[Andy McDandy]

6 years ago, I thought that Grenfell would be our generation's Aberfan.

What it's become is an object lesson in how the establishment covers its arse.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I was working by then, but no news other than the BBC, which I saw when I got home.

Devastating. May we never see the like again.

[Abernathy]

Cold War Steve. As subtle as a sledgehammer, but what’s required.

[Yug]

No money available for making schools safe

The Education Secretary has told Sky News she "didn't know" £32m was being spent on refurbishing her department's headquarters - as pressure mounts on the government over the discovery of unstable concrete in some schools.

More than 100 schools will have to partially or fully close due to safety fears over reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) amid a growing row over funding to pay for the essential repairs.

It comes as a multi-million-pound refurbishment is being carried out at the Department for Education's (DfE) Westminster headquarters.

When asked by Sky News' Kay Burley whether she spent £32m on her offices, Gillian Keegan said: "I don't know, actually. I didn't. I haven't done it. Which offices?"

When told it was at her offices, the education secretary added: "I know that when I was last in the department, I was on a different floor and I know they are refurbishing some of them. I wasn't involved in that.

"I guess there's some maintenance requirements that they had on there. I wasn't part of that decision to be honest, but I'll check when I get back.

"I know that I'm in a different floor than we used to be in, so I guess they're refurbishing aspects of the building."

When asked if it was good optics to spend so much money on offices when safety fears are growing over crumbling schools, she added: "I don't know what the condition of the offices - we could have been dealing with other issues within the offices - but I will look at it when I get back."

Willmott Dixon Interiors is carrying out the work at Sanctuary Buildings as part of a project its website says is expected to last 116 weeks to "provide" more modern and efficient office space across six refurbished floors.

The work includes stripping out the 1990s interior to make the headquarters "fit for purpose for years to come" with "improved lighting, superior acoustic properties and a muted colour palette"...

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/educatio ... t-12954848

At least there's money available for the really important stuff

[Watchman]

What about all that money Sniffer Gove couldn’t spend on “levelling up”?

[Bones McCoy]

[Tubby Isaacs]

Gillian Keegan has now told teachers to « get off their backsides » and send in the questionnaires.

She’s going to be back in uniform directing traffic by next week, at this rate.

Greg Hands probably thinks this shows « strength of character ». Heaven forbid experienced politicians be in the Cabinet, eh Greg? Let’s relish Gillian’s ideas.

[Andy McDandy]

See the Littlejohn thread. Plenty out there who believe everything would be fine if people just put their backs into it, or got a man in to sort it out.

[Oboogie]

Gillian Keegan has now told teachers to « get off their backsides » and send in the questionnaires.

She’s going to be back in uniform directing traffic by next week, at this rate.

Keegan's not going to be sacked. She hasn't been sacked for doing nothing about schools in danger of collapse, despite being Education Secretary and knowing about the problem for at least nine months. She's certainly not now going to be sacked for swearing let alone blaming teachers.

[Watchman]

Wonder if Birbalsingh has sent her questionnaire back

[Tubby Isaacs]

Keegan's not going to be sacked. She hasn't been sacked for doing nothing about schools in danger of collapse, despite being Education Secretary and knowing about the problem for at least nine months. She's certainly not now going to be sacked for swearing let alone blaming teachers.

Probably right. Also she’s shielding Sunak.

[Bones McCoy]

Wonder if Birbalsingh has sent her questionnaire back

It states that the Michaela school is safely supported by self-reliance, willpower and unshakeable Judaeo-christian values.
But if children show up with wrong uniform or silly haircuts (Insert your own aside here folks), the skies will fall.

[Bones McCoy]

Over harsh?

[Watchman]

In the context of “doing everything on the cheap/making sure your mates make a profit/denying any responsibility when it all goes wrong”…….it’s a no from me (That's no as in answer to Mr McCoys question, not no as in the post is unacceptable)

[Bones McCoy]

We're seeing a pile of infrastructure related problems emerging.

I don't see the press discussing the Capita shaped elephant in the room.

[Yug]

It's looking less and less good for the lying fucking cunts in government

More than half of English schools that are so dilapidated they are at risk of partial closure were refused money under the government’s school rebuilding scheme, Department for Education (DfE) statistics show.

Amid mounting concerns about a wider apparent neglect of the schools estate in recent years, beyond the immediate alarm about crumbling concrete panels, it emerged that of 500 rebuilt schools planned for England over 10 years from 2020, just four were completed in 2021.

In another development, the Guardian has learned that the Treasury vetoed a push by the Department for Education (DfE) to use a £1bn underspend to rebuild hundreds of schools during Liz Truss’s government...

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2 ... ding-money

I don't think blaming Labour / teachers / the RSPCA, or whoever is target of choice this week, is going to work. They've painted themselves into a corner and now they're caught bang to rights. I don't think even their client press will be able to save them from the fallout this time. They're fucked. In a mess of their own making.

Pass the popcorn.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Omnishambles. Clusterfuck.

I went to open the list of RAAC affected schools. It's in Open Document (sic) format. Cool, I think, that will open in Numbers (Mac iOS version of Excel). Nope. I look for an application to open it.

All of the list for Mac iOS are - Microsoft...

So I can't open it. What a bunch of twats. And that's against the law...

[Malcolm Armsteen]

So I've opened it in TextEdit.

Still a clusterfuck. Whoever compiled this needs a kicking.

It's not in alphabetical order of schools, and not (by me) searchable.
It's not grouped by authority or MAT.
It's not grouped by phase.
It says that some schools not affected are included.

If I wanted to make this hard to see, this is what I would do.

[Yug]

It sounds very much like, even though this problem has been known about for ages, there was no attempt to collect, collate, and curate the relevant data. Which is why Keegan was so keen to tell teachers to "get off their arses" and return the questionnaires ASAP. As the data started to come in, senior officials at the DfE started looking for someone who works with computers (i.e. nearly every member of the wider Civil Service) to put it all on a list, and some hapless Admin Assistant (grade E2 - the lowest non-industrial grade) with only basic knowledge of Excel, was told to get on with it. With no clear instruction as to what the customer (the SofS in this case) actually wanted. Hence the resulting hastily cobbled together dog's breakfast described by Malc above.

What we in the lower orders of the Civil Service refer to as a "lastminute.com" task.

Any blame for the unusable spreadsheet must be laid at Keegan's door. Along with the blame for not acting sooner on a problem which the Tories have known about since 1995.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Sounds about right. But you missed that the SoS - even on something this high profile - either didn't check it (after all to organise this would be the work of a moment in Excel) or didn't know enough to recognise that it isn't fit for purpose.

I'm so impressed that OpenDoc doesn't open...