We now know that while Grenfell Tower was still burning and for days following, officials of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council were holed up in their offices planning their denials and busily shredding incriminating papers, doing nothing at all to help stricken citizens. The government was busy with its urgent priorities, too, one of which was shaping the Inquiry to minimise damage across a whole range of interests, including its own, in particular the bodge it had made of buildings and fire regulations over the past thirty years or so. That and the fact it was directly responsible for failing to put right the furniture flammability regulations when it had the chance to some four years previous to the fire. 
 
There were plenty of well-compensated officials in government and the fire sector who would have received their orders almost as soon as the building caught fire. Oh, and let's not forget the flame retardant industry. After all, they had markets to protect, and it didn't help that outside the UK, the western world had largely turned against its products in furniture. So much so that it had been expanding into building materials instead. But it clearly wouldn't do if the truth got out that its products in sofas and mattresses in the tower were obviously not doing the job of preventing fire; worse still, they added greatly to the toxicity of the blaze. And so Dr Malcolm Tunnicliff was rushed into the media, while the fire was still burning, to assure everyone that there was no hydrogen cyanide poisoning (actually there was, and lots of it) and only old furniture (pre-1988) was toxic; modern furniture was not. Now, a common theme amongst those with something to lose from tragedies like Grenfell is that when they are pushed into an ethical and logical corner regarding, in this case, their lies, they simply don't respond. And so Dr Tunnicliff did not respond when I wrote to him to point out that he'd got the issue with furniture exactly the wrong way round, i.e. modern furniture is far more toxic than older stuff when it burns.
 
Meanwhile, a shocked and devastated community had to look after itself. 
 
There was an interesting moment, following the end of a meeting in June this year at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. We were being escorted from the meeting room to the reception via the lifts by, well, I'll call her Doris for now, since civil servants are very sensitive about being named in public. Even though they're public servants. 
 
Incredibly, considering what had gone on in the meeting, Doris was smiling and actually skipping a little with some kind of self-induced pleasure. She then made small talk by asking us what we were doing next. Instead of answering that particular question, however, I decided to try popping her joy bubble by saying, "You met the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group yesterday and they're hopping mad that you didn't answer any of their questions either."
 
I watched her carefully. The jolly sheen in her eyes dimmed for about half a second but then quickly returned. "We had a meeting with them, yes," she beamed.
 
As we left the building I said to my colleague, "She believes the meeting went well because she thinks she dealt with us. She'll tell her line manager everything's fine and probably get a positive mention in her annual report."
 
Move forward to last week. I'd put in some questions to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (along with many other people) regarding their complete inability to acknowledge, let alone deal with, the fall-out of the fire in terms of sickness and environmental damage. One of my questions was what is the Council doing about the fact the government proved four years ago the furniture flammability regulations don't work and therefore they contributed greatly to the toxicity of the fire? Well, RBKC contacted BEIS for a statement. Doris would have provided it and what she put forward was the same stock response BEIS has been giving for over a year - that they're still working on the regulations but must not do anything that would reduce fire safety.
 
Compartmentalisation. In our meeting with Doris, I had asked a similar question about twenty times: do you agree that your own evidence proves that the current match test fails in up to 90% of cases and therefore UK sofas are unsafe? She would not reply. The closest she got was to say the government believes the regulations can be improved.
 
To state that BEIS must not do anything to reduce furniture fire safety when they themselves have already proved it doesn't exist is clearly a lie. Doris lied. How can a civil servant lie in a public statement, especially when the result of that lie means millions of people are being poisoned in their own homes, and the Grenfell Tower fire was worse than it should have been?
 
Compartmentalisation. At one point in our meeting, I asked Doris about the sofa in her own home and the fact that it is toxic both in normal use and especially if it catches fire. I watched her eyes cloud briefly, sensing a trap - a trap, for God's sake! Yes, a trap of the truth - finally, she said, "I don't feel that my sofa is unsafe." Bear in mind, this is the woman who is responsible for these failing regulations that right now are damaging the health of thousands, perhaps millions of children. "And what are your feelings based on?" I said, "against the hard evidence on your own department's website that proves your sofa isn't safe." She didn't respond, presumably because to do so might have weakened the compartmentalisation protecting her from having to actually do some work. 
 
Doris, by the way, has been full time on the furniture regulations for around two years. She's even received a promotion in post, her salary now around £50K a year. When I asked her where they'd got with interliners (a proposal for which is in the 2016 consultation document that they are still apparently 'working' on) she said, "What's an interliner?"
 
This, in a nutshell, is how the establishment - government, local authorities, fire services and police at management levels - works. It is not there to help/protect the public. It exists to protect and reward itself. Similarly, the leadership of RBKC does not exist to protect its citizens; it exists as a career platform for itself. Like BEIS, it compartmentalises in order to allow it to lie, essentially. And when it's presented with the truth in such a way that threatens that compartmentalisation, it will just go silent, like Dr T.
 
So it is that the Leader of the Council, Elizabeth Campbell, has gone silent on me. As detailed on the Grenfell Tower Fire page of this site, after she mentioned that I'd raised the issue of the furniture regs at a recent RBKC meeting (well, she didn't have much choice), I wrote back offering to bring her up to speed on one of the main contributors to the fire. She didn't reply. I wrote a reminder. Again, she didn't reply. 
 
And thus the Leader of RBKC joins the long list of others who do not reply either, such as Sir Ken Knight, Dame Judith Hackitt, the Inquiry, BEIS, MHCLG, the GMB, Matt Wrack of the FBU; and Dave Sibert also of the FBU but recently and mysteriously stripped of his job there.
 
Silence, of course, should be damning, a sure indication of cowardice and mendacity. But it often works in the UK, unfortunately, simply because the recourse of the ordinary person is much more limited than it should be. The press used to be a reliable recourse but they are mostly hamstrung these days, by rich owners who do not want their rich mates pursued, and/or by the fear of legal action. There is a TV journalist who has been following the Grenfell fire since the beginning. I had a long conversation with him once about the role the furniture regs played in the fire. He was very interested but he didn't report on it. Later, I found out that he'd suffered from thyroid cancer. Thyroid conditions are one of the more well-established effects of flame retardant chemicals the like of which will be in this journalist's furniture in large amounts. I wrote to him about this. He didn't reply, although he's still reporting on Grenfell. Just not on the bit about furniture and flame retardants.
 
Yes, in a way you know you're right when they don't reply. The trouble is, they're surrounded by many others of a like mind, who also don't reply.

