YP Letters: Look to incompetence, not austerity, for causes of inferno

IT has been reported that John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, claimed the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire were ‘murdered by political decisions’ and that it happened as a consequence of austerity.

How can this possibly be true? It is illogical, when the building had £8.6m spent on it for insulation and aesthetics purposes. He would have more credibility as an Opposition politician if he had questioned the spending of £66,666 of taxpayers’ money on each flat.

I suspect the reason for the cladding was to help reduce carbon emissions. This is something he and all other MPs (apart from five) voted for under Ed Miliband’s 2008 Climate Change Act. Even the current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn did not vote against it.

In effect we have MPs trying to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions when we produce less than two per cent globally, by spending £8.6m in an attempt to reduce household energy bills which have risen due to green subsidies.

Instead of trying to save the planet, our MPs should be giving priority to the social care funding crisis.

Some MPs have complained about the brevity of the Queen’s Speech which covers the work to be undertaken over the next two years; as far as I am concerned this is a good thing, because it reduces the damage they can do.

It is nonsense to accuse anyone of murder over the Grenfell fire, but spendthrift incompetence is a factor, as only fools would spend this amount of money for so little benefit, especially when times are hard.

From: Edward Grainger, Botany Way, Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough.

THE terrible loss of life as a result of the Grenfell Tower fire, and the inherent problems associated with making blocks of flats entirely safe, should surely now curtail any plans to build 
yet more buildings at such height.

I first saw the inside of the first tower blocks constructed during the time of the Middlesbrough County Borough Council in the early 1960s before they became occupied and felt then, as I still do, that this was communal living of the worst kind.

I told my mother that day over the tea table that I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in one.

If we must still build high rise accommodation, then all the necessary safeguards must be of the highest order and be fully tested and approved.

They should also be limited in height.