Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Larch]

How did this intra-British Empire inmigration work, back in the day, for her family to be able to move from India to Uganda? IIRC Indians inmigrated to many places in the British Empire as traders, right? I seem to remember there being small communities of Indian origin in the Caribbean in many former British colonies, for instance

[Josquius]

How did this intra-British Empire inmigration work, back in the day, for her family to be able to move from India to Uganda? IIRC Indians inmigrated to many places in the British Empire as traders, right? I seem to remember there being small communities of Indian origin in the Caribbean in many former British colonies, for instance

Kind of unrelated.
In Central Africa it largely was merchants seeking out new business opportunities kind of like the Chinese today.
In the Caribbean it was rather dodgier, with the outlawing of slavery the Caribbean was suffering a deficit of labour so they sent people out to India promising vast riches to poor people who were willing to move over as indentured labourers. Kind of like the Gulf States today.

[The Larch]

How did this intra-British Empire inmigration work, back in the day, for her family to be able to move from India to Uganda? IIRC Indians inmigrated to many places in the British Empire as traders, right? I seem to remember there being small communities of Indian origin in the Caribbean in many former British colonies, for instance

Kind of unrelated.
In Central Africa it largely was merchants seeking out new business opportunities kind of like the Chinese today.
In the Caribbean it was rather dodgier, with the outlawing of slavery the Caribbean was suffering a deficit of labour so they sent people out to India promising vast riches to poor people who were willing to move over as indentured labourers. Kind of like the Gulf States today.

Cheers. I was not aware of this indentured labour aspect of Indian inmigration within the British Empire, I was under the impression that it was mostly because of trade and business opportunities rather than because of the need for harsh manual labour.

[Sheilbh]

How did this intra-British Empire inmigration work, back in the day, for her family to be able to move from India to Uganda? IIRC Indians inmigrated to many places in the British Empire as traders, right? I seem to remember there being small communities of Indian origin in the Caribbean in many former British colonies, for instance

I think it's complicated and I don't know enough to really give much information. My understanding is that there were basically three types of migration, the biggest was indentured Indian labour (which was only abolished in the 1920s) basically as a form of debt bondage (these are the "coolies"). This wasn't just a British empire thing - the French did it too to Reunion and their Caribbean colonies from Pondicherry - but obviously it's mainly a British empire thing. I assume as a replacement for slave labour.

My understanding is that it was normally for a period of time but there was encouragement to extend the period you were indentured. Many didn't return to India and, I assume, integrated into the wider Indian communities in Africa and the Caribbean.

There's also the "passenger" Indians who were typically the traders who bought their own tickets and travelled as British subjects rather than indentured labourers. I think part of that, especially in East Africa, may have been from well established Indian Ocean trade routes, but I'm not sure. They were kind of the middle men of Empire - there's a lot of very good post-colonial literature on (and by) Indian diaspora in the Caribbean or Africa, V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas for example (there's also a really good book about a 19th century trading trip through Kenya which I cannot remember the name of for the life of me - but it's part of this too).

And I think the other big category was probably the Indian Army which was deployed all over the empire.

But the Indian diaspora within the former British empire is huge - Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, South Africa etc. And there were a few countries in the immediate post-colonial cold war were their politics basically divided on racial lines with the Indian community on one side and the black community on the other - especially I think Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.

Edit: And actually just thinking from Tyr's points I think the East African trading networks may be a bit like there are Indian and Chinese communities all over different points of South-east Asia. There were trade networks there long before Europeans arrived. I think some of the migration of Indians during the British empire actually just reflects those old networks both to East Africa but also to, say, British Malaya.

[Sheilbh]

So it's not Brexit. But the Grenfell Inquiry is now in it's second phase. The first phase was about the incidents of the night of the fire, the second phase is about the wider issues - the focus so far has been on the contractors and the actual refurbishment. This is horrendous (but, somehow, not surprising):

Grenfell Tower inquiry: what we have learned since July
Robert Booth
Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent
Sun 6 Sep 2020 17.06 BST
Last modified on Mon 7 Sep 2020 04.37 BST

The Grenfell Tower public inquiry restarts on Monday, 28 months since it began with tearful tributes to the 72 people who died as a result of the fire. Hearings are expected to run into 2022, but the forensic analysis of how the high-rise homes were wrapped in combustible cladding has started to produce devastating revelations.

Day by day, the lawyers weave in new threads of evidence, but it is only when submissions and admissions are viewed together that a full picture begins to emerge. The bereaved families and survivors' group Grenfell United recently summed it up in a letter to the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick: "We have witnessed shocking dereliction of care and professionalism ... a total lack of empathy towards our loss and a focus on greed and profit at the expense of the wellbeing of residents."