Extract from my journal, 25thJune 2015
 
I remembered today that in fact I have the power, not my bosses. The longer I stay in the job and with the Civil Service Code case continuing, that power is strengthened. Barbara, for example, keeps trying to find different ways to move the project forward but only by pretending she didn’t cause any problems in the first place. But everywhere she goes, I have her blocked – with truth, integrity and knowledge. 
 
For example, yesterday I was discussing her dismissal letter to Steve [she’d forgotten that he’s still our technical adviser and for reasons as usual undisclosed decided she’d better formally let him go] with my union guy, Carl. He stopped me at one point and said, “Hold on – she’s dismissed him? That should be in your case.”
 
And he was right. I’d missed it because I’ve almost grown used to their casual, but essentially lying, way of dealing with stakeholders, including those who’ve contributed enormously to the public good and for no reward, financially or otherwise. 
 
What had happened was this . . . a couple of weeks ago, David King [at the time heading Flexible Foam Research, a two-man operation acting as a front group for the British Plastics Federation, big advocates of flame-retarded foam] sent John a ‘technical paper’. It purported to prove how the new match test isn’t going to work – but most of it the same old opinion-expressed-as-fact crap; and he ended it somewhat arrogantly/aggressively by listing ‘acknowledgements’ in the form of FIRA, FRETWORK, the Fire Protection Association, etc – the usual snouts in the FR trough suspects. Anyway, John and Barbara didn’t of course understand it and passed it to me, without actually admitting so of course. I told them to ignore him – let FW/6 deal with it [FW/6 was the British Standards Institute’s working group on furniture flammability – an upcoming meeting was scheduled very soon to discuss the progress, as such, of the new test] – that it’s just a shot across the bows. The only thing of significance is that he twice mentions ‘extra work/research’ that’s needed for the new test. He, along with the likes of Dave Sibert, Paul Fuller, Jon O’Neill, have been saying this for months, of course, but without ever saying what it entails. Sorry – they have actually told us: it’s to commission British Standards to come up with a test foam formula even though we’ve already had one for the past 30 years.
 
Barbara, however, insisted on doing an analysis. Which she did. Then told me to look at it. Which I did. It was, as usual, almost entirely wrong about everything. I went round to her desk and said that his arguments are blown out by BS7176. Her face was a picture: a carefully arranged frown that mightbe saying, “Of course,” or more likely, “HELP! What the fuck do you mean?” She should know of course, since she heard Steve give the argument at the FPA meeting in the House of Commons meeting room some months back. But there you go: she’s forgotten and so just wasted time writing an ‘analysis’ that misses the major point. [At that meeting, King was banging on about how we must get the test foam formula right, or face thousands of fires, court cases, etc. Steve pointed out that a) the formula we’d proposed for the new test has been used for loose covers for 30 years without any problems, and b) where testing for BS7176 – for non-domestic furniture – is concerned, flame-resistant foam fillings are required but all test houses just use any old bits of foam they have lying around, again with no problems.]
 
So Barbara, frown deepening in what I think was meant to indicate intellectual foreknowledge, said, “Yes, of course,” then went on about how “We’ll pin them down at FW/6, and answer all their arguments.” [Anyone following this story will probably be able to guess that when FW/6 met, Barbara and John were nowhere to be seen, and Chris who was supposed to support me in the likely battering to come from the Skipton Mafia and their mates managed to turn up right at the end, well after the storm had subsided.]
 
Then Chris tried to prove to me that we don’t need a technical adviser but the best she could offer as to a reason why is because, “It’s all like Game of Thrones.” So I emailed Barbara just before she was going to send the dismissal letter to Steve, copying in everyone, including Samantha, to say:
 
The timing is wrong and so are your reasons. One of which is that now Steve has been elected Chair of FW/6 there is a potential conflict of interest (the irony of which would be enough to scorch the FR-treated pants of Burson Marsteller) but the independence of the FW/6 Chair is not an issue; no one, not even the FR guys are questioning Steve’s independence. And most crucially, who are you going to replace him with? As soon as it’s known we don’t have a TA we’ll get loads more reports from the likes of David King, written in technobabble which will just cause more delays (as intended). Ditching our TA will also be seen as us losing faith in the new match test. Finally, you know there is no one else with Steve’s brilliance and integrity.
 
Barbara emails back to say she’s glad these issues have been raised before she sends out the email to Steve, along with a dig at me for not raising them earlier – yes, B, but it actually takes me some time to work through all your machinations. She goes on to say she’s discussed this further with Samantha who has some ideas about how we can achieve our objectives. Whatfecking objectives? The only one that matters is to stop putting the public at risk. But here’s the thing: some time back, when all these problems began, I said to Samantha: I know these proposals are a bit complicated; why don’t I ask Steve to come in for a couple of hours and we can explain it all to you. She looked me in the eye and said, “No.” [Which I now believe is a clear indication that she’d been got at.] Oh, and Samantha also said we need to make sure we aren’t rude to Steve. Which, really does show their utter lack of understanding of anyone outside their nicely-mannered circle of pension-preserving collusion, because I’ve never seen Steve be offended by anything other than people lying to him and thinking he’s too stupid to see it.
 
And with that, Barbara walked right into my rat trap. I emailed back to say that finding other experts could be a problem since over the past several months BIS does not have a very good reputation. For example, we’d invited a group of test experts to a meeting at one-day’s notice last December then totally ignored their advice when it didn’t suit our agenda (I don’t of course mean ‘we’ here; I mean ‘Barbara’); that we are currently vacillating on more work/no work with British Standards who are looking on bemused; that the furniture/testing industry is a small world (roughly Skipton-sized as it happens).
 
Barbara then went quiet, and no one else replied to my points. Which is odd at one level, given that I had in effect just accused her and John of giving the department a bad reputation amongst our stakeholders. 
 
Back to my meeting with Carl . . . we decided that the best move for now is that I write to the big BIS chief, Martin Donnelly, and tell him that the department is in danger of being highly embarrassed when it transpires it’s keeping the entire British public at risk via fence-sitting civil servants. We’ll see if he has any more of a conscience than his senior managers.
 
Finally and perhaps the most revealing thing that happened this week: I’d deliberately left Richard Black [not his real name: the CEO of a very large chemical treatment company, one that Trading Standards had often found guilty of undertreating furniture fabrics] off the guest list for our upcoming stakeholder meetings. This is because a Trading Standards colleague tipped me off that they’re about to bust his company once again. But he found out about the meeting and demanded to be invited. So I wrote to our lawyer for a legal view and she replied that we probably shouldn’t invite him, given that he may be on the way to another prosecution. But John emailed in with a spurious (and suspicious) comparison about how the government is still talking to supermarkets even when they’re in breach of various regulations, and that we should invite Black on the same basis. 
 
