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REPORTS HAVE BEEN appearing online of automated calls being made to Irish phones on the topic of abortion.
The call, from a Dublin number, says it has a message from a medical and obstetrics expert saying that Irish doctors do not put mothers’ lives at risk and are always obliged to intervene to save mothers’ lives, even if that results in the unfortunate death of an unborn child.
The message also mentions the tragic loss of a young woman in Galway – although it does not mention Savita Halappanavar by name – and follows that by saying “claims that doctors cannot intervene to save mothers who are in danger is untrue”.
It says that the ban on abortion does not prevent doctors acting to save women’s lives, and Ireland is one of the safest places in the world to have a baby. According to people who have received the call, the pre-recorded message asks the person answering the call to press a button to give an indication of their views on abortion in Ireland.
When the phone number is rung, people are invited to leave their thoughts on “whether we should continue to protect mother and child under our current pro-life laws, or legislate for abortion based under the British model or [leave] any thoughts you have if you are unsure”.
A number of Twitter users said they have received a similar unsolicited call, with one user saying her landline number was unlisted.
One TheJournal.ie commenter also claimed to have received the call:
It is not known who is behind the message and calls. A medical professional in Ireland is named in the message when the number is called, but there is no indication that the individual has given permission for their name to be used.
Those firemen and women are just incredible human beings. Bravery beyond measure .
@Catherine Sims: human beings at their bravest, most noble and hard working. I saw the coverage of their physical exhaustion.
Many of them saw sights that no human being ought ever to observe.
Their lives were also at risk. They evacuated as many as they could.
Fires are avoidable accidents.
@Tony Daly: media spin going on here…not reporting the real figures ..don’t know why ..total dead is going to be more like 250 -300.
Such a tragedy should never be allowed happen again. The lessons are glaringly obvious.
A fully funded and emergency programme must be introduced so as to render all tower blocks as safe as they can be. Money should not be allowed to be a consideration.
A team of experts should be commissioned to design that remedial programme. Central funding will be required. The lives and safety of residents in other Tower Blocks deserve no less.
Blame, accountability, culpability and allocation of liability can follow. The first step is remediation.
The obvious priority is to remove fire hazardous cladding from such tower blocks and to do so sooner than later.
@Tony Daly: The full inquiry – ordered by the PM – will consider all those issues, and many others.
@Tony Daly:
Money must be a consideration. The work will not be done for free so somebody must pay. If money is not considered then something else will suffer as a consequence. It would be foolhardy to start spending vast sums of money without considering the implications.
@Paul Foot: it would be too risky to await the outcome of the inquiry. Lives are at stake. Fix first. Debate later.
@Nick Allen: the remedial works should be paid out of central funding and allocations can subsequently worked out. The priority is to fix first and debate later. There are other tower blocks with dangerous cladding.
The problem of dangerous cladding first exhibited itself just over 8 years ago. There was a call for a public inquiry. Nothing happened and dangerous fire hazardous cladding continued to be installed.
Human lives continue to be at risk. Human lives should count for far more than money.
@Tony Daly: Fix first?! Without a detailed analysis of the problems and causes?
@Paul Foot: address the obvious, apparent and clearly recognisable problems as an emergency measure. Plastic composite cladding is one. Stairways without sprinklers is another. Hit the big issues quickly and decisively.
The various experts already interviewed on the media have expressed consensus as the problems. Fix these problems fast and decisively, nit a long winded debate and open ended discussion.
Get the experts in now and action their recommendation. Issues of liability, responsibility and contribution are highly complex. They will take a long time to sort out. In the interim concentrate on the obvious fixes.
.
@Tony Daly: They dont need experts when they have you. Jesus, you think you know evrrything.
Do you actually believe the bull you write?
@Ger Healy: in fairness, he’s right!
@Brian Fal: So he’s a building services engineer now? He comes up with vague suggestions based on something he gleaned on the news same as you and me but Tony decides he is our resident expert on every single news story. I can’t open any article on the Journal and he’s there! Driving me to not read the Journal as much anymore.
@Tony Daly:
Even if we bypass the investigation phase and assume that your quick analysis is complete and accurate the fix you recommend will cost hundreds of millions of pounds. This is REAL money and must come from somewhere. Central funding is used to pay for health services, police, social welfare and public servant etc. It would be completely irresponsible to approve spending money without knowing the implications. Your suggestion is unbelievably naive.
