Marcus Morgan and Paul Mitchell | ukwatch.net

Boris Johnson’s return to “traditional Tory values”

tim — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:16:01 +0000

It is only two months since the newly elected Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson promised he would, with a new broom, sweep clean the sleaze and corruption he declared characterised the outgoing administration under the Labour Party’s Ken Livingstone.

Johnson also proclaimed that his mayoralty would be a return to “traditional Tory values.” As it has turned out, it is this pledge that is being realised as his own administration has begun to fall apart amidst accusations of racism and the type of “sleaze and corruption” he promised to root out.

Last week, longstanding allegations of financial and sexual misconduct against deputy mayor Ray Lewis ended in his resignation, and forced Johnson to set up an inquiry.

The media hailed Lewis’s appointment as deputy mayor for young people as a shrewd move aimed at countering adverse reports of comments made by Johnson in an article on Tony Blair in which he referred to “picaninnies” with “watermelon smiles.”

Lewis’s Eastside Young Leaders Academy in Edmonton, London, and its “tough love” ethos of army-style drilling, religion, uniforms and discipline, was proclaimed as the real answer to gang-related violence.

In the past several days, however, it was revealed that the former Church of England Minister had had restrictions placed on his ministry because of a series of allegations of sexual and financial misconduct against parishioners. In 1993 he was accused of “sexually inappropriate behaviour” by two members of the congregation at St. Matthew’s, West Ham and he was banned from preaching for six years.

Two years later he was accused of failing to repay a total of £41,000 borrowed from three parishioners, though the investigation was subsequently dropped. Lewis also faces accusations of assaulting pupils at his academy, all of which he denies.

The Lewis resignation follows that of Johnson’s chief policy advisor, James McGrath. When asked by a journalist if Johnson’s election would provoke a flight of black Londoners back to the Caribbean, McGrath replied, “Well, let them go if they don’t like it here.”

Johnson mounted a feeble defence of both men, but then dropped them fairly quickly.

McGrath was chosen as an advisor by fellow Australian, Lynton Crosby, the architect behind Johnson’ electoral campaign who earlier spearheaded electoral campaigns for former Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Central to the campaign was a barrage of allegations of misconduct against Livingstone and his leading aides. Almost daily, the conservative Evening Standard newspaper ran stories charging the Livingstone administration with corruption. This claimed its first scalp shortly before the election, when Lee Jasper—the focus of many of the unproven allegations of corruption—resigned his post as Senior Policy Advisor on Equalities following the leaking of sexually explicit emails he had sent to a female friend in an organisation that received funding from the Assembly.

However hostile a section of the Tory press was to Livingstone, he retained the backing of the City of London as its favoured candidate and also had the support of newspapers running the political spectrum from the Financial Times to the Guardian. It is a measure of the widespread resentment and hostility felt towards Labour—and towards Livingstone himself—that this failed to win him re-election and that Johnson’s posturing as “Mr. Clean” was partially successful.

Livingstone’s defeat coincided with the disastrous performance of Labour in the May 3 local elections, as the party continues to lose what remains of its working class base and is deserted by the better-off traditional Tory and “swing voters” it won in 1997.

Johnson benefited on both counts. Turnout among Labour supporters was down while Johnson successfully mobilised his own party’s “natural constituency.”

In addition, Labour’s reputation as a party of big business, sleaze, incompetence, authoritarianism and militarism could no longer be countered by Livingstone invoking his radical past. Labour promoted Livingstone’s support in the City of London, but the Greens, Respect Renewal and the Socialist Workers Party’s Left List, together with the Guardian, promoted him as the “progressive candidate” and sought to mobilise support in the inner-city areas, particularly amongst black and Asian workers.

But such claims could no longer be reconciled after two terms in which Livingstone made his peace with Labour after first being elected as an independent. He famously denounced striking London Underground workers as “selfish” and defended Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair after an Old Bailey jury convicted the Met of corporate failure over the killing of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. Livingstone insisted there were no grounds for the resignation of this “incredibly talented officer,” stating that the court’s verdict might make stopping suicide bombers more difficult.

Anyone foolish enough to believe that Johnson’s would be the “clean hands” administration he had promised has soon been disabused. Johnson’s record since taking office has provided a glimpse of what can be expected.