This chilled me. Because Black is in thick with the FR producers, and with Andrew Stephenson MP, and is part of the Skipton Mafia. When I told Carl about John's actions later he suggested that it would probably work like this: the big 3 FR producers and/or Burson Marsteller and/or a big treatment company offer our man a well-paid job somewhere down the line. It’s not even illegal, as such, and can easily be covered by holding an ‘open’ interview for the post. Which makes sense, although I wouldn’t rule out hard cash. After all, the FR industry gave that US burns doctor a straight $250,000 to lie in court and big-up flame retardants. Given that our new match test could cost them around £50m a year, I’m sure they would gladly stump up at least a quarter mill to stop it going through.
 
 
 

From my journal, 16thJune 2015
 
[Here, I record details of two meetings on the same day which in many ways embody how my managers continued to put their pensions/industry liaisons/career fears before public safety.]
 
First today, we had a meeting at 10.00 with David Bolton, the new chair of the British Retail Consortium, and what a fucking shower my lot are. First, Phil is Chairing but doesn’t get to work until 10.02. He brings David up with him from the foyer, then has to excuse himself to change out of his sporty cycle gear (necessary, apparently, for his two-mile ride from the station to here, on a Brompton). He gets to the room by 10.15 but there’s only me and Victoria there with David: fourothers are due but are late. Phil and Vicky have a conversation about one of the absentees:
 
P: “Where’s Michael – is he coming?”
V: “I don’t know.”
P: “He’s meant to be here, isn’t he?”
V: “Who knows?” (She is only his line manager so why would she know?) “Do you want me to fetch him?” (He’s in the office, of course, but probably still having his breakfast which normally takes an hour or so.)
 
Michael finally rolls in at 10.20. While we’re waiting, David reminds me that he and I met at a very tough BRC meeting last year. Steve Owen and I had been invited to speak to a room full of retailers about the new match test. But unbeknown to us, David reminds me, Phil Reynolds of FIRA had spoken to them all first and really bad-mouthed the test, setting Steve and me up for a lot of negativity. But, David continues, we did a great job under pressure. “Make sure you tell Phil,” I say, but don’t mention Steve’s observation that all my managers had chickened out of the meeting in the first place.
 
At the start of the meeting, Phil does a lot of fast talking, covering strings of minor facts, intended to demonstrate that he knows ‘stuff’. When we get to furniture, he asks me to give an update. Which I do, after which David offers the following observations:
 

• A lot of the negative responses to BIS’s consultation were orchestrated by FIRA.
• FIRA have vested interests in being opposed to the match test
• The flame retardant producers and treatment industry are obviously opposed to the new test because they’re going to lose a lot of money
• [And to me with a sympathetic twinkle in his eye]: It must have been like wading through mud

 
I saw much significance in these comments but could tell that Phil either didn’t or didn’t want to. It looks as if the retailers are going to stand against the ‘No’ camp. Which makes sense since they will lose by further delays to the new test, e.g. David mentioned the public’s growing resistance to flame retardants and the problems of disposal of old sofas and mattresses, especially in light of the coming Stockholm Convention ruling on safe disposal of hazardous flame retardants at end-life.
 
Oh, and he also agreed with my suggestion that the chem boys/FIRA would use the overall amendments to the regulations to cause further delays to the new test (and all this was building nicely for what I had planned in the team meeting following this one).
 
Team Meeting
 
As I’d expected, Phil made no mention of the significance of David’s comments, so I brought it up, as far as I was allowed to. Then the others decided to look at everything other than the most important issue: the coming meeting at FW/6.
 
[Background: Sir Ken Knight, Paul Fuller, Jon O’Neill, Dave Sibert and others had persuaded the Minister, Jo Swinson, that she should commission the British Standards Institute to undertake 12-months ‘fast-track’ work on producing a new test foam formula for the new match test. No one wanted to listen to Steve and I pointing out that we already had a test foam formula in the existing regulations which had never produced any problems. In the event, Swinson agreed but Phil and Bridget were then in a bit of a pickle, i.e. if BIS went ahead and commissioned the work, then in 12 months time we’d be in the position of having no reason not to implement the new test and also having to explain why the hell we’d kept the public at risk for another year to produce a formula that already existed! Thus, Phil and Bridget changed the Minister’s recommendations in the government response published in March 2015, retaining the (frankly ridiculous) stuff about a new test foam formula, but a) changing Swinson’s directive that BSI be commissioned to do the work to just seeking their views on, and b) surrounding it in a huge amount of waffle, also not agreed by the Minister but guaranteed to ensure any changes were going to be delayed again – the response can be found here:
 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/456056/bis-15-140-consultation-on-amendments-to-the-furniture-and-furnishings-fire-safety-regulations.pdf
Note that the first suggestion talks again about finding ‘consensus’, despite Phil and Bridget being told by our Better Regulation unit that this is not possible and not necessary. Just for good measure, delay wise, they also added in that this attempt at consensus would now include allthe regulations, not just the match test: another recommendation never agreed by Swinson. Following, the publication of the government response, Phil and Bridget had persuaded BSI to hold a special meeting to discuss these items but both of them were clearly terrified of actually going along to explain it in person. Although I was currently in locked horns mode with them, they needed me to present at FW/6.]
 
Bridget was acting strange again: kept referring everything to me as if – IRONY ALERT! – I was the expert on the regs. I suspect this was her unsubtle way of saying, “It’s your arse on the line at FW/6, mate; don’t expect me to show my face.” Whatever, they wittered on about the forthcoming stakeholder meeting here in August, planning the order of events, discussing whether or not we need a facilitator . . . Good grief; the avoidance of the truth by diving into minor details was truly remarkable but not a million miles away I suppose from the Sir Humphrey playbook.
 
Then, probably sensing that I was suspiciously quiet, B announced that she had to leave early for another meeting; which suited me since now I had only one rat to trap. 
 
I pointed out that forces were gathering around the FW/6 meeting next month. Sir Ken Knight was attending as a guest, for a start. “Why would that be?” I asked but received only blank looks by return. “Could it be?” I went on, “That, following his success in getting us to agree to let BSI come up with a new test foam formula, he’s now going to push for us to let them take over amending the entire regulations?” Blank and blanker.
 
“Assuming I’m the one who has to face them,” I said, “I need two lines-to-take” and gave them my questions/suggestions of such.
 
