A TRAGEDY THAT HAS TURNED INTO A FRAUDULENT NIGHTMARE

THE consumption by fire last June 14 of Grenfell Tower on the northwestern outskirts of central London with the loss of 71 lives was a true tragedy but we know the cause of it. The cladding used by the incompetents who built it was the cheaper version that was a fire-encourager rather than a fire-blocker. But the useless decision-making that turned a spark into a catastrophe has persisted ever since.

The horrible blackened skeleton of Grenfell still rises far into the skyscape as you drive by, an untouched reminder and reproach to British official stupidity. Why is it not shrouded with cladding as, inside the shroud, it is dismantled floor by floor?

I am sure that in other countries it would be long gone. Worse, the amount that has been spent housing the survivors is now three times what it cost to build.

Claims of fraud proliferate. Accusations fill the sky like migrating starlings but little else happens to resolve who were true victims and who were con men who were never even there.

Court cases to punish these disgusting false claims are conspicuous by their absence. The official inquiry has all the energy of a sloth on barbiturates. The rest of us, mere taxpayers, can only think back to an age when the British were famed for drive, energy, dynamism and a vigorous civil service.

Now it seems those in charge of all our lives just stare helplessly at screens, desperate not to offend anybody.

Churchill used to scrawl in the margins: Action this day. The war apart, no wonder we put up statues to him.