@Ger Healy:
Wally did leave the position open for someone to fulfil :)
@Ger Healy: that is why a team of experts needs to be selected and appointed now and their expert recommendations immediately imo.emented. The causes are obvious and capable of rectification. Even a non expert can recognise cause and effect. The experts will assess the optimum solutions. Forget about me. I’m irrelevant. Focus on cause and focus on solution.
Don’t let your antagonism towards me blind you to the safety of the many thousands of inhabitants of unsafe tower blocks. Protecting people is the priority, not personality issues.
@Tony Daly: Christy, you really are a nutter…..
@Ger Healy: he’s right on plastic foam insulation being a real fire hazard and also just how widespread it is
@Brian Fal: He’s like a magpie, Brian, he picks up shiny sniipets of information on the TV and brings it back to his nest on the Journal. I saw the TV reports as well. I don’t need Tony’ s amateur input.
@Ger Healy: you are missing or evading the substance of the issue. This is a pervasive problem requiring urgent and priority fixes.
@Tony Daly:
The solution is not an obvious one though. Does the cladding need to come off or should sprinklers be installed or do you simply close all tower blocks with a single stairwell, do you and a new exterior stairwell like in Manhatton or is it as simple as putting in working fire alarms. Like many people on her I do NOT know the answer hence it needs to be investigated!
There are two types of cladding for such tall buildings. There is the cladding where the backing insulation is mineral based and not easily flammable. It is more expensive.
Then there is the cheap plastic based backing insulation. It is a plastic composite, usually polystyrene based. It is much cheaper. It is easily flammable. It is a known and established fire hazard as a result of a fire which occurred some 8 years ago. This was the type of cladding used in the “upgrade” works on Grenfell Tower. It was added to a building which was already an extreme fire hazard.
It is easy to locate the very numerous and vocal warning by the Grenfell Residents Association. This was a disaster waiting to happen.
@Tony Daly: There are literally dozens of different types of cladding, with a variety of component types, designs and manufacturing methods.
@Paul Foot: there are only two categories. Mineral based insulation and plastic based insulation. There is no safe plastic based insulation. Plastic is an amazing material but it is unsuitable where there may be a fire hazard. Be practical. Don’t over complicate. Focus on the fix. The causes are identifiable. Carry out interim emergency measure.
S. Mitigate against the risk. Longer term solutions can follow.
@Tony Daly: we’ve had a few PIR (plastic foam insulation) fires in this country in the last few years and they never make big news, the warnings are there!
@Tony Daly: Brick, metal, waterboard, vinyl, fibre, stone claddings (etc., etc.) don’t exist! Don’t type, as if you know everything – now advising other countries…
@Brian Fal: Brian, so very true.
@Paul Foot: insulation cladding is the matter at issue. Other cladding is non insulating.
@Tony Daly: absolute rubbish
@Paul Foot: stop b
@Paul Foot: stop being a dick
@Mark Gerard Lochlain:Only 2 types of insulating cladding!?
I don’t know what to make of some of the keyboard experts. I won’t claim to be an expert myself but I was a construction engineer in a previous life however I haven’t worked in that field in a long time.
Insulation cladding has been used for decades in various forms usually perfectly safely and, obviously, sometimes sometimes with terrifying results.
The last thing we need after any disaster of this magnitude is a knee jerk reaction to do ‘this’ or do ‘that’ quickly, we simply don’t know if these these reactions, however well meaning, will compound an existing problem. I always remember an old engineering lecturer who said “never make an existing problem worse, a calm mind prevails”. This is the case here.
A well run investigation will give answers, some we may not like and perhaps not as quickly as we’d like them, but only when we have all the answers can we consider where we go from there.
If there was a ‘fire resistent version’ of the cladding that costs effectively the same amount, it’s unbelievable that a version that was known not to be fire resistent would even be permitted under building regulations.
In a society with so much petty and excessive regulation over all aspects of our lives its absolutely incredible to think that flammable cladding would be allowed to be fitted to a high-rise residential block.
@Avina Laaf: well said!
@Avina Laaf: There was a fire man on Channel 4 news who said that some of the fire inspections are now not carried out by the fire service, in some boroughs this has been privatised.