First line: what do I say when they ask me why the Minister’s agreement – that BSI would be asked to spend 12 months on a new test foam formula, which was what they’d agreed was all that needed doing towards implementing the new test - has now had loads of other vague recommendations added to it including allthe regulations; and why we haven’t commissioned them to do this straight away, instead are now just asking for their ‘views’ on it (and the rest of the regs)?
 
Oh, boy, did this permafrost the atmosphere. The main rat saw the danger all right and said exactly what I expected him to: that the Minister had agreed to the drafting of the government response and not just the 12 months extra BSI work. To which I was able to say (since I’d checked all the emails) that the Minister had very clearly put in writing that, following the round table meeting in February, she wanted the 12 months BSI work to go ahead in order that the new match test would be implemented in April 2016 (there is of course no chance of that date being met now). But she did not agree to seeking consensus on all the rest of the regs. Phil repeated that she’d agreed to everything in the government response but we both know he’d slipped the extra stuff past her and besides, as I said, “That’s not what the stakeholders like Sir Ken believe is going to happen.”
 
In essense this is the trap the rats are now in:
 
Phil and Bridget allowed Sir Ken, O’Neill and Sibert, followed by the round table meeting, to advance the proposal that BIS undertake 12 months work on a new test foam formula that isn’t needed. Swinson was open to this at the meeting and confirmed it to us in writing afterwards. I’m the only BIS person to speak out against this unnecessary work – getting shouted at by Sir Ken for doing so – but now Phil is doing the same thing, albeit for very different reasons. He’s had to leave the new test foam thing in the response’s Next Steps but he’s also having to obscure it as much as possible, otherwise the work would get done and he and Bridget would have nowhere to hide.
 
So, in essence what Phil has done is this:
 

• Allowed the round table/FPA, Sir Ken, etc to believe they’d won the argument for 12 months BSI work
• Refused, at my request, to put Swinson right about the fact such work was not needed
• Got her to sign off the government response but without making it clear to her that he’d changed a) the commission for BSI to dothe work to just seeking their ‘views’ on it, and b) 12 months being changed to just a few months – in order to make the desired new implementation date of April 2016
• Further added things in the commissioning letter to BSI, now stating that we don’t in fact need anyextra work doing, just getting their views on the foam and the rest of the regulations while you’re at it

 
The wonderful irony is that in order to ‘answer’ my question about a line-to-take, he had to push further into the argument that BSI doesn’t consider that any more work is necessary. Well, they wouldn’t, especially with Steve being FW/6’s new Chair. 
 
The other line I said I needed was in response to BIS’s almost certain demand – especially with Sir Ken present – that they should be commissioned to produce a new standardfor all the testing requirements of the regulations. (Working with all the leading test houses a couple of years back, we’d established that it was best to do away with standards and instead put all the test requirements in the regulations – much to BSI’s horror, of course.) If we concede to that, I said, we’ll be looking at 3-5 years delay. The irony being that if Phil doesn’t want that to happen, he’s going to have to come up with a line to defend my work.
 
After Phil chewed his mental lips for a few seconds and threw sociopathic eye daggers at me, I put a proposal to them: that I put down a marker at FW/6 that as soon as we see that all the amendments to the regulations will not get in by April 2016 (which they clearly won’t), BIS will ensure that at least the new match test does. This is to defuse the delaying tactics, and we have the perfect reason: removing the current danger to public safety (something that Clare, our lawyer, was very strong about the other day).
 
Phil said that we’d need Ministerial approval for this (I resisted pointing out that the absence of such had not stopped him before); to which I agreed but said we can at least set out our intention at FW/6. To which he suggested – somewhat desperately, it has to be said – why not wait until we see how the FW/6 meeting pans out then think about suggesting something at the August stakeholder meeting? To which Chris, of all people, said, “It could be too late by then?” (Well, yes, that’s the point; glad you finally appear to see it.)
 
They decided that I should put all this in writing, which means I’m in the interesting position of having to set out in writing how they misled a Minister.
 
The bigger picture? In some ways, I saw it in David Bolton’s eyes earlier in the day (Phil wouldn’t have, of course): respect. The BRC were somewhat resistant to me and Steve at their meeting but I think they’ve had time to mull it over and see that he and I can be trusted, and that we know what we’re doing. Respect: something that Phil will neverget from anyone he deals with, stakeholders and colleagues alike. He may of course be getting something else from the chemical industry that for him is more important. 
 
 

The Grenfell Inquiry is taking a break at present and I thought it might be timely to set out a few pieces of new information and reminders regarding the part played in the fire by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
 
As covered in detail on this site, BEIS is refusing to make changes to the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, even though they know this is poisoning just about every person in the country and that the failures of the Regulations made the Grenfell fire worse than it needed to have been.
 
BEIS is refusing to respond to its 2016 consultation that once again proposed a new ‘match test’ that would put right the current failures and hugely reduce toxic flame retardants in UK furniture.
 
The current civil servant in charge of the Furniture Regulations has been in that post for nearly two years yet when questioned recently did not even know that the flammability requirements are modified British Standards. She also did not know what an interliner is.
 
In response to a FOI request made by the Grenfell Fire Forum, BEIS stated that it had had NO contact with the Grenfell Inquiry or the Dame Judith Hackitt review about the Furniture Regulations, e.g. to inform them that they are failing and therefore contributed to the fire. I questioned Dame Hackitt about this recently and she said that BEIS were working on the problems with the Regulations. So, who’s lying?
 
In January 2018, BEIS set up the new Office for Product Safety and Standards within itself, with a £3m budget. It has been criticised by the Chair of the BEIS select committee for doing nothing about Whirlpool washing machines which keep catching fire.
 
BEIS/OPSS were charged with investigating the fridge-freezer unit that is thought to have started the Grenfell fire. They issued a press release in May this year, stating that ‘experts’ had concluded that the risk from these units is low and therefore a recall is unnecessary. The APPG for Fire Safety and Rescue questioned the BEIS official about this, asking for the names of the experts and to see their work. This official – the same one that’s in charge of the Furniture Regulations - did not reply.
 
