Retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick has been chosen to lead the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire, the PM has said.
Who is Sir Martin?

Born in Wales and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, his career has spanned nearly five decades after being called to the Bar in 1969.
As a lawyer, he specialised in commercial law which involved dealing with disputes relating to maritime and land transport of goods.
Sir Martin went on to spend more than 20 years as a judge of the Commercial Court and Court of Appeal until his retirement in 2016.

Well, what to say... Nice pick Theresa:(

Sir Martin Moore-Bick said the probe could be limited to the cause, how it spread, and preventing a future blaze.
But isn't the cause and how it spread already known.
Perhaps not in detail but sufficient enough.

preventing a future blaze.

If all had followed the already existing fire regulations in the first place this tragedy could have been avoided.

Judge says scope of inquiry "doubtful"

Of course it will be limited. Wouldn't want criminal charges to come out of it, that would be a travesty!

I see you got rid of Grand Juries. Too bad. Justice will not be served.

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Most of the above posts are absolute B******S. By looking at the way in which the building was modified in a very focused manner it is MORE probable that a criminal case can be built against the REAL perpetrators of any crime committed. Spend time on digging into why xxx ignored yyy's complaints would ensure that the specifiers and installers of the cladding system would escape prosecution.

It is NOT the purpose of a public inquiry to prosecute people, but to gather together the facts surrounding the case. If those FACTS allow the Crime Prosecution Service to consider that there is a criminal case to be answered then it is they who lay the charges. Such an approach was used in the investigation of the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster - a brief technical public inquiry led to a number of prosecutions in a very short time frame - in contrast to massively drawn out series of inquiries into the Hillsborough Crowd disaster where we have seen a number of very expensive inquiries and only now (twenty years on) are we seeing people being charged.

In the current case it is VITAL that no time is wasted on the non-technical issues - someone (person or organisation) in a TECHNICAL role gave advise that was wrong, and that is the person who effectively killed 80 or more people and has rendered several hundred more homeless.

At this point I have to "declare an interest" - My day job is confirming that, among other things, safety regulations have been correctly interpreted and implemented. Just a few weeks ago I upset one of our clients by telling them they couldn't use a particular type of cable insulation material on a modification to some control wiring. Their argument was that it was only low voltage control wiring so it didn't matter, it wouldn't go on fire", my argument was that the cable might not be the source of the fire, but by burning and producing toxic smoke as a result of "someone else's fire" they were not compliant with either the specific or general requirements. We were still arguing about this on the eve of the Grenfell fire, and they lodged an appeal against our rejection of their Case for (Fire) Safety. Today we received an apology from them and acceptance that they had to use the more expensive cable insulation system, and that they had withdrawn their appeal against our rejection of their Case for (Fire) Safety.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Good post but which posts are you referring to?

As to the public inquiry, I for one know the difference between an inquiry, inquest & a criminal investigation.

What with the inquiry & with the Metropolitan Police declaring their criminal investigation, isn't it possible that with the declaration of both to take place, "evidence" might disappear buggering up both?

As for your day & the client you commented on, that is just one instance, How many more like that occur throughout the country & how many are now crapping themselves for using lower cost materials?

One of the biggest problems with the Hillsborough aftermath was the first inquest, where the coroner took exactly that narrow legal view - that all deaths had taken place by 3:15 pm, and nothing after that time could be examined in the context of an inquest. As we now know, lots of things happened after 3:15, including false briefings to the press and falsification of witness statements: it's taken 28 years to reach the criminal charges laid yesterday, and we still have the trial to come.

I agree with Rob: there's a need for a very quick, forensic, analytic, technical enquiry.

But there's also a need for an enquiry into the post-fire social factors: where were RBK&C, for example?

I was listening to the Victoria Derbyshire programme on BBC TV (most channels, it feels like) yesterday morning. They trailed that they had some hard news about who authorised the switch to PE cladding - but they never broadcast it. Instead, they allowed their programme to be dominated by the very-real social needs of the survivors, and a staged car-crash encounter between residents and the housing minister. Good TV if you like that sort of thing, but no use as a technical analysis.

The same will happen here if the public enquiry is limited to technical explanation, and nothing else is put into place to address the social issues. The residents, in their current mood, would be absolutely furious with a 'technical only' enquiry, and I for one would support them.

Probably, the answer will have to be two concurrent enquiries: one technical, and another social. They can't happen serially, in case - like Leveson - part 2 gets punted off into the long grass never to be seen again. But will our politicians rise to the need and the occasion? They seem to be rather busy kicking lumps out of each other again, as usual.

Agree with the concurrent inquiries.

What needs to happen is authorities need to act fast & sure with no stone unturned.

We know it can be done but only after being chased up like the case of the Moroccan survivor who could not fly home with his wife's body as all documentation was burned up. A quick call to the Passport Office by the BBC & he had his passport 4 hours later.

I'm not suggesting the inquiries go that fast but that those involved get off their rectums & work instead of shuffling paper around or attempt to pass the buck.

Tricky Nicky shoots himself in the foot

"The cabinet had hoped to hold the meeting behind closed doors but was forced by a court order to admit the press and public at 18:30 BST.
The council adjourned the meeting soon after claiming it would "prejudice" the forthcoming public inquiry."

So Paget-Brown, can we safely assume that had that court order not been issued & no public or press in attendance, the meeting behind closed doors would have been completed?

Yes.
And from the article.

Tests are being carried out on 600 buildings around the country following the fire on 14 June.
On Friday, Downing Street said cladding from 149 tower blocks in 45 local authority areas had failed fire safety tests.
Every panel tested had failed combustibility tests, it added.

Also from the article:

B15 to B18 - an attempt to reduce the costs by £514,144.00. No wonder they have a £42,000,000 surplus, but at what a cost!

The double barrelled snob is gone

Wonder who will employ him now?

"But she has said the "wider lessons" must be learn from both this catastrophe, and the inspections of other buildings around the country that followed it."

Time for May to go

She's totally clueless on leadership.

"But she has said the "wider lessons" must be learn from both this catastrophe, and the inspections of other buildings around the country that followed it."

Time for May to go

She's totally clueless on leadership.

The wider lesson is very simple: don't trust a politician or a bureaucrat, they are taking bribes from the business people.

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The wider lesson is very simple: don't trust a politician or a bureaucrat, they are taking bribes from the business people.

In this country, they ARE the business people!

The wider lesson is very simple: don't trust a politician or a bureaucrat, they are taking bribes from the business people.

In this country, they ARE the business people!

Get busy and fix your government, you have identified the problem!

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As I said, it's going to get...

...very...

...messy.

Are there any other countries than Britain that have combustible cladding?
Yes!
Property insurance companies FM Global and LPCB are clear with their certification: QUADCORE â„¢ is characterized by the smallest smoke evolution of the class.
I could probably give a long list with companies that use their thermal properties more valuable then their fire resistance.

There were reports that a building in Germany was evacuated because it had the same cladding as Grenfell....

The outer cladding material has been used in many countries, but not always with the same insulation material - so this could potentially be a world-wide issue. (Wasn't there a fire in one of the Middle East countries which looked very similar, but it didn't break through into the interior due to the windows being non-openable....)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I think Dubai has been mentioned several times in that context. Also Australia.