Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire part II

[LondonJohn]

Not really. It is a problem for posters who think 'it is believed' means 'it is confirmed' because they do not understand the nuances of language and when something is conditional.

Luckily, I am here to explain.

Stop obfuscating and misdirecting. We are talking about your use of the word "invariably".

 

[Disbelief]

Not really. It is a problem for posters who think 'it is believed' means 'it is confirmed' because they do not understand the nuances of language and when something is conditional.

Luckily, I am here to explain.

Like when you explained that welding did not melt steel.

 

[theprestige]

I have never lied about my qualifications or background, or my experiences.

Sure you have. This, for example:

Having had to study all aspects of business and industry inside out, outside in, in every possible way

Is clearly self-aggrandizing nonsense. The only reason to not count it as a lie is because it's so obviously and stupidly untrue that one is inclined to simply tune it out as a hedge against insanity. Kind of like not reading Act II of The King in Yellow.

 

[Vixen]

The problem is that you made this up in an attempt to impress others and elevate your nondescript job to "exciting" levels. You're lying. Just drop it please.

Good old British envy. You want it to be a lie because you think it is somehow prestigious. It is not. The Act is law and applies to everybody.

It can mean something or nothing depending on the foibles of the employer. It was a throwaway comment, true, albeit mistakenly believing many civil servants sign it yet somehow it seems to have triggered a kneejerk response in you, when it means squat for the average person.

To put t back in context, firefighters are not allowed to speak to the press. There is a chain of command as to who is authorized to give a press conference. There is nothing controversial about this. Please desist from claiming I am lying when I stated that I signed it on two occasions.

 

[Steve]

Please see my post #1579 above, which explains that I wrongly thought that your post had been posted by Vixen - so I thought I was replying to Vixen. I apologise again to you for mistakenly putting you in my firing line!

Thanks for that. Missed it when I came back to the thread. Misunderstandings all round. No harm no foul.

 

[JayUtah]

I signed it.

No. You didn't sign the Official Secrets Act. The Official Secrets Act is an act of Parliament, revised and amended a few times since its initial passage. The only person who signs acts of Parliament are the representatives of the lawmaking bodies who pass them and the Sovereign giving assent to them.

I was given a document to sign that specifically said I was bound by the Official Secrets Act. This was a document quite separate from any other document and specific to the Official Secrets Act.

But it was not the act itself. Nor is your gaffe repaired by saying it's just a "figure of speech." It isn't. It's simply a wrong, naive statement.

If you do not believe it that is your prerogative.

I'm quite willing to believe you signed a paper in connection with your employment. I'm not prepared to believe that what you signed was the Official Secrets Act. I'm not prepared to believe your claim that everyone who embarks on civil service in the U.K. is required to affirmatively acknowledge in writing being bound by it. I'm not prepared to believe that your inaccurate and unknowledgeable nomenclature is merely colloquialism that your benighted critics somehow do not know.

However, I suspect it is is just more ad hominem because you are unable to debate the topic under the usual terms of debate.

If you believe my posts are inappropriate personal attacks, report them for moderation. Otherwise kindly do not insinuate as much for desperate rhetorical effect.

The terms of debate include various methods of dispassionate refutation. These methods include, for example, showing that the syllogism underpinning the argument is of non-validating form. If the syllogism is of validating form, then another method includes showing that the premises of the argument are not factually sound and that despite the validating form of the syllogism, a reliable conclusion cannot follow from them.

Your argument is that firefighters in the applicable fire department are not being truthful with the public regarding the cause of the fire because they are governed in such activity by the Official Secrets Act. This claim is not predicated upon any objective or documentary fact you can produce, but instead entirely on your claim to have had to subscribe explicitly to the Act as a condition of your own civil service and your belief that all other civil service employees had to do the same.

For that syllogism to be of validating form, your experience would need to be categorical. You have not shown that it is, although you have assert as much. You have the burden to prove your syllogism is of validating form. But even granting you validating form as a courtesy, we still have to examine the factual nature of the premise.

Thus your alleged experience in civil service and your knowledge of its requirements are strictly in the crosshairs, not as ad hominem arguments but as a questionable premise to the argument you have decided to formulate and deploy.