I put in a FOI request to BEIS asking the same questions and they responded to tell me the answers are at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hotpoint-fridge-freezer-ff175b-independent-investigation
 
However, this link was not given to the APPG and was not mentioned in BEIS’s press release. Strange. What could they be hiding? Well, we are currently looking into the test reports at that link and so far they look pretty dodgy, to say the least. Overall, BEIS is conflating two separate points, i.e. on the one hand, they’re saying that they tested second hand units of the same type as started the Grenfell fire to see if other such units in the UK need recalling but they don’t. On the other, they’re trying to imply that the actual unit that caught fire in Grenfell tower was also safe – which is incredible, considering it was responsible for 72 deaths. But see for yourself; here is what BEIS stated in the press release:
 
“The investigation into the fridge freezer Hotpoint FF175B model identified by the Metropolitan Police as being involved in the Grenfell Tower fire has confirmed there is no need for a product recall or any other corrective action, and that consumers can continue using the product as normal.

“As part of the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire, Business Secretary Greg Clark ordered an immediate examination of the unit by independent technical experts.”

​The second paragraph is misleading in other ways, too. First, the unit was not examined by independent technical experts. Similar second hand models were examined by an Intertek test laboratory which produced a (questionable) report that the experts then based their decision on. The actual unit in the Grenfell fire has not been examined by BEIS. Second, it probably goes without saying that the ‘independent experts’ were in fact either BEIS officials or other officials appointed by BEIS.
 
My view is that BEIS are trying to claim that the actual unit involved in the Grenfell fire is not dangerous because the last thing they want is attention being drawn to products they are responsible for having added to the fire. Like furniture.
 
I have been working with Lady Mar on trying to get flame retardants out of products. In July this year she raised some parliamentary questions for BEIS to answer. Here are two of them:
 
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Fire Resistant Materials
HL9708
Q: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they take to ensure that all flame retardants are safe (1) in normal use, (2) during fires, and (3) at the end of life when they are disposed of.
 
A: Manufacturers and distributors must ensure all consumer products are safe before they are placed on the UK market, including those that use flame retardants. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have lead responsibility for environmental policy and restrictions on chemicals.
 
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Fire Resistant Materials
HL9707
Q: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the study by the University of Central Lancashire, Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate, published in April; whether they have consulted with their Chief Scientist in forming that assessment; and whether, following that study, they intend to reconsider the efficacy of current flame retardants.
 
A: The Department welcomes the paper by University of Central Lancashire and it forms part of the evidence we are considering in reviewing the legislation regulating the safety of furniture.
 
The first part of the first answer is not true. Flame retardants are not a product, for a start, and are therefore not governed by product safety laws. They are governed by REACH, the EU’s chemical assessment regime. While product safety law requires manufacturers to be able to demonstrate that, say, a bunk bed is safe beforeit’s placed on the market, using the recognised standards to do so, a flame retardant chemical can be placed on the market by the manufacturer purely on the grounds that he says it’s safe. The pattern with flame retardants is that eventually they are properly tested and almost always found to be toxic, then removed from the market. The problem being that they are still in millions of products. Note, too, that the second two points by Lady Mar were ignored. This is probably because where ‘during fires’ is concerned, FRs are incredibly toxic (see the UCLAN paper mentioned in the second question). And disposal of FRs at the end-life of products is a subject that both industry and BEIS are terrified of. In short, the Stockholm Convention is soon to rule that FRs in products must be disposed of safely thus. The UK, of course, possesses literally millions of sofas and mattresses stuffed full of toxic FRs. At present, these are disposed of dangerously but cheaply in land-fill. To dispose of them safely will cost a fortune. Strange that the Department for Business would choose not to mention this fact.
 
The second answer completely contradicts the first! The UCLAN paper proves that FR-treated UK furniture is highly toxic. You might also wonder what BEIS means by ‘considering’ the evidence that FRs are toxic in regard to regulating the Furniture Regs. Their own 2014 consultation paper demonstrates the toxicity of FRs. The UCLAN paper was published in December 2017 (although Professor Hull gave a demonstration of it several months earlier). Which means that for at least eight months, but more like for four years, this Department has done absolutely nothing about the fact that the failures in regulations it is responsible for are poisoning the entire country.
 
All of which raises perhaps the most germane question, why on earth are the consumer product safety laws in the UK governed by the Department for Business? 

From my journal, 4th June 2015
 
I feel as if I’m living in a parallel world to most other people. At the end of the European Branch team meeting today, Susannah [I’m now using these people’s real names, by the way], Our Leader, said that two teams had won the “Take the Biscuit” award this week. One was the “Fancy Dress” team, as she put it, and at first I thought it must be a bunch of people who’d put on a fancy dress evening recently (similar things have won). But then I realised she meant the team that had dealt with the recent “Watchdog” campaign, to extend the Nightwear Regs. 
 
[Claudia Winkleman’s daughter had been badly burned by a candle, her cheap and highly flammable fancy dress outfit going up in flames very easily. I was in charge of the Nightwear (Safety) Regulations, as well as the Furniture Regs. They are both UK-only regulations. The BBC and others were calling for stricter flammability requirements for fancy dress outfits. Certain flame retardant-loving types like Paul Fuller had been campaigning to have fancy dress outfits included in the Nightwear Regs, a move which could easily lead to lots of flame retardants in children’s clothing.]
 
I hadn’t made the connection because in reality it hasn’t been dealt with at all. Susannah went on to praise Phil [previously known in this blog as John Lord] and Richard because apparently, they’d . . . well, here’s the thing: I can’t remember what she said exactly – because it was false, or falsely reasoned. But in effect she was saying they’d got the Minister on board with our ‘solutions’. She mentioned me in passing then Richard, to applause, goes to get the prize; the biscuits. Parallel worlds, because I was thinking that the reality is this:
 

• Phil tried to exclude me from the process
• I found out anyway and produced a ton of stuff they didn’t know about
• I briefed Richard who’s supposed to be a standards expert but, well, isn’t, even if he knows a lot 
• a) it was actually me who did the important work, but b) they couldn’t even get that right in what they finally put to the Minister
• The result being that they haven’t come up with any solutions at all. They’ve bodged things, kidding themselves they’ve done good work when in fact whatever actually happens next is a lottery

 
Then we had a Furniture Regs project meeting. Parallel worlds again because I’m the Box 3 SEO who apparently can’t deal well with stakeholders but, once again, they have to keep asking me for advice and giving me the meaty action points, because despite their higher pay grades, they do not actually understand anything.
 
In short, they’re in a state of panic because they have no overview. They can’t handle me because I do. They can give me the lowest box marking for my annual report and generally treat me like crap but they can’t get round me because I know. Knowing comes from being always-on, coupled with commitment and insight.
 
