He'll think you're gay and after him.

I'm saying it was all done in a typically labour manner of mismanagement and resulting in typically labour fashion of colossal failure and huge costs!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:
I'm saying it was all done in a typically labour manner of mismanagement and resulting in typically labour fashion of colossal failure and huge costs!!!

So you're in favor of privatization, in spite of it being proven by this issue to result in unsafe buildings that the children of Britain are to be educated inside?!

Or do you think the more left-wing approach should have been taken in order to preserve and better protect Britain's most precious resource?

Which is it, Tommy?

Still no response from Tommy, I see. Typical righty coward!

Tommy Monk wrote:
I'm saying it was all done in a typically labour manner of mismanagement and resulting in typically labour fashion of colossal failure and huge costs!!!

The only people who mismanaged where the private company and the building inspectors.

no choice BUT to use "private contractors"

there are no "nationalised" building contractors

local authorities dont have their own building dept anymore.....

ever since "dear old maggie"

and labour did NOTHING to reverse that

Schools fared quite well under labour actually. I worked in education then and we saw a lot of improvements - we used to discuss it at governor meetings.

sassy wrote:Funny, all those schools had to be signed off by building inspectors, so wonder where the 'dodgy' bit actual was.  And I absolutely agree, should never have been done by private companies lol

I agree the failures were clearly widespread... from the labour govt at the top... and throughout the local labour councils who oversaw and approved the local planning permissions/construction/inspections of the actual buildings!

Tommy Monk wrote:

sassy wrote:Funny, all those schools had to be signed off by building inspectors, so wonder where the 'dodgy' bit actual was.  And I absolutely agree, should never have been done by private companies lol

I agree the failures were clearly widespread... from the labour govt at the top... and throughout the local labour councils who oversaw and approved the local planning permissions/construction/inspections of the actual buildings!

So you're saying that the Labour Party went wrong when it preserved Thatcher's misguided privatization scheme?

Ben_Reilly wrote:Still no response from Tommy, I see. Typical righty coward!

So you not only want to set the loaded questions but you also think you can dictate the time allowed to answer you...!?





I count only 2 minutes from your question post to you then posting again accusing me of avoiding it and being a coward!!!



Most amusing...!

Tommy Monk wrote:

sassy wrote:Funny, all those schools had to be signed off by building inspectors, so wonder where the 'dodgy' bit actual was.  And I absolutely agree, should never have been done by private companies lol

I agree the failures were clearly widespread... from the labour govt at the top... and throughout the local labour councils who oversaw and approved the local planning permissions/construction/inspections of the actual buildings!

Rubbish Tommy.  Nobody says 'build crap schools', they approve a company, and company builds them and building inspectors pass them as fit for purpose.  The only people responsible are the builders and the building inspectors.

Tommy Monk wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Still no response from Tommy, I see. Typical righty coward!

So you not only want to set the loaded questions but you also think you can dictate the time allowed to answer you...!?





I count only 2 minutes from your question post to you then posting again accusing me of avoiding it and being a coward!!!



Most amusing...!

You said all that but still didn't answer the questions

This has LABOUR FAILURE stamped all over it!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Still no response from Tommy, I see. Typical righty coward!

So you not only want to set the loaded questions but you also think you can dictate the time allowed to answer you...!?





I count only 2 minutes from your question post to you then posting again accusing me of avoiding it and being a coward!!!



Most amusing...!

Still no answers, I see. Toddle off and get back when you have anything

I think the questions are for labour to answer over this huge failure and mismanagement/ misaporopriation of public funds... and local labour councils who were responsible for the direct control over them in the local areas...!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:I think the questions are for labour to answer over this huge failure and mismanagement/ misaporopriation of public funds... and local labour councils who were responsible for the direct control over them in the local areas...!!!

In other words, why did they continue Thatcher's disastrous privatization scheme? Good question, but wouldn't you have to round up a bunch of people no longer in office?

The best thing moving forward would be to press the Tories to abandon Thatcher's idiotic, right-wing, and child-endangering programs, even if it means they have to embrace a famously left-wing position and realize that the private sector isn't always the best choice.