Now that my rebuttal is properly framed in the context of the rules of polite debate, kindly address it instead of whining about shabby treatment.

 

[Steve]

Okay to treat me with disrespect though, eh?

You seem to have earned it.

 

[Vixen]

No. You didn't sign the Official Secrets Act. The Official Secrets Act is an act of Parliament, revised and amended a few times since its initial passage. The only person who signs acts of Parliament are the representatives of the lawmaking bodies who pass them and the Sovereign giving assent to them.



But it was not the act itself. Nor is your gaffe repaired by saying it's just a "figure of speech." It isn't. It's simply a wrong, naive statement.



I'm quite willing to believe you signed a paper in connection with your employment. I'm not prepared to believe that what you signed was the Official Secrets Act. I'm not prepared to believe your claim that everyone who embarks on civil service in the U.K. is required to affirmatively acknowledge in writing being bound by it. I'm not prepared to believe that your inaccurate and unknowledgeable nomenclature is merely colloquialism that your benighted critics somehow do not know.



If you believe my posts are inappropriate personal attacks, report them for moderation. Otherwise kindly do not insinuate as much for desperate rhetorical effect.

The terms of debate include various methods of dispassionate refutation. These methods include, for example, showing that the syllogism underpinning the argument is of non-validating form. If the syllogism is of validating form, then another method includes showing that the premises of the argument are not factually sound and that despite the validating form of the syllogism, a reliable conclusion cannot follow from them.

Your argument is that firefighters in the applicable fire department are not being truthful with the public regarding the cause of the fire because they are governed in such activity by the Official Secrets Act. This claim is not predicated upon any objective or documentary fact you can produce, but instead entirely on your claim to have had to subscribe explicitly to the Act as a condition of your own civil service and your belief that all other civil service employees had to do the same.

For that syllogism to be of validating form, your experience would need to be categorical. You have not shown that it is, although you have assert as much. You have the burden to prove your syllogism is of validating form. But even granting you validating form as a courtesy, we still have to examine the factual nature of the premise.

Thus your alleged experience in civil service and your knowledge of its requirements are strictly in the crosshairs, not as ad hominem arguments but as a questionable premise to the argument you have decided to formulate and deploy.

Now that my rebuttal is properly framed in the context of the rules of polite debate, kindly address it instead of whining about shabby treatment.

Common figure of speech in the UK. As was explained.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... They have now amended this to say it wasn't a full EV or a plug-in EV, in anticipating the full report out soon.

Is "now" a nuanced and subtle way of saying "last November"?

They said this in clarifying the matter to a journalist on Twitter, if I remember correctly. Is that right?

I note that this was not an official press release and I recall that you reject all their statements which are not official press releases. Except in this case, when for some reason you don't. You cling to this one as the wording does not specifically exclude hybrid designs which cannot plug in to charge.

What looks to the rest of the world like a very minor accidental ambiguity, you have seized upon as a deliberate deceit, as if they expect to deceive the public about this having been a battery fire and then escape criticism when the final report comes out because they technically didn't strictly lie.

Putting all common sense aside for just long enough to ask you about this: is it your view that they lied by omission and that they expect to escape criticism when this deception is revealed because they used a cunning form of words to bamboozle a journalist? Is that what you think they intend? Really? Really, really? Can you imagine a world where that could work?

 

[JayUtah]

The Act is law and applies to everybody.

But you did not sign it, as you erroneously claimed.

It was a throwaway comment, true, albeit mistakenly believing many civil servants sign it yet somehow it seems to have triggered a kneejerk response in you, when it means squat for the average person.

The problem is only partly that you wrongly believed all civil servants must affirm their subjugation to the Official Secrets Act. The other part is your belief that the Act is something that the average civil servant could sign. That's not a slip of the tongue or a colloquial expression. That expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Act is and how it is applied to people who are subject to it.

You have tried to save face in a pattern we have come to know all too well from you. You have claimed it is a turn of phrase alternatively unimportant, known only to you, or would be familiar to your critics if they had your lofty experience.