Once in power, he quickly set about appointing his own cronies—an army of consultants and advisors—stating bluntly that “it is not intended that the fees for these (other) individuals will be made public.” Reports suggest that many will receive a salary of more than £100,000.

The chief executive of the London Development Agency (LDA)—which declares itself the “Mayor’s agency responsible for driving London’s sustainable economic growth”—was sacked and Harvey McGrath, former chairman of the hedge fund specialists the Man Group, nominated in his place.

A “forensic audit team” has been set up to investigate allegations of corruption in the LDA and Greater London Authority, headed by the former editor of the Sunday Telegraph Patience Wheatcroft, who had stirred up controversy after censoring a critical article about Conservative leader David Cameron.

Multimillionaire former asset stripper and private equity chief Tim Parker was made first deputy and chief executive, as well as being appointed the new chairman of Transport for London. Full delegated powers over major planning decisions were given to Ian Clement, an unelected advisor from Bexley Council, who became notorious for cutting the “meals on wheels” scheme for pensioners.

Johnson has appointed Simon Milton as director of planning, but had to backtrack after it was revealed that he is also chairman of the Local Authorities’ chief lobbying group. Although losing his title, he will still remain in Johnson’s office in the role of consultant.

Munira Mirza, a former radical, has arrived at the heart of a Tory administration as the new cultural advisor to the mayor, thanks to her opposition to “multiculturalism” and professions that the extent of “Islamophobia” is exaggerated. She writes for the Policy Exchange think tank, whose founder Nick Boles will likely work on marketing for the mayor along with Dan Ritterband, a former Saatchi & Saatchi advertising executive.

Policy Exchange, which is described as the most influential think tank “on the right,” is headed by Charles Moore, former editor of the Thatcherite Spectator magazine—a position held previously by Johnson. The organisation was embroiled in controversy only recently over allegations that documents it circulated to prove the influence of Islamic extremists in Britain’s mosques were fakes.

Once in office, Johnson swiftly implemented the right-wing policies outlined in his manifesto. Central to this agenda is to “beef up the police presence on our streets by increasing police numbers and cutting red tape at the Metropolitan Police Service.”

Within hours of his election, dozens of extra police were deployed to carry out random “stop and search” procedures across the city in “Operation Blunt 2,” exploiting the media frenzy over youth-related gun and knife crime in the last few months. This has not been addressed on the basis of tackling the wider issues of poverty, job opportunities and social inequality, but by increased police powers and a zero tolerance policing policy.

In a city with the dubious honour of having the most surveillance cameras in the world, Johnson has also promised more closed circuit TVs.

These initiatives closely parallel those undertaken by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, whose critics have argued that the fall in street crime had more to do with enrolling an extra 7,000 officers than with any strategic master-stroke, and that much crime simply moved to neighbouring districts. Bloomberg made a special visit to London’s City Hall to congratulate Johnson on his electoral victory, but the content of their meeting has remained strictly confidential.

Another indication of the real agenda of the new mayor is in his attitude to low-income earners. Johnson has cancelled the cheap oil deal Livingstone made with the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez last year and declared that he will annul applications for cheap fares, which have benefited more than 80,000 Londoners on Income Support benefits. Livingstone used the deal as part of a handful of populist gestures to buttress his neo-liberal economic policies, making sure they did not conflict with the fundamental interests of the City of London, or compromise his record in promoting London as a magnet for global capital.

It is Livingstone and Labour that have paved the way for a deepening of the assaults they began on the working class in London, only now with Boris Johnson at the helm.

Welsh Nationalists in Power

Tim Holmes — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:59:18 +0000

For the first time in its 82-year history, Plaid Cymru, the nationalist Party of Wales, will form part of the government in the Welsh Assembly. After nine weeks of political horse-trading since the May 3 elections, the party has formed a “One Wales” coalition government with Labour, while junking the Rainbow Coalition it was negotiating with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

In the elections, Labour had its worst results since 1918. Its vote fell by 8 percent, leaving it 3 seats short of the 30 needed to form a majority. Plaid Cymru, which made every effort to dress up its right-wing programme of corporate tax-cutting with left-sounding rhetoric, gained 3 more seats at 15, with the Conservatives securing 12 and the Liberal Democrats 6.

