Tories Are Lucky That the Grenfell Fire Did Not Happen Two Weeks Ago

By now, you have doubtless heard of the Grenfell Tower fire in London, where perhaps as many as 100 people in a public housing tower died in a ferocious blaze.

The facts at this point are that the residents had been complaining about potential fire hazards for years, and the fire was likely made much worse by the addition of cosmetic cladding that was both flammable (so flammable that it has been banned in the US) and functioned as a chimney for the flames.

The indications are that the cladding was added because the building was located in the very tony Kensington borough, and they wanted to improve the views.

Theresa May should be thanking her lucky stars that this didn't happen before the election, because her housing/fire safety minister specifically argued against better fire regulations, and when May initially went to the scene of the fire, she refused to meet with the former residents of the apartments.

By comparison, Jeremy Corbyn visited with the former residents, and promised that they would be told what happened.

Heck, even the singer Adele went to talk to the fire victims.

If this had happened a week before the elections, Jeremy Corbyn would now be the Prime Minister.

BTW, Corbyn has already made a proposal to help the people displaced by the fires, he wants to put them in the empty flats in the area that are owned by rich people who use London real estate to launder their money:

Empty flats in North Kensington should be "requisitioned if necessary" for people left homeless by the Grenfell Tower fire, Jeremy Corbyn says.

The Labour leader has also said he is "very angry" that so many lives were lost in a deadly tower block fire.

………

And he told MPs on Thursday: "The south part of Kensington is incredibly wealthy, it's the wealthiest part of the country.

"The ward where this fire took place is, I think the poorest ward in the whole country.

"And properties must be found, requisitioned if necessary, in order to make sure those residents do get re-housed locally.

"It cannot be acceptable that in London you have luxury buildings and luxury flats kept as land banking for the future while the homeless and the poor look for somewhere to live."

It a good solution, and it is precisely the sort of action that makes Tory heads explode, which makes it even more delicious.

This is Obvious in any Cursory Reading of Dilbert Cartoons

It turns out that the whole open office setup, ditching offices for cubicles, or worse open desks, is damaging to worker productivity:

Four years ago, Chris Nagele did what many other technology executives have done before — he moved his team into an open concept office.

His staff had been exclusively working from home, but he wanted everyone to be together, to bond and collaborate more easily. It quickly became clear, though, that Nagele had made a huge mistake. Everyone was distracted, productivity suffered and the nine employees were unhappy, not to mention Nagele himself.

I need to make a note here: American management sees employee misery as an independent good.

It is believed that if your employees are happy, the consultants believe that you are leaving money on the table.

………

Numerous companies have embraced the open office — about 70% of US offices are open concept — and by most accounts, very few have moved back into traditional spaces with offices and doors. But research that we’re 15% less productive, we have immense trouble concentrating and we’re twice as likely to get sick in open working spaces, has contributed to a growing backlash against open offices.

Since moving, Nagele himself has heard from others in technology who say they long for the closed office lifestyle. “Many people agree — they can’t stand the open office,” he says. “They never get anything done and have to do more work at home.”

………

What’s more, certain open spaces can negatively impact our memory. This is especially true for hotdesking, an extreme version of open plan working where people sit wherever they want in the work place, moving their equipment around with them.

This does not surprise me.  It has always been my experience.

Of course, it's cheaper in the short run, and as I noted above, it makes workers miserable, so it is like catnip to so called business experts.

I Haz a Sad

I just discovered the fate of the Westgate theater in Beaverton Oregon. It was demolished in 2006.

It was an early multiplex, just three screens, and its largest theater seated over 1,000.

It was also where I first saw Star Wars, and where I first saw The Empire Strikes Back.

It has an interesting role in the lore of Star Wars.

By dint of the demographics of Portland, which obligated both the theater and the studio to continue to show the film until attendance dropped below a certain level, the film was shown, in 70mm on a huge screen, for over 2½ years.

For a much of this time, which was before the time of video rentals and the rise of the VCR, it was the only theater to have carried the film since initial release, and for some of this time, it was probably the only screen in the US showing the form.

When the theatrical re-release happened, the chain owning the theater (IIRC Luxury Theaters) put the film on just about every screen in the area, and it finally stopped running the film.

Before this, any number of Portlanders, myself included, saw Star Wars many many times.

If I were within 200 miles of Portland, I would have driven there to see The Force Awakens.

