Grenfell Tower – Britain still a country that murders its poor

[alanjjohnstone]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/27/met-says-grenfell-council-may-have-committed-corporate-manslaughterThe Scotland Yard investigation into the Grenfell fire disaster has said there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect the council and the organisation that managed the tower block of corporate manslaughter.The two organisations under suspicion are Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation.The law on corporate manslaughter would require any prosecution to prove that there was a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed to those who died.Police said: “After an initial assessment of that information, the officer leading the investigation has today notified Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that each organisation may have committed the offence of corporate manslaughter, under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.”The 2007 act says that an organisation is guilty of corporate manslaughter “if the way in which its activities are managed or organised … causes a person’s death and amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased”.Anyone found guilty is liable to a fine, not imprisonment. The breach of the duty of care “is a gross breach if the conduct alleged … falls far below what can be reasonably be expected of the organisation in the circumstances”.The 2007 act does not give detectives the power to arrest any individual from the organisations under suspicion.Any prosecution would need the consent of the director of public prosecutions, who is the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. 

[ALB]

Looks as if they have already began to select possible scapegoats to take the blame off capitalism whose way of working required, in the slump that followed the crash of 2008, that governments cut back on their spending to relieve taxation on profits. Since most local government money comes from central government, this trickled down to local level, with in this case the result we've seen. How about charging capitalism with corporate manslaughter?.

[alanjjohnstone]

I know it is off topic but your point on cuts to local councils spending will only get worse with Brexit.Central government needs to replace £8.4 billion regeneration funding that will be lost when EU subsidies end. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/brexit-latest-billions-needed-regional-aid-eu-funding-cornwall-councils-a7863886.html

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