Then you'd be wrong and trying to twist something as normal Tommy.   You don't even know what the problem is.  It might be that the company scammed the strength of the concrete, which nobody but them would know about.

sassy wrote:Then you'd be wrong and trying to twist something as normal Tommy.   You don't even know what the problem is.  It might be that the company scammed the strength of the concrete, which nobody but them would know about.

Im glad you said that because I've read that article and can't see any reference to labour anyway and there's a whole,list of fuck ups that could've happened by anyone!

eddie wrote:

sassy wrote:Then you'd be wrong and trying to twist something as normal Tommy.   You don't even know what the problem is.  It might be that the company scammed the strength of the concrete, which nobody but them would know about.

Im glad you said that because I've read that article and can't see any reference to labour anyway and there's a whole,list of fuck ups that could've happened by anyone!

I hope they get to the bottom of it, because building that use the right materials and are passed by a building inspector should not collapse like that, even with a storm.

I agree. I'm just confused as to why this was titled a "labour thing" and Labour was mentioned nowhere in the article.

What am I twisting...!?


Read the op... read the bit I highlighted...


Who was responsible for these PFI deal builds...!?

Problems have only been found in 4 schools - the rest were built by the same contractor and have been closed as a precaution until they have been surveyed.

The problem is the lack of ties to the steel structures and the external wall exterior construction.

The Scottish government scrapped PPPI in 2007.

PFI was the brainchild of John Major's government and George Osborne used it 61 times in his first year on multi-billion £ public sector infrastructure projecs - more than double that were used in any year under Gordon Brown's premiership.

Well the building inspector would not be able to see the ties once the wall was up.   Why the hell hadn't they tied it in properly - short cuts to get it done quicker?

Should have been inspecting it throughout...


And Bru. .. are you saying these were not labour PFI builds...!?

Tommy Monk wrote:
Councils across the country are being urged to check the safety of school buildings after sudden closures in Edinburgh on safety grounds.

Officials ordered the closure of 17 schools and a community centre on Friday.
It is not yet known when they will re-open.

It is now feared that all schools built under the same private finance contract could pose a safety risk to children and staff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36005962

They were all built under labours dodgy PFI contracts!!!

YET ANOTHER pathetic pisstake on Tommy's part  !!!

THOSE kinds of ridiculous economic rationalist policies originated with the Thatcher era's cost slashing exercises..

SINCE WHEN have Maggie and her cohorts been considered as Labour goons ?


ONLY IN Tommy's mind can everything be blamed on former governments..
SO, when is the next election over there ?

sassy wrote:
Funny, all those schools had to be signed off by building inspectors, so wonder where the 'dodgy' bit actual was.  And I absolutely agree, should never have been done by private companies lol

PRIVATE CONTRACTORS are always used over here...

GOVERNMENTS simply aren't rich enough as to maintain their own construction firms..

"British taxpayers face a total bill of more than £300 billion for projects funded using the controversial private finance initiative.

There are 717 PFI schemes currently under way to build new hospitals, schools, roads and other public facilities with a combined capital value of £54.7 billion.

However, the final cost of paying off all these projects will reach £301.3 billion over the coming decades, the Guardian reported."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9380539/PFI-projects-set-to-cost-tax-payers-over-300-billion.html

Tommy Monk wrote:Should have been inspecting it throughout...


And Bru. .. are you saying these were not labour PFI builds...!?

You are looking for labels, and not reasons tommy.  Notice in not one of these incidents is there an ounce of selfishness?  It's all mismanagement.

Put that aside for the moment, when Tories and Republicans do wrong there is almost inevitably some profit motive--legal or otherwise--behind it.  We get this all the time in the US...Benghazi, emails, whatever the allegation, when the allegation is against the left, there are only mistakes involved.  No one was making a profit.

Republicans and Tories lie for profit, not just mistake.  Need oil? Start a war in Iraq!    Need money?  Make a side deal for jewelry and an expensive house to give a speculator a state land deal.  Unavailable?  I'm in the bathroom with my secretary and no pants...don't tell my wife!  Tories and Republicans don't just mismanage, they generally get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

It's a British matter, so I'll leave it to the Brits to argue if it was really mismanagement.  It sounds as if you are just matching labels, and not thinking it through.  But, as I say...

