WORDS: Gary Kelly
Not to be undone, by the inferno at Notre Dame, the political opportunists in this country have come out and said words to the effect of “The Palace of Westminster is an inferno waiting to happen”.
Meanwhile, there are families made homeless in The Grenfell tower inferno still living in temporary accommodation. I say living their current situation is no life at all for anyone. We live in a country where traumatised people are still in B and B’s approaching 2 years since the tragedy.
David Lidington, Theresa May’s Deputy has wasted no time capitalising off the back of the blaze in Paris, and this isn’t just Tories, Chris Bryant, on the Labour side of the house was straight in this morning saying words to the same effect. Scoring political capital indeed.
Quite frankly, and this sounds harsh, I couldn’t give a monkeys when the very place you are talking about has not resolved the situation for the Grenfell families. A huge amount of tower blocks around Britain still have the same cladding on them which led to the blaze. Just one is a disgrace.
The sheer brass neck of these people, our elected representatives, LAWMAKERS, essentially extorting goodwill out of the emotion of the situation at Notre Dame is a new low given the context of their inaction on Grenfell and the extremely serious safety issues that remain unresolved.
Heres’s a seemingly ‘radical’ suggestion, if we are going to have to spend money on the place where our elected representatives stitch us all up then let us build a new parliament. You know those buildings that are being built out of shipping containers? Build one of those, on the cheap, outside of London and when each new election comes round move it to a new city.
I want to see a UK Parliament (if we have to have one) In Belfast, Glasgow, Liverpool, Southampton, Manchester, Sunderland, Coventry, Cardiff, Swansea, Exeter, Carlisle, Leeds, Wolverhampton, Bristol and more.
Let us have a Parliament fit for Britain in the 21st century, not some crumbling edifice that will take billions to repair when we should be spending that money on building houses so our fellow human beings have somewhere to live.
The money spent there will go some way to eradicating homelessness. Let us see billionaires chip in to cover any shortfall, if indeed there is any shortfall. I want a non-static Parliament, built on the cheap that reflects Britain in the 21st century, not a Britain long dead, crumbling, impossible to repair.
Let us push on and move forwards. Britain is not just London. People are more important than buildings.
Don’t talk to me about fixing ‘the big hoose’ if homless people are freezing to death on the streets. Don’t talk to me about the fire hazard at Parliament when those very people that inhabit that building have done the sum total of zero to fix the safety issues across Britain highlighted at Grenfell.
The tragic deaths of our people in that tower must never be allowed to be in vein.