Labour’s first minister, Rhodri Morgan, and Plaid’s leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones, who becomes deputy first minister, hailed the One Wales agreement as a “progressive, stable and ambitious programme for government”.

First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, whose Scottish Nationalist Party is in government for the first time after narrowly defeating Labour on May 3, congratulated Wyn Jones. Salmond raised no criticism of Plaid’s coalition with the party now leading the opposition benches in the Scottish Parliament. He instead called for new “formal mechanisms for dialogue” now that nationalists were in power in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where Sinn Fein shares power with the Democratic Unionist Party.

In all essentials, the One Wales programme is identical to the All Wales agreement Plaid made with the Rainbow Coalition, confirming that there is nothing of any substance separating the official parties in the Welsh assembly. All are wedded to the same pro-big-business agenda. Neither programme even mentions the invasion and continued occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, although this was the main issue accounting for Labour’s loss of support and Plaid’s successes.

The orientation of all the official parties is towards how best to continue along the path laid out by the Labour Party since coming to power in Westminster in 1997, while stifling the growing opposition to war and the attacks against the living standards amongst broad layers of people.

Plaid’s main concern, like that of the SNP, is to secure a quid pro quo from Labour in return for its collaboration in the form of concessions for Wales—or more correctly for the regional business interests and privileged middle class layers it represents.

Both programmes included two long-standing demands of the nationalists that will only encourage further separatist sentiments and stoke up antagonisms with the rest of the UK—a referendum on full lawmaking powers for the Assembly and a review of the Assembly’s funding. The nationalists claim that Wales is seriously underfunded as a result of the Barnett formula, which the UK Treasury uses to allocate money to the regions based on population.

The Conservatives have argued that Wales receives 12 percent more funding per head and Scotland over 25 percent more than England. Spending per capita for Scotland is £8,265, £7,666 for Wales and £6,762 in England. Plaid is demanding more, citing greater problems of social deprivation in the country.

This has created a backlash in England, where the Conservative Party, Labour’s Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and sections of the media are whipping up Little Englander nationalism based on demands for an end to the “subsidies” enjoyed by Wales and Scotland.

The One Wales coalition has also had to make promises with regard to health and social housing provision in the face of widespread opposition to the last administration’s cuts. More money would be needed to put this in place.

However, pledges to end the National Health Service (NHS) internal market and to continue the ban on Private Finance Initiative schemes are cloaked in deliberately ambiguous formulations like the promise to take “a more open approach to NHS reconfiguration involving more public consultation.” In a similar way, the transfer of social housing, most of which needs repair and maintenance, out of council control will continue. But the coalition will “work actively to ensure that tenants have access to impartial advice” during transfer ballots. Instead of a commitment to build substantial numbers of good quality, socially owned homes, the coalition promises only to undertake the construction of 6,500 “affordable” houses over four years.

Whether the coalition can even deliver on these feeble promises is doubtful, given signs that the Treasury will only increase the Assembly’s £14 billion budget by 5 percent in the next session, down from 10 percent in its first term and 6.5 percent in its second.

The One Wales agreement was approved by more than 90 percent of Plaid’s national council. One member of the council, Plaid MP and coalition negotiator Adam Price, explained how the coalition was the culmination of Plaid’s campaign to put pressure on the Labour Party in the hope that it would lead to “the emergence of Plaid, as in Scotland, as the largest party of the left and inheritor of the left’s hegemony, or the creation of a genuinely autonomous Labour Party which has finally broken its umbilical ties with the British State. Either outcome would accelerate our progress on the path to political independence.”

It is not Welsh Labour that has moved left, but Plaid that has exposed its pretenses to be a left alternative to Labour.

The enthusiasm for the deal was not so evident in the Labour Party. Although 92 percent of trade unions and groups affiliated to the Welsh Labour Party voted for the programme, this fell to 61 percent amongst constituency parties. The majority of Westminster MPs representing Welsh constituencies and the former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock are vehemently opposed to the coalition, fearing it will lead to the further fracturing of the United Kingdom and seeing the concessions as an attack on the New Labour agenda.