By contrast, they’ve sold their integrity to an organisation that has long given up being actually effective. They spend their days managing – or trying to – everything down to their level of limited and fragmented understanding. Most of the time this works because they never get challenged by the real world outside. They can’t handle the Furniture Regs because they’re the UK’s responsibility and therefore represent the real world that’s sneaked inside these EU-dominated walls.
 
I send them emails or tell them in meetings that in effect a war’s coming and I watch the scared flickering shadows in their eyes, the “not me, surely?” thoughts. They try to fragment the issues so they can more easily deal with them. But the issue is not fragmented: it’s the fact that the government has failed the public. 
 
The two person team of me and Steve has been incredibly more effective than the numerically far superior groups we’ve been up against. We’ve faced hundreds of them across dozens of meetings and events and often been attacked and lied to and scorned. But they couldn’t beat us because we’re intact in our perceptions and moral underpinnings. The awareness matrix we’ve built between us has always been ahead of their games – not that it’s necessarily worked, of course.
 
FIFA built a shadow matrix, a network of connections and mutual deceptions which was rooted in greed. Which meant it was actually always using them, not the other way around. So, when the FBI comes calling, it all collapses instantly, with everyone at FIFA turning on each other. That can never happen with a positive matrix because it is formed around actualinsights. The shadow matrix is formed around weakness, self-deception, fantasy and greed. Crucially, the members of the shadow matrix aren’t actually in control of it. So, when it deserts them, they have nothing left to work from, to think from, to be from.
 
My lot are not exactly like FIFA but they have formed a shadow matrix. Phil is the main operator and puppeteer within it. But he’s still its creature. Chris has sold her soul to it when she should have trusted me – two of us would probably have been enough to make the difference. But here I’m missing the point: you can only join or form a positive matrix if you’re already a seeker after truth and integrity. You can perhaps be the supporter of a positive matrix, if you aren’t directly challenged by the needs of the shadow matrix opposing it; but that’s the subject of a whole different kind of process.
 
Richard Hull [professor of fire toxicity at UCLAN] recently made the point to me that BIS has probably never before had to deal with this kind of case, and he thought that was to my advantage. I wasn’t sure about that but I told him that I was no longer stressed; and that’s because I’m right and if that means they ultimately all get taken down, so be it.

Below in bold is a press statement made yesterday by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I thought it was worth reproducing (along with my comments) because it’s illustrative of how difficult it is for Grenfell Tower fire survivors to get justice. Many of the people I work with remark on how government officials these days lie uniformly and/or simply refuse to respond to matters of public safety, electing instead to protect their careers, pensions and, quite frankly, their right to do bugger all in their day jobs. This is routinely happening with MHDCLG officals, too, when questioned about buildings legislation in relation to Grenfell.
 
It becomes rather tiresome to point out that this statement, like all the others from BEIS in recent years, is not only full of untruths, it offers absolutely no evidence or facts in support of its claims. Note, too, what it doesn’t do, e.g. provide any links to the relevant documents such as BEIS’s own 2014 proposals on a new match test with the accompanying research and scientific proof of the Technical Annex. Why? Well, almost certainly because anyone reading those will immediately see this statement for what it is: a ghastly, unfounded, self-justification for keeping the entire country at risk from toxic poisoning in their own homes.
 
 
A BEIS spokesperson said:
 
“We have sought views, consulted and proposed ways forward but there is not yet consensus across the sector and Government will not take risks with people's safety. (1)
 
“The UK has the highest furniture safety requirements in Europe and we are committed to improving environmental outcomes and reducing toxicity but need to do so in a clear, well evidenced way which also improves fire safety.” (2)
 
 
Additional Information: 

• The Government considers the safety of consumers to be a priority, and consumers should have confidence that the products in their homes are produced to rigorous safety requirements. (3)
• We are committed to improving environmental outcomes and reducing toxicity but need to do so in a clear, well evidenced way that also improves fire safety. (4)
• UK furniture safety requirements are acknowledged as being the highest in Europe.  We are committed to reviewing these regulations to ensure that the highest levels of fire safety are both maintained, and improved, for UK consumers. (5) 
• Revision of the regulations is complex, with a broad spectrum of views expressed by respondents from industry, fire services, charities and regulators. (6)

 
 
(1)  There wasn’t consensus when they proposed exactly the same changes (as in 2016) back in 2014 but the Minister, Jo Swinson and the next Minister, Anna Soubry ordered that the new test should come in regardless – which was also agreed by the fire sector. BEIS’s own Better Regulation unit advised – rightly – that you’ll never get consensus when some parties will lose out financially, and that consultations are not intended to get consensus over a matter of public safety. And the government IS taking risks with people’s safety! It’s refusing to put right the unsafe situation that Richard Hull’s paper (and other works) proves is in place, e.g. that a UK sofa is more dangerous than an EU sofa.
 
(2)  No it doesn’t – because BIS proved they don’t work! The UK government is currently being challenged by European furniture makers, via the EU Commission, on the basis that the Regulations are an unjustified barrier to trade, because they’ve been proven not to work. There is no proof at all that these regs save any lives – but we do know they’re putting millions of lives at risk through toxic poisoning. The BIS 2014 condoc and technical annex was ‘clear’ and ‘well evidenced’ – since then they haven’t produced a single piece of evidence for anything they’re saying now – 21 months since the 2016 consultation closed and still no change: this hardly constitutes a ‘committed’ approach.
 
(3)  The furniture products in our homes are NOT safe – they’re poisoning us, both in their normal state and especially when they burn.
 
(4)  BIS’s own 2014 consultation document and technical annex (widely praised by the country’s leading test experts) proved in a ‘clear, well-evidenced’ way that there are big safety problems with these regulations. Since then, BEIS has replaced its in-house regulations experts with a couple of people who recently demonstrated that they do not even know the requirments in these regulations are based on British standards. The Grenfell Fire Forum has not been able to find any evidence at all that BEIS officials have done any work on ‘improving environmental outcomes’, other than adopting a deflecting tactic in recent months. This is to keep back their Furniture Regulations officials and instead send Jon Elliott of their Science Unit in the Office of Product Safety and Standards to attend meetings and say things like, “We needto look at environmental outcomes” [my emphasis]. At the same time he tells people that the issues with the match test (that fails in most cases in practice) were ‘then; this is now’, etc.
 
(5) Actually, they’re not; now that the EU knows the truth about how they don’t work. 
 
(6) The same views were expressed by the same respondents in 2014 and dealt with. No evidence at all that they’re consulting anyone on these ‘complex’ regs. The first time in nearly two years that BEIS officials actually went out to visit a stakeholder was a few weeks back, when they booked themselves a trip to IKEA in Almhult, Sweden. 
 
