I'm sorry if painting people who are constantly vilified and hated in a positive light offends you.

You recently posted that you don't care about refugees drowning in the med. Are there any deaths yesterday that don't bother you?

I think you will find it is the insanely backward aspects of the religion that grates rather than 'people'. And the fact that we now have Islamic terrorists in our midst.

Hardly an unreasonable concern is it Joseph.

Costs don't work like that.

When a government or council takes responsibility for something like smoke alarms, it also has to take responsibility for buying them, fitting them, maintaining them, verifying their operational acceptance, their replacement. They also have to be up to certain standards and requirements.

I knew a guy who worked at a massive car park as an attendant. The first half of his shift was going through the car park recording whether each bulb was working or needed to be replaced, because there was a legal obligation on the car parks owners to provide a reasonable level of illumination at night to deter crime and risks of injury.

So whilst you and I can just buy a smoke alarm, and accept responsibility directly on ourselves for buying a s**t one, that option doesn't exist for Public or Private companies - who will be held accountable for failures.

So if a smoke alarm isn't working, there would be an expectation for it to be replaced promptly (as fires have a high threat to life), and the only way you can reasonably do that, is to check them on a regular basis or connect them up to a network system that reports failure. Of course the latter is better, but then that system has to be sourced, installed, maintained....

Of course the person who checks them, needs to be qualified to a specific level of technical competence, and someone has to cover for him when he's on holiday or sick.. and so on.

The same applies to a private contractor, except if they're dodgy they can circumvent some of these issues and they're less accountable to the people than politicians (but not much), meaning they could probably hire a lower skilled worker, and buy insurance. Where as council or government worker failures that result in deaths always result in new legislation from the outrage... and that adds more cost to your smoke alarm system.

interesting read jamie, but i would rather a cheap battery fed smoke alarm had been on every floor of that tower the other night than the alternative, nothing,,just one working on alternative,,nothing,,,just one working on one of the 24 floors could have saved many lives!

It's emerging that Emma Coad, the newly elected MP for Kensington & Chelsea is on the board of the management company that the residents complained to.

That could be a tad embarrassing to spin away.