[Robin McAlpine Blog] Glasgow burns because of the Big Lie

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Glasgow burns because of the  Big Lie

Symbolically, practically, procedurally, the Great Fire of London had to start in a pie shop. (OK, technically it was a bakery making mainly biscuits for the army, but still…).

Symbolically because the bakers or pie makers were so associated with the times. Practically because there has to be fire to bake and London was a wooden city. Procedurally because while some fire-risk industries were already banned from the city centre, you can’t push bakeries out of town.

Symbolically, practically and procedurally, the Great Fire of Central Station had to begin in an unlicensed vape shop. That, a bookies and a cheap furniture shop of some sort are the staple of much of Scotland’s modern urban realm. It is the symbol of our times.

But it is the practical and procedural issues which predominate. And those are the result of the Big Lie, the underlying mythology of our society which does damage like this all the time but is never fingered for the blame.

The Big Lie is that all that is great and good and lovely in human affairs is the direct result of business profits. Therefore if business profits are set free then the sum total of human happiness will increase. Utility doesn’t matter – gambling and vaping are useful only because of profits. There isn’t a politician operating in Scotland who doesn’t subscribe to the Big Lie to some degree.

So how does that play into the practical and procedural aspects of the Central Station fire? Practicality is easy enough. Lithium batteries are unlikely to spontaneously combust, most especially not when not being operated (but more likely if they are charged). But if there is any kind of fire, they are fiendishly flammable.

They burn hot and the burn long. A fire that involves lithium is a much, much worse fire than a fire that does not involve lithium. A chip fat fire will burn at around 200 degrees centigrade; a lithium fire can burn at five times that. But it’s not just that, it’s that lithium fires reach a ‘runaway’ stage quickly and at comparatively low temperatures (100 degrees is enough).

Why? Because lithium ion batteries are a self-sufficient fire. They contain their own oxygen in the metal oxides used which is released as they burn. Lithium batteries burn under water. Once they are ignited they never stop burning until the fuel is expended. It is almost as if they are designed as a kick-starter for a bigger fire.

If you sell cigarettes you have the weight of history on your shoulders; invent vapes and you can sail straight through unregulated waters

This leads to the procedural point. Vape shops are not properly regulated in terms of fire. As we now know, the sum total of the checks Glasgow City Council does to see if a vape shop is compliant is purely about whether they’re selling to children. Vape shops are a fire risk and an addiction risk but they are only monitored as addiction risks, and even then barely that.

Yet years ago when I was involved in a major office move we were told very clearly that we could not store toner cartridges for the photocopiers anywhere near the photocopiers. One is very flammable, the other gets very hot. We had landlord inspections to make sure. So how come the much less dangerous photocopier is regulated but not the vape shop?

It’s the Big Lie again. This idea that protecting people from abuse by commercial predators was a bad thing is recent. There is some chance you think that the ‘war on red tape’ is about common sense or looking out for your needs. It isn’t. It is the source of every scam, every corporate abuse, every act of money gouging, most corporate-related deaths.

It means that regulations which were put in place in saner times have to be removed if they are to be weakened, and actively deregulating things is not actually all that easy. The problem is that there is a procedure, a parliamentary process, and during that process evidence on risk and harm has to be taken into account.

When politician look at the claims of lobbyists in the face of evidence of genuine risk to life of members of the public, the lobbyists lose. But if the lobbyist can do it in secret and control the entire evidence ecosystem? No problem, there will be no regulation to remove. It won’t be there in the first place.

I’m sure you know the tech bros mentality of ‘move fast and break things’? That’s everything now. If you sell cigarettes you have the weight of history on your shoulders. Invent vapes and you can sail straight through unregulated waters. Now it is those who are worried about the impacts who face the entire burden of proof. They almost always fight with their hands tied behind their back.

Because the vaping industry is recorded as having spent about half a million pounds directly lobbying politicians. And if you’ve followed my critiques of lobbying (I used to be a lobbyist), those are joke numbers. That’s the money you spend hitting politicians over the head. It is not the money you spend making the thing you hit them over the head with.

That’s the expensive bit. That’s the economic impact assessments, the coordination of large numbers of addicted smokers to pressurise politicians for you, adverts, the whole lobbying ecosystem. This is the pattern with almost every new industry sector now. The assumption is that it is an absolutely free-for-all all the time – until you get caught. And that is rare.

If ‘but GDP’ trumps every cry of ‘but extreme fire risk’ or ‘but enormous addiction problem’ or ‘but really ugly high street’, we can’t escape it

This is all in the name of profit. Someone somewhere probably uttered the words ‘a vape shop may go up in flames and kill us all, but hopefully it won’t and we’ve got business rates to collect’. Over and over again we find that business makes profits ‘for the benefit of us all’, that it is active government policy to let them cut corners, and then when disaster results, it is the public that picks up the bill.

Here is the Big Hidden Truth; our happiness is a function of our environment. If every shop is a message saying ‘your community failed’ then you feel worse about yourself. Your house is not a stand-alone entity. It is there only because the house next door isn’t on fire. Profits don’t make society happier or we’d be the happiest society in history right now.

I would love to really dig into the way regulatory failure has happened – both in terms of process and in terms of politics. But Craig is covering that in the Common Weal newsletter this week. Plus I understand that you have probably read an awful lot about this fire already.

So let me simply end with this. The Big Lie keeps hurting us over and over and every time it does the Big Lie jumps up again. All the other shops want us to compensate them because one of them has cost all the rest of them their business. ‘Hi, a fellow local businessman has cost us profit so make the public pay’.

Until we escape it this or something like it will keep happening. If ‘but GDP’ trumps every cry of ‘but extreme fire risk’ or ‘but enormous addiction problem’ or ‘but really ugly high street’, we can’t escape it. This can only led by the politicians, but they’ll never, ever do it when the lobbying is so one sided.

I was at a medical appointment today. In general chat a nurse asked me if anything would finally change because of this fire. I said what, m life after Grenfell? No, nothing will change at all. There will be a cosmetic show for the public and some short-life working group and some speeches and possibly even a grant fund. Then it’ll be back to industrialising the countryside or Uber or some other abuse and we’ll all forget about vape shops.

It is an uneven fight and the public is the victim. Team Profit are far too powerful in our politics. Until that is no longer the case, invest in fire extinguishers.

Source: Glasgow burns because of the  Big Lie