The bottom line is simple: if BEIS puts these regulations right – either by implementing a new match test or by changing to just a smoulder test like the rest of the world – the former producing fire safety, the latter producing FR-free products, which the Grenfell Fire Forum and others believe is the better option) – the following industries will lose out big time financially:

• Flame retardant industry
• Chemical treatment industry
• Furniture industry (by losing its coveted trade barrier to the rest of the world)
• Testing industry (less testing required)

 
Given that all four work together closely – the core group often referred to inside the business as ‘The Skipton Mafia’ – and blocked the 2014 changes despite offering no evidence at all to support their complaints; and given that back then BIS had two full-time national experts working on the regulations, but now has none . . . there is absolutely no chance of these regulations being put right any time soon. The likes of Jon Elliott know this of course and are simply covering their backs until we get to Brexit which they somehow hope will sort everything for them.
 
Meanwhile, Jon, I advise that you buy your sofas and mattresses from outside the UK, if you care about your family being poisoned while they sleep.

Extracts from my journal, 15th June 2017
 
Grenfell Tower, a huge housing block in Kensington, caught fire last night and is still burning. About a dozen people so far have died, and around 40 injured. A reporter I know phoned today to talk about it and said he thought the timing might be suspicious. 
 
The clouds of dark smoke pouring out of the tower are that colour mainly because of flame retardants - and that smoke will include hydrogen cyanide. And yet not one single person has mentioned this in the media, even though hundreds of people, including firefighters have been breathing it in for hours. Which may or may not be a great sleight of hand act on the part of the FR industry. On which point, there was an article in the Guardian yesterday by Dr Malcolm Tunnicliff, who dealt with 12 casualties from the fire. He says:
 
"We knew in advance that it was a fire in an enclosed space so we also knew there was a real risk of cyanide poisoning from foam in older furniture burning. So we had lots of cyano kits – which contain the antidote to cyanide poisoning – ready and waiting to give people. Happily tests shows that none of them had; that was a relief."
 
I find this suspicious - first that he would be talking at all to the press and offering views on the fire before there's been any kind of investigation. Second, that he mentions burning furniture foam as a possible source of cyanide poisoning but does so wrongly, i.e. while foam in older (by which I suspect he means pre-1988 when the Regulations came in) was toxic when burned, modern foam is far more toxic because it contains FRs. Third, he claims victims were tested for cyanide but I thought that diagnoses of blood for cyanide poisoning takes quite some time. [We also learned later blood tests were taken from none of the survivors. I wrote to Dr Tunnicliff about his statements but he did not reply.]
 
Some possible issues/factors:
 

• Richard Hull has just given a talk at BFR 2017 on his work that proves a sofa treated with FRs is more toxic than an untreated sofa. The FR industry as usual was present; also present, and not usual, was Dave Sibert of the FBU.

 

• The Fire Safety Order 2005 removed the requirement upon the 'responsible person' to get a professional fire risk assessment made of his property - which is part of the general issue of industry gradually weakening safety requirements.

 

• TV says that every one of the survivors suffered from smoke inhalation; none from fires/burns, which means we need protection from toxic smoke produced by burning FRs more than from fire. When I mentioned this to Steve Owen earlier today he said, "Well, obviously," but it's not obvious to most of the population and those who advise them on fire safety.

 
The reporter who phoned me wants to do a big story on toxic smoke and furniture, bringing in Richard Hull's research, showing that the Furniture Regs can be used as a good/bad example of failing fire safety requirements, i.e. they don't work; don't increase escape time; produce highly toxic fumes. 
 
I also have some dark thoughts that I do not want to fully express, even in this journal. But I'm concerned that BEIS still may finally implement a new match test that will hugely reduce FRs in furniture cover fabrics, which in turn may lead to getting rid of them altogether (as in the US and rest of the EU). A move that might be triggered by Richard Hull's BFR talk and forthcoming paper on the same subject. The FR industry lost its US market then failed in its attempts to gain the EU market, and is at risk of losing its main supporter, the UK - at a time when it is trying to build new markets in India, Africa and Asia. And if it transpires that FRs killed many if not most of the people in Grenfell Tower when they and the Furniture Regs don't work, well, that would be very seriously damaging. Not just for the FR industry itself but also for those who get paid to promote it, including fire services officials and at least one BEIS official. In this respect, it will be very interesting to see if attention regarding the Grenfell fire remains everywhere but on burning furniture.

Today, on the Grenfell Inquiry livestream you could watch a fire officer being questioned because he had led the initial response to the fire. He looked uncomfortable throughout. At one point, he admitted to not following national safety guidance when carrying out a check on Grenfell Tower in 2016.
 
Behind the relative calm of the Inquiry proceedings, a lot of largely unseen activity is taking place, some of it near-frantic, with various people trying to cover their backs, suppress the truth and, no doubt, encourage the finger of blame to point at the more obvious targets, like those who were directly involved in fighting the fire.
 
The Grenfell Fire Forum has had some strange interactions recently with people we know well, some of whom have been helping our efforts to reveal the truth. At least, that's what they said they were doing. Why strange? Well, let's just suppose that there is a network of people with vested interests that work counter to public safety that might just get exposed through the Inquiry. Let's just suppose that the Grenfell Fire Forum has put a lot of information together that shows these links. Because when you know where to look you find the same names cropping up time and again, on the various associations for fire safety, for standards-making, on related trade associations, government advisory groups, etc. 
 
Let's also suppose that the Grenfell Fire Forum has contacts with good people who do not want to be named but who do want to provide information that further connects the same names to the same activities. Let's suppose also that the same names know that we know about them.
 
Well, these are clever people in some ways; at least, where making a buck or two is concerned. But they often underestimate those who may not be as high-ranking but don't have greed fuelled by panic at being exposed governing their thinking. Hence, we notice when someone decides to cut all ties with us a few hours after we've been talking to someone else they have links with but don't know that we know that.
 
We also notice for example how the Department for Business has just possibly lied in a press release announcing that there is no need for a recall of the fridge-freezer type that started the Grenfell fire. We know where to find the same names once again behind this issue, and how there is mutual back-covering going on. We also see the bottom line: that the same BEIS officials who are protecting themselves where the failing furniture regulations are concerned are prepared to wave through the risk that another fridge-freezer will cause another Grenfell Tower fire to the same end.
 
So, yes, there may well have been mistakes made by front-line firefighters. But they don't make the policies such as 'stay put'. Those same names are involved in that process and their reasons are not always to do with public safety.
 