@RMcG:
I’m inclined to think that the building probably did comply with current regulations. It’s the regulations themselves I’m questioning.
@Avina Laaf: that’s what I didn’t understand. How did it pass inspection when evidently it was not!
Particularly after a series of similar fires.
@Deborah Behan: My guess, nobody was bothered to update the regulations
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: They were supposed to be updated but Mays new chief of staff Gavin Barwell delayed this while he was Minister for Housing
A government inquiry into this will be nothing but smudge as usual, the government doing more naval gazing which will ultimately say we learned lessons from this now move on. An inquest is what is needed not smudge. This is corporate manslaughter. Tower blocks going up in flames like a sheet of paper is stuff from the 19th century not the 21th.
@Government Sachs: Heads will most certainly roll for this, however, the question is whose head? Currently the head of RBKC, Nick Paget-Brown, is playing a game of deflection, where he is blaming the residents for not wanting the sprinkler system installed, apparently because of the level of disruption involved. This is typical establishment tactics, of deflecting blame & all of his Tory goon pals will row in behind him (circle the wagons). Watch how they try to make excuses & apportion blame in the coming days.
A truly heartbreaking situation. The poor people especially the young kids, the things they must have seen. You’d never get those images and feelings out of your head. Hope now everyone gets the support they truly need
@Dara Smith: absolutely and old people at the very top must have known there was no hope for them. Absolutely awful.
RIP all of you xxx my thoughts and prayers are with all the families,friends and all the people in the area. This has given me the same feeling like the Stardust and 9/11 I’m so upset reading and seeing all the news coverage. To hear the people who said that they wrote to the council about their concerns about this building and nothing was done about it, then this happens! it’s shocking and disgraceful. I hope the others two tower’s beside this one is evacuated and the people are housed ASAP.
I have a very uneasy feeling today regarding the Grenfell tower fire. The last couple of days have been full of shock, anguish and grief, but unfortunately after this comes anger.
With so many disenfranchised people getting no justice or closure, I can only see one sad outcome – RIOTS.
In 2011 after Mark Duggan was shot by police, local protests turned into some of the worst riots the UK have seen. That was one guy killed by the establishment, according to reports over 100 may have died due to very shabby local council housing policy’s.
There is a lot more angry people today than there was in 2011, and I hope I am wrong but I can see their anger directed at Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council, and some of the elitist mansions in that area.
I was doing a piece to camera for a documentary yesterday to be screened in the Autumn on the Stardust. I did have second thoughts about doing it as I waited for the crew and Charlie Bird to arrive. I was waiting at the Stardust memorial site.
Because of the Grenfell tragidy I was beginning to wonder to myself is the Stardust tragidy insignificant this day and age?
But I began to realize there is quite a few common factors between the the two, both were in working class areas, as in the Stardust the council ignored the warnings, and the council have to tried to shift the blame to the victims.
Watching BBC’s newsnight and Kirsty Wark’s interview lastnight has brought into question the validity of Government led inquiries. https://twitter.com/ChrisMOwens/status/875482558640869376?s=03
@Maurice Frazer: public inquiries are just about taking the political heat out of tragedies.
Official response will be
Distract
Delay
Prevaricate
Procrastinate
Obscure
Conceal
Supress
Humour
The drip feed of the number of casualties -even approximate number of those unaccounted for- is the most cynical form of ” fake news” , and manipulation of data, by authorities, I have ever seen. A classic case of PR management, of more torture for families and loved ones, caught up in this preventable tragedy. Damaged limitation of ‘bad’ news for UK Government.
This type of drip feed assists in the death of popular media( print/ airways/ online , even) , and encourages Social Media, unregulated and uncontrollably….but at least not treating the ordinary punter, as moron( incapable of receiving bad news and its absorption, all of a sudden)..there might yet be a backlash of street demonstrations, for this ‘control’.
Democracy: how are you!
,
@Liam Geary: I agree.
GOD BLESS.
From today’s London Times.
The US had banned this cladding for taller buildings.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/us-banned-cladding-that-was-used-on-grenfell-tower-kd02bwjlx
It seems that the final death toll will be over 50.
Gross and reckless negligence was the cause.
Lives needlessly destroyed in horrendous circumstances.
RT.com reports there is now the SECOND fire broke out at another building in London
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