Your Republicans sound more like our leftie labour lot to be honest...

Tommy Monk wrote:

Your Republicans sound more like our leftie labour lot to be honest...

Interesting, most people think they are right of your Tories.

Frankly, I think they are so disappointed in themselves and where their political philosophy has taken them, that they are (figuratively) suicidal. That would account for Donald Trump being the front runner, and Canadian Senator Ted Cruz actually being the 'establishment' alternative.

The RW of America is in its death throes.

The lefties here are too!

Tommy Monk wrote:The lefties here are too!

Well, and thank heavens for that. Lefties always have to clean up after the crazy RW.

It's the other way round here...


As I said to ben. .. your Democrats support policies that we already have under our conservatives!!!


Your Democrats are more right wing than our conservatives!!!


If you had our lefties then even your Democrats would be calling them commies and traitors and quite mad! !!

Tommy Monk wrote:It's the other way round here...

Not from the looks of it, tommy.

Tommy Monk wrote:It's the other way round here...


As I said to ben. .. your Democrats support policies that we already have under our conservatives!!!


Your Democrats are more right wing than our conservatives!!!


If you had our lefties then even your Democrats would be calling them commies and traitors and quite mad! !!

Highly doubt that. Many Democrats moderate their stances because they live in such a conservative country, for one. For another, it's the Democrats always trying to keep things like Social Security and Medicare public programs, while it's the Republicans constantly trying to allow their corporate masters to get in on the action.

The right doesn't believe in the public sector or in social programs. That's why I always have to laugh my ass off when I hear a British conservative talk about preserving the NHS while railing against socialism -- the NHS is one of the most famous socialist programs in the world.

PFI began under Major as a continuation of Thatcher's program of privatization and yes, it was also continued by Labour, but that in no way makes it a left-wing initiative. Other examples of privatization -- either sweeping or creeping -- have been introduced by governments all over the world, all of them described as right-wing. They very rarely work well, because making something into a for-profit venture introduces an incentive to overcharge and provide less quality.

What you're trying to do here, Tommy, is place all the blame on the left for a problem that it incurred only because it didn't shit-can a bad idea inherited from the right.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8779598/Private-Finance-Initiative-where-did-all-go-wrong.html



And do you know anything about our labour party and their propensity for selling off huge swathes of the public sector to private corporations...!?


G4s, serco answer crapita now run everything from prisons to benefits payments because of labour!!!


Something that I have always been against!!!



What you are trying to do is say that because I am against stuff that labour have done... really I am in favour of it because I am right wing and the right wing done it too!!!


I have always believed that the state should run certain things that we pay taxes for... and if they are doing their job properly them it will always be cheaper than a private company doing the same job because there is no need to include extra for the profit margin.

sassy wrote:Well the building inspector would not be able to see the ties once the wall was up.   Why the hell hadn't they tied it in properly - short cuts to get it done quicker?

Over here, we have the UBC {universal building code} for any and all specific type of structures and the inspectors have what is called a 'Punch List'...but prior to any dirt digging ceremony the Blue Prints {plans have to be signed off on by the local municipality that sells & signs off on the building permit}; building plans have to have all those pesky finite details of site elevations - wall dimension {interior/exterior} - depth of concrete - storm water run off drainage - water lines/sanitary sewer lines]- licensed electricians - licensed plumbers - site foreman's {not all union labor required any longer} and the building permit sign placed on site at all times. 

And as each phase of the construction is completed the inspector provides a SOC {signature of completion} and if the builder/construction foreman is unable to obtain one or fails to comply with specific issues that are notated on that specific punch list --- then 'ALL' work comes to a STOP until the corrections are done and the punch list is given the SOC! 

I'd be wanting to see those inspection punch lists and how many errors and what was ordered to be corrected most of all whose signature is attached to that punch list/SOC?

We have crooked/shifty/give-a-shit builders/contractors/inspectors throughout this country too. It pays to get references and always start at the local municipality; go as a inspector what home builder do THEY have the most problems with and ongoing punch lists --- those that do the job know what builders cut the most corners!