Islwyn MP Don Touhig said, “I am totally opposed to sharing power with Plaid in the Assembly. This is wholly wrong and it is suicide for Labour. The party is walking into a trap.”

Pontypridd MP Kim Howells, minister with responsibility for the Middle East and South Asia, went further—blaming the Labour government for bringing in devolution based on proportional representation in 1997 and the creation of an Assembly “that would inevitably attempt to gather to itself ever greater powers and responsibilities.” He attacked the Labour Party in the Assembly for becoming “the vehicle for transforming significant elements of Plaid Cymru’s political aspirations into reality,” which will “lead ultimately to separation and independence.”

Morgan replied to his critics asking them what they thought the alternative was. “I keep saying to them, ‘Well what else do you want me to do then? Just be voted out of office before the end of July?’ ” He explained that it was impossible to maintain a minority Labour administration, and he could not get the Liberal Democrats, coalition partners in 2000-2003, to form a coalition: “If we hadn’t peeled Plaid away from the triple alliance, they would have become legitimised in government as the leaders of government.”

Oil Fire Inquiry

Alex Doherty — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 13:24:11 +0000

The Blair government has rejected calls for a public inquiry into what Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott admitted was the biggest fire in Europe since World War Two.

On December 11, 2005 a huge explosion ripped through the Buncefield oil storage depot at Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, northwest of London, decimating the depot and surrounding houses and offices. The depot stores 16 million litres of petrol, diesel, kerosene and aviation fuel. It took 650 firefighters four days to bring the raging inferno, burning in 20 different storage tanks, under control. (See: Buncefield Oil Depot Big Fire hempstead.wingedfeet.co.uk/)

The blast was heard over 100 miles away and produced a huge plume of thick smoke that drifted over the capital in a matter of hours and spread across the entire southeast of England. By chance, the weather conditions meant the thick cloud stayed thousands of metres in the air and did not drift down to the ground affecting peoples health.

Also by chance the blast occurred early on a Sunday morning, so that only two people were seriously hurt and 40 people were injured. Considering that a large part of the depot and nearby buildings were completely demolished by the blasts, authorities described it as a miracle that there were no fatalities. If the incident had occurred during the week casualties could easily have numbered in the hundreds.

Up to 20,000 workers are employed on the Maylands Avenue Estate which lies alongside the depot. It is eastern Englands largest business park and has become a centre for companies involved in the IT and retail distribution trade. Offices belonging to over 30 of the 400 companies were entirely destroyed and many of the others suffered damage calculated at £50 million, according to David Way, director at the London-based insurance brokers Alexander Forbes. Way also estimates up to £100 million worth of damage at the oil depot itself and that £20 million worth of fuel went up in flames. The blast also damaged houses, some of which lie on the Woodhall Farm housing estate half a mile from the depot and are built on the site of the former Brocks fireworks factory in the 1970s. Some 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes following the explosion.

The BBC reported that up to 5,000 people were unemployed for Christmas as a direct result of the explosion. The long-term consequences could be far greater. A number of businesses, including Fujifilm, have threatened not to re-open unless something is done about the oil depot.

One worker explained, My wife is a full-time self-employed admin worker for one of the big companies on Maylands Avenue. She has no other clients and has not worked since the Buncefield explosion. It appears that she will be paid up to the event, but after this she is on her own. Her employers have not indicated if and when she will be working again, but have clearly said that they would not pay her in the interim period between the incident and the restart of work.

Residents living near the oil depot sent a petition to Home Secretary Charles Clarke on January 3 calling for a full public inquiry into the explosion and fire. Their solicitor, Des Collins, said: No one seems to understand that this community has been destroyed…. We feel that the Home Office is the only possible government department that will look at the issues and order a public inquiry.

Rachael Lampey, a local resident, said, Perhaps a company or individual should be held responsible to ensure it doesnt happen again. If the site is to stay therehow safe is the area for residents and businesses?

So far there has been no indication that the disaster will be subject to a public enquiry. Instead, the chairman of the governments Health and Safety Commission, Bill Callaghan, said an internal inquiry would be held by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and a report published. He promised it would be the most wide-ranging health and safety inquiry since the investigation into the Potters Bar rail crash in 2002.

