Another nail in the coffin

Subject: Another nail in the coffin 

I'm always underwhelmed when members of the "great and good" are established on committees to investigate things which go wrong. When I heard a 'Dame of the Realm'  had been appointed to look into the building industry and its procedures I thought a glimpse at her background would be useful.

Dame Judith Hackitt has an ocean of engineering degrees to her name as well as being the ex chair of the Health and Safety body which is supposed to be one of the watchdogs to established good practice within the very industry she is being asked to adjudicate.  It seemed to me that whilst you needed an expert who understands the issues, her chairmanship of one of the bodies which clearly had failed to monitor the industry regarding its concern for overall safety she was a little too close to the flame.

We have a High Court Judge looking at the accountability of contractors involved in the procurement and fitting of what turned out to be a highly inflammable cladding which was installed at Glenfell and on buildings across the land, cladding which the specification illustrated was not fit for purpose.
The Judge's progress is leisurely as befits his status, 9 months have passed and he seems only to have got his ducks in a row but theses sort of things can't be hurried since we are in thrall of the Establishment and their figures of magisterial importance. Anyway the more he can string it out, time wise the more he can charge and his political masters are usually keen to kick problems into the long grass and if the past is anything to go by, these investigations often take years.
Dame Hewitt his morning was paraded before the Medea to divulge her own findings. She had found the obvious and rejected the obvious in consecutive sentences.
She illustrated the establishment penchant for observing the blinding obvious, by stating that the regulations were not being followed and that the organisations given the role of overseeing the regs were falling far short of their duty. The obvious corollary to this would have been to ban the cladding in which the flammable material is a constituent part but no, that's far too simple and what to us is obvious is less obvious to a member of the Establishment who task it is to clarify and provide leadership.
One has to ask why. Is it because she was too cozy with the industry and her task was being to act as a conductor and to present us with articulate waffle. Obviously we will never know but it has put another nail in the coffin of trust which the survivors of Glenfell have demanded.