One of those names has been telling people that I approached him recently and said, "I know where you live." Apart from the fact I don't know where he lives, I have never threatened anyone with anything but the truth. What I actually did was to remind him of the fact that back in 2014 he had agreed with the government that the current match test fails and the new one would work. But that he and others of those same names had then talked our Minister into endorsing an unnecessary 12 months further work with British Standards, following which the match test would be implemented in April 2016. But they never undertook the work. I questioned them publicly at the end of 2017 about why they had done nothing in the past 4 years about a test they agreed does not work and therefore is pumping everyone full of more flame retardants than necessary, including their own firefighters. He said now that they didn't tell the Minister that 12 months more work was needed, and I said I have you on record. And I do.

Below is a link to the presentation I did in Ireland in May this year. 
 
To put the issue raised in these slides into perspective: the Grenfell Inquiry has been running for nearly ten months, the Hackitt Review has concluded, as has the Inquiry's Experts Panel, yet so far the actual main cause of death in the Tower has not even been mentioned, let alone investigated. Which is:
 
The majority of deaths in Grenfell Tower were from toxic smoke poisoning and the majority of toxic smoke came from burning upholstered furniture.
 
Adjacent to this is the fact that UK upholstered furniture is three times more toxic than furniture in the EU, the reason being that it contains up to 30% by weight of flame retardant chemicals.
 
Or, to put it another way, flame retardant chemicals were responsible for most of the deaths in Grenfell Tower. Yet they have been barely mentioned either, in the Inquiry/Hackitt Review/Experts Panel.
 
Why? Well, there is big money in flame retardants, as I talk about elsewhere on this site. And there are plenty of people happy to take the FR industry's money in return for falsely claiming that they save lives from fire, even if in the case of fire union officials, that means it hugely adds to rising cancer rates in their own people (and the rest of the population). 
 
Slide presentation, Dublin, May 2018.
 

 
As I've described elsewhere on this site, the Grenfell Fire Forum met BEIS officials recently to discuss the Furniture Regulations. Three of us also spoke at a Fire Congress in Dublin on 31 May and took the opportunity to meet up the day before with officials and others from the Irish government to discuss the same issue (Ireland is the only other country in the world that has the same furniture flammability regulations as the UK). 
 
During my time at BIS/BEIS I had met the same Irish officials many times, both in Ireland and London. We had a good working relationship; indeed, when I spoke at another fire safety conference in Dublin earlier this year, I met two of them for a drink the night before. They are good company. However, I couldn't help notice that they spent the first half hour or so that night talking about their pensions.
 
We met BEIS on 3 May. As I've described on the Grenfell Tower page, they refused to answer our first question, although by the end of the meeting they promised to answer it in writing. Five weeks later, and despite three written reminders, they still have not replied. The question put to them several times at the meeting and in writing was:
 
a)         Do you agree that BIS/BEIS's published documents - the 2014 consultation paper, the 2015 Technical Annex, and the 2016 consultation paper - prove, through testing evidence and scientific reasoning, that the current match test fails in up to 90%* of cases in practice, confirmed by Trading Standards' in-field work, and that UK furniture is therefore unsafe**? Please answer Yes or No.
 
b)         If your answer to a) is 'No' please provide the evidence to justify it.
* "Up to 90%" is based on the fact that Trading Standards report they are finding 84.3% failures in the match test in practice but that figure is based on just two of the failings of the test: undertreatment and stain-repellent spraying. It does not take into account failings caused by flammable materials close to the cover or the presence of a fibre-wrap layer in most sofas - 5.7% being a conservative estimate for these two factors.
** For example, from BIS's Technical Annex (our emphasis): "Consumers are, in many instances, being led to believe that the furniture they buy is match resistant when it is not so in its final form (because it has been sprayed by persistent and flammable materials or has covers which behave favourably in test but not in the finished item or has components near the surface which are flammable) ... The Regulations rely upon a combination of ignition resistance measures; if any one of these measures is compromised it can lead to catastrophic failure of actual final composites."
They managed to avoid answering this question for two hours, in the process displaying a stunning lack of knowledge of the regulations they are responsible for; that, and producing incredibly convoluted and contradictory statements which amounted to them claiming that the evidence they need in order to act has yet to be gathered.
 
Let's be clear about what this means: the people responsible for ensuring the public is safe when it sits on its sofas and when it sleeps on its mattresses are in fact deliberately keeping the entire British public at risk - both from flammable products and the vast amounts of toxic flame retardants in those products used in order to meet flammability requirements that don't even work.
 
They are doing this knowingly. Why? Because, evidently, their pensions and having a smooth career that doesn't cause their senior managers problems is more important to them.
 
The Irish have failed to act, too. And in their case they can't claim ignorance since the same people have been in charge of their regulations for many years more than the BEIS officials.
 
Here are a few of the explanations they gave us for why nothing has changed in Ireland:
 
"We are citizens, too, so we have to face the issue that we may be sitting/sleeping on unsafe and toxic furniture."
 
Our response: But you know there's a problem and therefore can make a choice about what furniture you buy. The vast majority of Irish citizens do not.
 
Their response to that was to say that there had been several articles in the Sunday Times which had alerted the Irish public to the problem. 
 
Our response (leaving aside the obvious point that even if this were true, they should still have acted by now): Those articles were very short and did not alert the Irish public to the overall problem [we have copies of the articles and knew exactly what was in them].
 
"We are short of resources but we have made this subject a priority for 2018."
 
However, they appear to have done nothing so far, five months into the year.
 
We asked why they haven't been working with/consulting anyone on these regulations. Their response was to state that they can't do so when they are forming policy: it has to go to the Minister first. 
 
Our response: Yes, the Minister has to sign off policy but you are completely free to consult anyone while gathering the information and evidence you need to draft the policy (which is exactly what was done at BIS in the build-up to the 2014 consultation on a new match test).
 
"Evidence is often not that important in forming policy."
 
This is ridiculous. Yes, at times some parts of policy may be formed around incomplete evidence but a) all the necessary evidence was in place for the 2014 proposed new match test and b) you don't have any new evidence anyway. 
 
So, once again, we have officials in charge of public safety regulations, knowing that they don't work and therefore their entire population is at risk, coming up with complicated 'reasons' for their inaction when in fact they are simply protecting themselves.
 
Similar attitudes are at play in the Dame Hackitt Review, of course. 
 
The worrying thing is that the same department, BEIS, is handling the Brexit work. The one thing we can be sure of is that every effort will be taken by those officials to make sure their pensions are safe.