Since the parsimonious answer is that you are just making all this up the same way we have caught you doing this several times, we have no reason to accept you as competent authority on the limitations and requirements of public service generally. This leads us to :—

To put t back in context, firefighters are not allowed to speak to the press.

So you say, but you've provided no authority for this statement. Originally you claimed yourself as the authority, but that has been refuted.

There is a chain of command as to who is authorized to give a press conference.

You have been shown documentary evidence that members of the fire department of all rank are encouraged to provide correct and complete information to representatives of the media. You have neither addressed this documentary evidence nor shown how your imagination of how fire departments work has any basis in observable fact. You're simply making it up as you go and throwing tantrums when people challenge you.

Please desist from claiming I am lying when I stated that I signed it on two occasions.

You did not sign the Official Secrets Act, and you were not merely offhandedly or colloquially speaking when you claimed you did. You were simply mistaken about what you signed and what it represented.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Common figure of speech in the UK. As was explained.

Yes. That is true. "Signing the official secrets act" is a figure of speech used in the UK.

A number of friends who would necessarily have gone through this process tell me that, more specifically, it is a figure of speech used by people who have not.

 

[JayUtah]

Common figure of speech in the UK. As was explained.

No, you asserted as much without evidence and in contravention of other speakers of the U.K. idiom of English. Further, we have ample evidence of your desire to backpedal from your errors using exactly the argument that your mistake is somehow known and common in some milieu of your life that you are certain we cannot verify. It hasn't been credible any of the times you've tried to save face this way.

Now inasmuch as I took the pains to frame my rebuttal in the formal, courteous terms of debate that you seem to think lacks in my posts, I wonder why I'm being rudely brushed off with another single-sentence dismissal. You can no longer employ the bogus ad hominem evasion. Apparently that leaves you with nothing.

 

[SteveAitch]

Yes. That is true. "Signing the official secrets act" is a figure of speech used in the UK.

A number of friends who would necessarily have gone through this process tell me that, more specifically, it is a figure of speech used by people who have not.

Having signed four times (on joining and leaving two different departments), I would say that your friends may be correct in their area, but it was used in the ones I worked in.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Having signed four times (on joining and leaving two different departments), I would say that your friends may be correct in their area, but it was used in the ones I worked in.

Fair enough. I'll happily take your word for it.

 

[SteveAitch]

Fair enough. I'll happily take your word for it.

Thank you. Thinking about it, it may also be time dependent/age related - we are talking a good few years ago.

Which could also explain why the positive vetting they did (lowest level, when I joined what is now HMRC) was a bit rubbish!

 

[JayUtah]

Fair enough. I'll happily take your word for it.

We don't have to; I've finally found a few other examples of "sign the Official Secrets Act" being used in the U.K. in the manner suggested. So I'm prepared to believe that Vixen "signed the Official Secrets Act" in the manner she suggests: a separate acknowledgment of the duty to obey it, not the Act of Parliament itself. So I will plead prior ignorance on that with apologies.

Vixen has kindly admitted her ignorance in believing that one has to do this as a necessary condition of civil service employment in the U.K. So the argument that the firefighters in question did this, and are bound by it in a way that prevents them from disclosing true facts about the fire in which they were involved, is effectively refuted. The categorical requirement is not satisfied, and the syllogism is therefor not of validating form.

 

[catsmate]

Stop spreading lies about me.

Then stop lying.... Simples.

 

[catsmate]

The fire fighters - which are attached to every airport - were there within four minutes of the 'accidental ignition' of the Tesla. Yet the shooting flames were rapidly intense and explosive enough destroy the surrounding vehicles, despite the prompt presence of the firefighters.

We're still waiting for you to provide evidence that the fire at Gatwick North Terminal on Wednesday last began in an EV or hybrid.
You have failed to do so and dodged the question.

 

[SteveAitch]

1. It was a fire.
2. At an airport.
3. ?
4. Profit It was caused by an EV!

 

[P.J. Denyer]

That's okay, nobody else was confused. You just misused a word.

Heresy! Words mean what Vixen wants them to mean, if everyone else and the dictionary define them differently they are wrong and must repent!