The comparison with Potters Bar gives some indication of the direction the enquiry will take. A few days before Callaghans statement, the government ruled out a public inquiry into the rail crash at Potters Bar, which claimed seven lives. Last October the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that no criminal charges would be brought against any individual or corporation for gross negligence manslaughter in relation to it.

Instead of a public inquiry into the Buncefield explosion, Callaghan has asked the competent authoritiesi.e., the EA and HSEto examine their own role in regulating the activities at Buncefield under COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazards) regulations. The COMAH regulations were introduced after the Flixborough chemical explosion in northern England in 1974 that killed 28 workers and destroyed or damaged 1,800 buildings near the site.

The remit of the joint HSE/EA investigation is to share any immediate lessons with the wider industry and … publish a report on the incident, the investigation and implications for the control and mitigation of on and off-site risks. It is unlikely to enquire how local planners (along with the HSE and EA) allowed housing and workplaces to be built so close to the oil depot in the first place and will not question the commercial decisions that led to the depots expansion and drove the building spree in the area around it.

The depot is operated by Total UK, a subsidiary of the French oil giant Total, in a joint venture with Texaco, but is also used by BP and Shell. It is the fifth largest in the UK, loading approximately 400 road tankers a day and connected by pipelines to nearby Heathrow and Luton airports. The depot is said to supply a third of the fuel for Heathrow and has led to shortages at the airport with long-haul flights being forced to make extra refuelling stops.

Total were also owners of the AZF chemical plant in Toulouse, France that exploded on September 21, 2001, killing 30 people and leaving 2,500 with serious injuries. Frederic Arrou, chairman of the Association of Victims of September 21, told the Times that at Buncefield an explosion of this importance obviously makes me think of what happened in Toulouse. He added, The fact is that ordinary people are kept in the dark and never told about the risks of living near a place like this. In France, at least, we are treated like children.

The cause of the Toulouse blast has never been properly established, but Total has claimed that an electrical spark may have been the reason.

The immediate cause of the Buncefield fire remains uncertain, but the electrical spark theory has also surfaced with the media blaming a tanker truck driver for turning on a switch nearby and igniting escaping vapour. However, if there was a large enough leak to reach the truck, it probably would have reached another ignition source sooner or later because fuel vapour is heavier than air and stays on the ground.

Drivers refuelling on site say that a storage tank was leaking just prior to the blast. According to one driver employed by Total at Buncefield, I saw smoke and vapours escaping from the storage tank another driver was about to load from. I have only worked here for six months so I didnt know if it was dangerous, so I asked some Tesco drivers who were also waiting to load what they thought. They walked over to the office to report the circumstances and suddenly the tank exploded.

Hertfordshire Fire Services deputy chief Mark Yates stated that escaping petroleum vapour was the most likely cause of the original explosion and fire. Local residents also reported a strong smell of fuel near the entrance on several occasions and claimed to see foam running onto the road near the depot and into nearby fields, suggesting some cleaning-up exercises may have taken place.

There are reports that the two seriously injured workers were part of a maintenance crew working on a vapour recovery unit. This is significant as an important finding from the Flixborough inquiry was the lack of supervision of maintenance workers. Despite this, safety experts told the BBC that a weekend effect in industry still exists involving unsafe maintenance work on Saturdays and Sundays. An additional question is: if there was a fuel leak did the detection system pick it up?

Total denies there were any leaks in the run-up to the explosions. According to the government, the site was also subject to an audit just three months previously by the HSE. Justin McCracken, deputy chief executive of the organization, said that the last inspection was specifically focusing on issues of preparation for dealing with fire and nothing came out which caused us undue concern.

Buncefield was built in 1968 primarily to provide aviation fuel for Heathrow airport and was situated on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead, a new town that was largely completed by then. However, the depot has since expanded into a major distribution by the addition of pipelines bringing fuel in from the Humber and Merseyside and taking it to Luton and Gatwick airports, which have mushroomed in size in the last three decades. Over the same period, as the price of land has rocketed, particularly in the southeast of England, the commercial zones of the town have expanded and developers have squeezed in housing estates dangerously close to the storage tanks, loaded with highly flammable fuel.