………

Today, the biggest movies are released on thousands of screens across the country. In large cities, you have at least a dozen theaters to pick from, and most of those are multiplexes showing it on multiple screens. Not only that, you can go just about any time you want, since cinema chains open around noon every day of the week. A few summers ago, The Dark Knight Rises was easily the most anticipated movie of the year, yet the day after its premiere, my daughter and I were able to waltz into the theater ten minutes before it started and had our choice of the best seats.

………

Now let's climb into my time machine and transport back to 1977. If you weren't around back then, you might be surprised to learn the biggest movies opened in only one or two theaters in town - 'exclusive engagements' - giving the impression you were privileged they were playing near you at all. And back then, theaters showed matinees only on weekends. Monday through Friday, the box office never opened 'till around 7:00 PM. Not only that, there was no such thing as home video, meaning if you didn't catch a movie on the big screen, it might be years before you saw it on TV. So to see a blockbuster movie usually meant waiting in line.

But Star Wars wasn't simply a blockbuster. It was the mother of all blockbusters, arriving with huge fanfare at only one theater in the Portland area, the Westgate Tri-Cinema, located in the suburb of Beaverton. Since literally everyone wanted to see it (except my dad, who never liked sci-fi in any way, shape or form), this meant there was one 1000-seat auditorium to placate over a million people in the metropolitan area.

I can't speak for how other cities' theaters handled the demand for Star Wars in '77, but at the Westgate, even three months after it premiered (mainly because it took that long to talk Dad into going), we were still required to wait in a massive line to buy tickets, then wait in an entirely different line in get into the theater itself, a total of about two hours (during which time Dad was getting increasingly pissed). It was worth the wait, of course, not only because Star Wars more-than lived up to the hype, but because the Westgate itself was a wonderful place, with huge auditoriums, gigantic screens and plush, luxurious, rocking seats.

………

Regarding the aforementioned connection between Star Wars and my hometown of Portland...as I said before, it premiered as an exclusive engagement at the Westgate, which enjoyed long lines of eager fans. After roughly eight months, it expanded into multiple theaters in town. Then after all the Star Wars hype began to dissipate, the film continued to play at the Westgate, over a year-and-a-half after its initial release. In fact, the Westgate was the only theater in all of North America still showing the film. And there were Star Wars zealots flying to Portland from all over the world, just so they could check-out the movie on the big screen one more time.

I feel the same way.

Someone in the Bowels of Bureaucracy has a Sick Sense of Humor

The new headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security used to be an insane asylum:

Washington D.C. is often used as a backdrop for tales of idiosyncratic power (Veep, House of Cards, Homeland, 24, Newsroom, The West Wing, just to name a few) and why not? The architecture’s symbolism and ideology can be matched only by the cynicism and suspicion these structures inspire. So therefore it seems somehow fitting that DC’s next major addition, the Headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will be perched on a hilltop just across the Anacostia River, physically and gesturally overseeing all before it.

Yet beyond maintaining constant visuals on the terrain, this headquarters represents a change in the city’s views on temporality, functionality and even irony. Because this is a space with a past, one it both embraces and fears.

The Ghost Across the River
In 2007, the announcement came that a long abandoned former mental institution was to be renovated in order to create a headquarters for the DHS (the agency which oversees immigration, customs, border control and the secret service, along with several other federal functions). Aside from sounding like the plot to a bad action/horror movie, the site was a bit of an odd-duck: an enormous campus, fifteen minutes drive from the White House and full of old buildings barely anyone had ever heard of. For its own part, St. Elizabeths Hospital was founded in the 1850s as “The Government Hospital for the Insane”, hosting generations of doctors, nurses and patients. Some of which having been infamously linked to the powerful of DC, including: Ezra Pound, brought there on charges of treason in 1945; John Hinckley Jr., for shooting President Reagan in bizarre attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster in 1981; Richard Lawrence, who attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson in 1835, failed, and was then beaten mercilessly by the President himself and Charles Guiteau, after killing President Garfield in 1881.

I am amused, but not particularly surprised.

Concept of the Day

Edifice Complex:

Term coined by the lawyer and historian Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson in Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, London (John Murray 1958, Houghton Mifflin, 1962) referring to the tendency of successful organizations to build new headquarters just before they begin to decline. See New Headquarters/Office Syndrome, Shiny; Business Week, Curse of.

I'm beginning to think that this has the germ of an investment strategy.