Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire III

[phiwum]

Mr Hopkinson did not lie; he said, and it is obviously a well prepared statement and not one ad libbing off the cuff:



Which part of that statement is 'lying'?

If he had no evidence that it was a diesel vehicle, then he lied that it was believed to be such.

Moreover, the current official press release is unequivocal. It says that the vehicle was a diesel, neither a hybrid or EV. If this were not the case, then this is a lie. Indeed, I would expect that Hopkinson and/or many others who know the state of the investigation also know what this statement says. If it has not been corrected, despite containing a false claim about the kind of vehicle involved, then it is simply a lie.

There's no "plausible deniability" and even if there were, a lie told with plausible deniability is a lie nonetheless.

 

[phiwum]

The Secretary of State minister responsible is Chris Philp:

wiki

It is just not feasible that this minister would not be directly involved at the outset.

You are drawing mere inferences without any real understanding of how these positions work. You might be right. He might be in the loop. It does not follow, of course, that he tells the fire chief what to say to the press.

All of this is just your guess about how these things work. It is not at all close to proof or even a strong argument that this minister had something to do with the remarks in that press briefing.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

These are figures for the Essex Area alone 2018 and 2019. It states on the FOI request that only the Courts and Tribunal Services have the full figures/

https://www.essex.police.uk/foi-ai/...-with-false-registration-plates-2018-to-2022/

The 13,000 earlier came from a google search, uk, first up, and referred to cloning.

Point being made is that the police and the fire brigade can't just assume the numberplate on an ANPR is legitimate, especially in a serious incident and the driver presumed to have flown out of the country. In an incident such as this, you have to think the worst and not assume any one particular car is the culprit too readily. Organised criminals might well have a decoy, for example. The video uploaded by the Romanian lady could have come from another event for all they know at that stage.

Correction: these are not in fact the figures for false plates in Essex. It appears you didn't read your link with any care.

It says they could not provide that info and instead it lists several different number plate related offences for which they did issue notices of intended prosecution. Most are "failure to conform with regulations" which is likely people using non-standard fonts or letter spacing or using black rivets to make one character look like another to spell out a name.

I Googled and got what is probably the same 13,000 incidents figure as you found. It is not a figure for convictions as you claimed.

The probability that a randomly chosen car has a false plate is very low. If the car had had a false plate that would have been discovered almost immediately, because the registered keeper would be someone else. Charges would presumably have followed. There's no hint this happened. Are you claiming the police have hushed it up on orders from the government?

It makes zero sense that the car had a false plate and the fact that you propose it as a serious likelihood is purely your desperation to protect your fantastical conspiracy theory.

 

[Vixen]

I'm not relying on that number plate from the video, and I'm sure the fire investigators aren't either.


Even if you could get an accurate measurement from those videos, UK number plates aren't of a universal size.

"The industry standard size front number plate is 520 mm × 111 mm (20½" × 4⅜"). Rear plates are either the same size, or 285 mm × 203 mm (approx 11"x8") or 533 mm × 152 mm (approx 21"x6"). There is no specified legal size other than an absolute minimum margin of 11mm..."

I was referring to the number of digits in a numberplate which have to be a standardised size. So a six-digit numberplate will, on the same vehicle, look longer than a four-digit one. You say fire investigators quote a RR Sport 2014. Can you provide the citation, please.

 

[Vixen]

You really don't get it. Your reading comprehension really is that bad.

I comprehended well that the purpose of the figure in full was to apply a shiny gloss to the underlayer of a car park being burnt down. It wasn't even relevant.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... it is apparent that plenty of communication with politicians and elected members such as councillors is required, so the idea Mr. Hopkinson did not need to consult with the appropriate government ministers is misconceived, especially in such a serious incident such as that.

Don't be daft. That the job requires liaison with councillors and politicians is no reason at all to fantasise that politicians must be consulted on operations while firefighting is going on.

What sort of idiot would create a system like that, where firefighters must ask politicians how to fight fires? Obvious nonsense to try to protect your beloved conspiracy theory.

 

[Vixen]

Strawman. No one has claimed EVs are "harmless". Like any automobile, they are complex machines with a huge amount of stored energy. But they also aren't the threat to human civilization that you and the rest of the EV conspiracy theory crowd believes them to be in your technological ignorance.

Q.E.D. you believe any question mark over any EV is a sign of a conspiracy theory because to you it is all about ideology. The idea of the fire at Luton being started by a thermal runaway is something that deeply offends your ideological principles and you think it is an attack on EV's.

Has it occurred to you it is quite possible to be wholly objective about the cause of a fire without taking one ideological side or the other?

The way people seized on Andrew Hopkinson's words that 'It is believed to be a diesel' as being vindication was just insane! Even to the extent of someone producing a deep fake video to fake a numberplate showing it could not possibly be an EV of any sort.

 

[novaphile]

Everyone (except the terminally bewildered) imagines this scenario:

Caller: "My car is on fire!"
Fire service: "Where are you?"
Caller: "Fourth floor of the carpark at Luton airport."
Fire service: "Units have been despatched."
Fire service: "What kind of car is it?"
Caller: "It's a Land Rover diesel."
Fire service: "Are there any dangerous goods on board?"
Caller: "No."
Fire service: "The units are about five minutes away, please get to a safe place and wait for them near the entrance to the car park."
Caller: "I can see them now, I'll flag them down."