Here the Guardian draws some of the strands together..

"Pocketing the difference"

The pressures that led professionals to wrap Grenfell Tower in plastics that burned like petrol on 14 June 2017 could be seen as early as 2013, when cost-cutting began. The block's landlord, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) – an arm of one of the richest councils in Britain – decided that its existing refurbishment quote was £1.6m too high. It wanted a cheaper builder using cheaper materials. Rydon, a Sussex-based contractor, saw an opportunity. It had already wrapped the Chalcots and Ferrier Point council towers in London in the same potentially lethal ACM cladding that it would use at Grenfell. "This one has 'our' name written all over it," said Mark Harris, the commercial manager for Harley, Rydon's cladding subcontractor.

The council landlord had to put tender the job publicly under EU-wide procurement rules "to ensure that the best contractor is selected and value for money achieved". But the transparency of that process has been placed in doubt.

In March 2014, with bidding under way, Rydon renewed a long-held relationship with senior executives at the TMO at an annual housing conference in Brighton. Rydon sponsored a regular drinks reception to entertain prospective clients and as usual, the firm's contracts manager, Stephen Blake, was able to spend time with the TMO. His relationship with the its assets director, Peter Maddison, "goes back a long way", the inquiry heard. The contract interviews had still not happened, but Blake's TMO contacts gave him the nod. "We are in pole position – ours to lose," he emailed colleagues.

It turned out that Rydon's £9.2m bid was far cheaper than their rivals Durkan and Mulalley, but that wasn't enough for the TMO.

Maddison told the chief executive of Rydon, Jeff Henton, his firm was "in first place" and that "subject to a small amount of value engineering" – a euphemism for cost-cutting – he would recommend their appointment. In fact the desired cuts were far from modest: £800,000. Did the TMO give the other bidders a chance to make the same adjustment? Blake did not know, he told the inquiry. Was there, asked Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry, "a secret understanding ... that if you agreed to reduce your contract price by £800,000, you would get the job?" Blake denied it. Either way, the job was Rydon's.

Now came the crucial switch of materials to cladding that spread the fire, a decision that became enmeshed in financial sleight of hand.

In 2013, when the TMO was worried about costs, its agents had asked the architect, Studio E, for "a radical rethink".

The designers suggested switching from zinc to cheaper plastic-filled aluminium panels after being shown samples by a sales representative for manufacturer Arconic that had already admitted internally that the panels were "unsuitable for use on building facades" in Europe. The TMO in turn suggested the switch to Rydon, which found that it could save up to £576,000, but it told the TMO the benefit would be up to only £376,000.

Millett asked the inquiry: "Was the plan in Rydon to keep the TMO in the dark about the real extent of the savings on the ACM panels and then pocket the difference to make up the shortfall?"

The shortfall came from an arithmetic blunder that Rydon said it made in its initial estimate, which was £212,000 too low. "That could be the reason for it," said Simon Lawrence, Rydon's contracts manager.

"Essex boy patter"

Did Rydon know the safety implications of the cladding switch? Lawrence said the firm assumed "what was being proposed by the client, the design team, would be compliant".

But in fact the client itself was concerned, at one point at least. In 2015, one of the TMO's executives, David Gibson, started worrying about the 2009 Lakanal House cladding fire that killed six people and whether the panels would spread flames.

"Simon Lawrence assured us that this would create no problem because the materials used were completely inert and would not burn at all," he told the inquiry. Lawrence denied saying this.

Earlier in May 2014 Lawrence tried to use "Essex boy patter" to persuade the TMO to use a cheaper version of the cladding system, saving Rydon £75,000. "I'm giving it my hardest sales pitch as we speak," he told colleagues by email.

There were other concerning revelations about safety. Bruce Sounes, project architect at Studio E, admitted that he didn't tell building control when the zinc panels were switched to plastic-filled aluminium. Rydon promised five times to appoint fire safety advisers, but failed to do so.

Its site manager, Daniel Osgood, was given the job of overseeing the cladding contractors' work despite not knowing that cladding could be combustible or that cavity barriers were needed around windows to stop the spread of fire. "I just assumed that everything was 100% fireproof," he said.

After a while he was moved from the project. Lawrence wrote in an email: "In my opinion he is just a chancer who wants to do as little as possible and not be responsible for anything." Osgood said this was "very unfair" and that he had been applying himself 100%.

"Easier and quicker"

It was not just the cladding that burned. Combustible materials were packed around the new windows, which, the inquiry heard, "contributed to the speed at which the fire spread from the flat ... to a multi-storey external fire".

