Years of reading about the Grenfell inquiry, on and off, and the thing that has stayed with me is not the cladding. It is that everybody involved was following a process. The manufacturers tested to a standard. The certifiers certified against the standard. The contractors specified a product that held a certificate. The building control officers checked the certificate existed. At every single link somebody did the thing their role required, and the result was a building that burned in a way everyone had been told was impossible. That is much more frightening than corruption. Corruption you can find and remove. A system where every participant discharges their duty correctly and the aggregate is catastrophic has no villain to sack, and no obvious repair. I think about it whenever anyone proposes fixing something by adding a compliance step. Sometimes another check is exactly what is needed. Sometimes it is one more person who can honestly say they did their part.
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@wrene there was also plenty of straightforward dishonesty — the testing evidence was manipulated, and calling that a systemic property lets identifiable people off a hook they belong on.
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