 

[Vixen]

What's really daft is that it may be possible to make a case that the fire was worse because there were EVs involved (I don't know if that is the case, but it seems a reasonable possibility worth investigating, which I'm sure the report will be doing), but Vixen is hung up on the vehicle that started it.

In a car park holding 1,500 cars, the statistics show that about 5% would be an EV of some sort, or just 75 of them. A thermal runaway is not caused by radiated heat, it is most commonly caused during charging or because of a collision, making the cells unstable. If the vehicle number zero was just an common or garden diesel car fire, even if electrical only, it wouldn't be such a big deal. As Smart Cooky says there are 19,000 such fires every year and no car park ever burnt down because of them, if caught at an early stage.

 

[Vixen]

Or they could have examined the remains.

Yeah, if you can find a floor to walk on!

 

[Vixen]

None of these refer to cloned plates so I'm unclear why you have posted this.

What evidence do you have that the police and/or fire brigade simply "assumed" the plate on the ANPR to be legitimate?

In any case, the point about cloned plates is that they are put on an identical vehicle in order to hide insurance status or to avoid speeding tickets/ULEZ fines. So even if the plate were a clone, which you haven't demonstrated is likely, it would be on an identical make/model.

And what evidence do you have that the driver of the car which caught fire is an "organised criminal"?

I was responding to suggestions posited by a couple of posters that all the fire brigade or police had to do was look up the ANPR or the CCTV and then check the DVLA records.

I was pointing out that in a major incident at an international airport face value information can't just be taken for granted and certainly not whilst the embers of the fire are still hot.

There was an airport incident in Germany recently and the entire place was surrounded by SWAT police and national security, flights grounded, even though it turned out to be some guy with his kid involved in a custody battle demanding to be flown out of the country. Look up any airport incident and it's all hell breaking loose, So the idea, 'You just need to look up DVLA' as posited by said posters is naive, albeit the obvious first step.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

As soon as 'critical incident' declared.

I see. And what is the incident commander supposed to ask the government minister to do, exactly?


Let me help you. Here's the handbook. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a79d06eed915d6b1deb38ac/incidentcommand.pdf


Perhaps you can show us at which point they're expected to call the Ministry to speak to Chris Philp, and what they're supposed to say they're calling him for.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Vixen, do you believe you are smarter than everyone else here?

 

[Vixen]

There's a new edition you know. The entry for EVs now says "mostly harmless"

What about you and your C2 on your Bingo Card t'other day? Hoist by your own petard. That was spectacular!

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The problem with Liverpool was a drainage system of petrochemicals that caused heat bouncing of the ceiling to ignite the floor above.

Above? I'm not sure you know how gravity works.

A problem in Liverpool was a drainage system with aluminium gutters and plastic pipes which could not contain burning fuel flowing down.

 

[Vixen]

If he had no evidence that it was a diesel vehicle, then he lied that it was believed to be such.

Moreover, the current official press release is unequivocal. It says that the vehicle was a diesel, neither a hybrid or EV. If this were not the case, then this is a lie. Indeed, I would expect that Hopkinson and/or many others who know the state of the investigation also know what this statement says. If it has not been corrected, despite containing a false claim about the kind of vehicle involved, then it is simply a lie.

There's no "plausible deniability" and even if there were, a lie told with plausible deniability is a lie nonetheless.

There has only been one press release.

So someone put Hopkinson's words into 'plain English' and people think it is an update.

 

[Vixen]

You are drawing mere inferences without any real understanding of how these positions work. You might be right. He might be in the loop. It does not follow, of course, that he tells the fire chief what to say to the press.

All of this is just your guess about how these things work. It is not at all close to proof or even a strong argument that this minister had something to do with the remarks in that press briefing.

No, what happens in crisis management is that a crisis management team is formed and a talking heads team is formed to decide what information they are going to give out to the press and how they are going to handle the communications side. The statement is composed and then circulated, with each member of the team suggesting edits, corrections and insertions. This team might well include a legal bod lawyer and in the case of a serious fire will have the advice of the police as to what can and cannot be said until further investigation.

The idea that Mr. Hopkinson jotted his notes whilst eating his breakfast and then ad libbed is laughable.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I was referring to the number of digits in a numberplate which have to be a standardised size. So a six-digit numberplate will, on the same vehicle, look longer than a four-digit one.

That is not how UK number plate sizes work. The number of characters does not change the size of the plate. The plate "B7" I saw yesterday was mostly blank space.

 

[Agatha]

I was responding to suggestions posited by a couple of posters that all the fire brigade or police had to do was look up the ANPR or the CCTV and then check the DVLA records.

I don't think anyone has suggested that that's "all" they had to do. But you didn't address the point that cloned plates are put on identical makes/models.

I was pointing out that in a major incident at an international airport face value information can't just be taken for granted and certainly not whilst the embers of the fire are still hot.

There was an airport incident in Germany recently and the entire place was surrounded by SWAT police and national security, flights grounded, even though it turned out to be some guy with his kid involved in a custody battle demanding to be flown out of the country. Look up any airport incident and it's all hell breaking loose, So the idea, 'You just need to look up DVLA' as posited by said posters is naive, albeit the obvious first step.

Since nobody has said "you just need to look up DVLA", why do you keep banging this drum, or for that matter brought up an unrelated incident in Germany?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I was referring to the number of digits in a numberplate which have to be a standardised size. So a six-digit numberplate will, on the same vehicle, look longer than a four-digit one.

You're taking the Michael surely?

Are you genuinely claiming that a normal UK numberplate with the layout AB12CDE will be longer than a personalised one (e.g. AA11)?