These, it emerged, were installed by a small put profitable subcontractor run from Gosport in Hampshire by a former Rydon manager, Mark Dixon. Lawrence, who let the contract, said, "We knew and trusted [Dixon] well".

But the £120,000 contract went badly. Dixon complained that the works were giving him a "headache" and "I need to find ways of making it easier and quicker".

The specification was to pack the gaps around the windows with non-combustible Rockwool insulation fibre. But Dixon's company, SD Plastering, instead used combustible Celotex foam boards.

Lawrence told the inquiry that he did not read a bill of works that showed Dixon's intent. Neither did Simon O'Connor, Rydon's project manager. When O'Connor inspected the works, but there were missing finishes and gaps, he thought it was "a disaster".

"Shoddy workmanship"

The project was undermined by "shockingly poor workmanship ... allowed to happen unchecked", the inquiry heard. Fire barriers in the cladding system were installed upside down and the wrong way round. Some were roughly cut and gaps were left.

When cladding frames rattled in the wind at night, keeping residents awake, the TMO's project manager, Claire Williams, forwarded a complaint to Rydon of "shoddy workmanship ... posing a great danger to everyone".

David Collins, a resident in one of the flats, "found a part of the window installation hanging loose". Rydon asked for it to be dealt with because that particular flat was "a problem property" and Collins would "shout this from the rooftops if not resolved promptly".

Lawrence also described residents who questioned the quality of works as "rebels" and told the inquiry there were "several very vocal – dare I say aggressive – residents." Among them he named Eddie Daffarn, a 16th-floor resident and co-author of the Grenfell Action blog, who predicted that a fire could devastate the block eight months before the 14 June 2017 blaze that killed 72 people.

Internally, Rydon had its own worries about quality. "At the moment we have a poorly performing site which is mainly (but not totally) caused by poor surveying and cheap, incompetent subcontractors," Lawrence emailed a colleague in June 2015.

Neil Reed, head of project delivery at the landlord's agent Artelia, complained in another email: "I have to say, I do not think I have ever worked with a contractor operating with this level of nonchalance."

Rydon said: "We continue to cooperate with the inquiry alongside the many other parties that were involved in the run-up to and delivery of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment. We will act accordingly in relation to any recommendations relevant to the industry that come out of the phase two inquiry report. Our thoughts continue to be with all those affected."

Latest evidence in the last couple has been from the council surveyor (who said his department was swamped and under-resourced, he was handling 130 projects at the time) and the project director (who revealed that the council changed the priority from "sticking to schedule" to "value for money" and that he also got the contractor to cut their bid and didn't know about the £800,000 conversation).

[Tamas]

So corruption and negligence at pretty much every step of the way.

[The Brain]

Does that industry have any basic safety regulations and procedures?

[Agelastus]

The designers suggested switching from zinc to cheaper plastic-filled aluminium panels after being shown samples by a sales representative for manufacturer Arconic that had already admitted internally that the panels were "unsuitable for use on building facades" in Europe.

The specification was to pack the gaps around the windows with non-combustible Rockwool insulation fibre. But Dixon's company, SD Plastering, instead used combustible Celotex foam boards.

I think it would be a reasonable inference for a layman like myself to see these two acts (Arconic's and Dixon's) as being criminal rather than simply negligent.

Which bit in particular were you referring to as corrupt. Tamas?

[Sheilbh]

I think these bits make it seem a bit corrupt to me - especially given how strict everyone is about hospitality:

The council landlord had to put tender the job publicly under EU-wide procurement rules "to ensure that the best contractor is selected and value for money achieved". But the transparency of that process has been placed in doubt.

In March 2014, with bidding under way, Rydon renewed a long-held relationship with senior executives at the TMO at an annual housing conference in Brighton. Rydon sponsored a regular drinks reception to entertain prospective clients and as usual, the firm's contracts manager, Stephen Blake, was able to spend time with the TMO. His relationship with the its assets director, Peter Maddison, "goes back a long way", the inquiry heard. The contract interviews had still not happened, but Blake's TMO contacts gave him the nod. "We are in pole position – ours to lose," he emailed colleagues.

It turned out that Rydon's £9.2m bid was far cheaper than their rivals Durkan and Mulalley, but that wasn't enough for the TMO.

Maddison told the chief executive of Rydon, Jeff Henton, his firm was "in first place" and that "subject to a small amount of value engineering" – a euphemism for cost-cutting – he would recommend their appointment. In fact the desired cuts were far from modest: £800,000. Did the TMO give the other bidders a chance to make the same adjustment? Blake did not know, he told the inquiry. Was there, asked Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry, "a secret understanding ... that if you agreed to reduce your contract price by £800,000, you would get the job?" Blake denied it. Either way, the job was Rydon's.

