...has been nothing short of disgraceful.

As long as cheaters prosper, they will continue to cheat, no matter how short-term the prosperity.

Show them a picture of Grenfell Towers.

There are youtube vids of deplorable, mold infested units.

And here is something we can look forward to if the Deplorables maintain control:

Electricity for the poor entails a pay-as-you-go vending machine in each unit. The poor have to pay in advance for electricity. Many can only afford an hour or two a day. There are youtube videos of that heartless policy too.

Have been common in the UK for decades. Before we came to Australia in the 60s, I remember going to Scotland to visit my grandparents and hearing the cry, "Quick, a shilling for the meter...."

Most people existed quite happily with the system; I would almost welcome it here, now. PAYG, in my opinion is preferable to being hit with a $400 -$500 bill each quarter.

It's not only the UK that uses metered utilities. Holiday rental houses in France, Spain, Netherlands are often fitted with them.

I find it preposterous that rich England is up with people NOT having electricity. What operates fire alarms if there is no electricity?

Specifically to Grenfell, it had recently been updated, and the management company stated the residents did not want fire alarms in the common area, like hallways, but in their apts.

Also I read that some residents are disagreeing with that statement.

If I have my students vote and then I say, "The students voted against this" there will be some student who object and say they opposed it.

For them, "The students" seems to mean every single student, when there's the possibility of it imputing something to them that they didn't want. (If they're on the winning side then of course it's "the students" who decided, and those who disagreed lost and should just STFU. Take this asymmetry as entailed by human nature and applying not just to my classroom but to national elections, national polls, conusmer surveys, and council housing meetings.)

Then again, if that happened some people would just tap those circuits if they were rated for a high-enough load. If they were tapped out, then the fire alarms wouldn't work.

Surely the worlds 1% would put that space to better use......snark

some of those buildings will be evacuated. There's no news about where people are supposed to go or what will happen to the London real estate so conveniently depopulated.

Still, I'd rather live in a tent or the subway for a few months than risk being barbecued/killed by cyanide.

Source: Reuters

....as I might have mentioned in the UK forum, the tower blocks left near me have all been cladded to make them better insulated and less hideously ugly, and there is a good chance that some of these will have the inferior quality cladding.