I'd also be interested to see how many people move between those types of organisations in different roles so they're on a bit of a merry-go-round from (public sector) client to (private sector) contractor/manager and back etc.

[Tamas]

Yeah that bit plus the "accidental" overcharging, at the very least.

[Tamas]

Oh I remember BTW that the project manager overseeing this tiny little thing was 25 years old at the time with no prior experience or qualification. But when I applied for shit with about 1% level of responsibility to this, I got anal probed to make sure I was already doing that kind of stuff in my sleep. It was... frustrating.

[garbon]

Wrong thread.

[Sheilbh]

Article on the Tory spending in the 2019 elections which is another example of how relatively cheap our politics is (my favourite entry was the one person who claimed back £5.89 spent in KFC ):

Conservatives spent £16m on 2019 election win, figures show
Electoral Commission data includes £1.6m on Lynton Crosby's polling firm
Rajeev Syal
Wed 7 Oct 2020 13.54 BST
Last modified on Wed 7 Oct 2020 15.38 BST

The Conservatives spent more than £16m on achieving an 80-seat majority in December, including paying for a £500 cab journey from York and £22,000 on fast-food deliveries, official figures show.

Data released by the Electoral Commission on Wednesday shows that the party spent £16,486,871 to claim its biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher's 1987 victory. Each winning seat cost about £200,000.

The payments included nearly £6m sending unsolicited material across the country. The party also paid more than £1.6m on CTF, the polling firm set up by the Australian election guru Lynton Crosby.

Johnson is a longtime friend of Crosby, who worked on his London mayoral campaigns, and the pair are understood to have talked informally on the phone regularly during his leadership campaign.

The Australian strategist and polling expert was a key figure in the general election campaign, despite the two having disagreed over the role of the prime minister's partner, Carrie Symonds.

One notable expense in the newly released data was a £500.80 journey in an Addison Lee taxi from the University of York where the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, was appearing on BBC One's Question Time. The destination of the journey is blacked out on the bill.

Recording of the programme ended at about 10pm, informed sources said, and other guests were booked minicabs by the BBC or took the train out of York.

Jenrick's office has been approached by the Guardian and asked if he was a passenger in the taxi.

Another election expense was for Uber Eats deliveries to campaigners that came to £22,735.14. Those based in Millbank Tower, the campaign headquarters, would regularly order in deliveries of sushi, pizza and beer, one said.

The party also spent £458,688 on Twitter graphics and videos from New Zealand-based PR firm Topham Guerin, which controversially rebranded the Conservatives' Twitter account as FactCheckUK during the leaders' debate last November.

The picture agency Parsons Media received three payments totalling £44,975 from the Tories. Andrew Parsons of Parsons Media subsequently worked as a photographer for the prime minister, Boris Johnson, at taxpayers' expense.

The party spent £4,471,937 on marketing and canvassing, and £3,011,665 on advertising. A further £529,650 was spent on rallies.

Just over £1m was spent with Facebook and another £700,000 was paid to the strategic advisory firm Hanbury Strategy, which is run by the former Vote Leave executive Paul Stephenson.

The Tories were fined a record £70,000 in 2017 for making false declarations about their election expenses in 2015, when David Cameron's party beat Ed Miliband's Labour party.

The commission found the party failed to declare or accurately report more than £275,000 of campaign spending at three byelections in 2014 and at the 2015 general election.

The spending return for the UK general election was missing payments worth at least £104,765 and payments worth up to £118,124 were either not reported to the commission or were incorrectly reported by the party. Invoices and receipts were missing for £52,924 worth of payments.

Labour's expenses have yet to be published because its financial submissions to the commission were late owing to the coronavirus outbreak. Official figures show the pro-Corbyn activist group Momentum spent just over £500,000.

The report shows that the cost of the SNP campaign was £1,004,952, Plaid Cymru spent £183,914, and the doomed campaign of the Independent Group for Change spent £29,556. The cost of Ukip's failed general election push was £8,761.

The commission said that spending returns for parties who spent over £250,000 at the 2019 general election were due to be reported by June, but due to Covid-19 not all parties – including Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit party – were able to deliver returns before the deadline. Further batches of spending information are expected to be released in due course.

[celedhring]

Same here, national parties spent €45m total in campaigning for the last general election. I know it's a much larger country, but I shudder when I see the yank figures.

[Tamas]

Wrong thread.

No I meant Grenfell