According to one resident who spoke to the press, the local Dacorum Councils greed and corruption are to blame for allowing development right up to the edge of the site. He claims the council were involved in a debacle with a local property developer in the 1980s who had to pay out £550,000 ten years later to underpin, plate the floors and actually put some bolts to hold the floor to ceiling windows in houses on the Woodhall Farm estate facing Buncefield.

The HSE seeks to justify the close proximity of housing and workplaces to the oil depot, stating, The UK is a small, densely populated island and such undeveloped areas as do exist are often so remote or of such environmental value as to be unsuitable for industrial use. It also remains the case that, to be economically viable, industries need to be sited where they are accessible to main transport routes and to sources of labour. It asserts, A balance has to be struck between the needs of industry, the needs of the community and the interests of safety.

An unnamed environmental protection expert told the Independent on Sunday that there were serious flaws in the design of Buncefield that contributed to the intensity of the disaster. He claimed that the site was too crowded with fuel tanks grouped three or four to a bund (a retaining wall intended to prevent the spread of spillages), whereas in most of Europe sites rarely have more than two tanks to a bund.

Sources in the EA have told the World Socialist Web Site that the bunds were designed to prevent oil spills, but were never properly tested to cope with an explosion that might involve the use of millions of gallons of firewater that could spill over the bunds and flood the site.

Jeff Charlton, a disaster consultant of Disaster Advice Limited, told the media that the bunds were designed to hold the oil tank contents and a firewater lagoon located at the depot can hold 1.4 million litres of watersufficient to soak all the tanks for a period of 40 minutes. However, the fire lasted for four days and Charlton points out that the firefighters used 15 million litres of water and 250,000 litres of foaming agent, flooding the reservoir and contaminating the site. As the priority was to extinguish the fire, any consequence may have been felt to be acceptable, he added.

The resulting pollution could threaten river and groundwater supplies and contaminate the soil. On December 12, the EA said that the fire-waters, combined with oil and petrol, could have a severe impact on surface and ground water quality and aquatic life and that it was working with the fire service to ensure measures are taken to avoid this situationwith runoff being collected in bunds around the site and pumped to on site storage areas.

An EA press officer has told the World Socialist Web Site that in fact 24 million litres of fuel, firewater and foam were produced. It has been transported off site and the majority is still being held in tanks at Maple Lodge wastewater treatment works, pending a decision on its future disposal.

There are serious problems associated with the disposal of the fire water and foam, especially in such large quantities, because the foam can knock out the treatment processes and cause the foam and raw sewage to be discharged into the river. Downstream of the Maple Lodge treatment works lay abstraction points that draw water from the River Thames to supply London with its drinking water.

Although scientists have developed better foam concentrates over the years to reduce their environmental impact, they still contain surfactants (the active ingredient in most detergents), solvents such as glycols used in antifreeze and various additives (metals, dyes and preservatives) to improve their effectiveness in extinguishing flames. One key ingredient, a surfactant called PFOS, is now known to be toxic to aquatic life and builds up in the blood of animals and humans. Although the production of PFOS was recently stopped, there are still stocks of the old materials around. Many of the modern foam concentrates have new formulations, but their toxicity and persistency in the environment are unknown and still being investigated.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has accused Hertfordshire Fire Brigade of not having enough foam to deal with the fire. It said, The brigade has no policy or planning for dealing with any major incident requiring foam. It has no specialist foam vehicles and no large stocks of foam. There are no officers with specialist training to deal with a major oil fire.

FBU General Secretary Matt Wrack also pointed out that two local fire stations are threatened with closure, and commented, Many other brigades are facing threats of significant cuts and station closures. Hertfordshire county council cannot cut their fire service on the basis there will always be others who can help.

The Hertfordshire planning authorities and Fire Brigade have borne the brunt of the criticism for the fire disaster and the oil companies seem to have escaped unscathed. However, it is the depot owners and management who are ultimately responsible for the safety of the site and prevention of accidents. Despite the size and importance of the site there does not appear to have been sufficient functional firefighting equipment at Buncefield or trained firefighting crews provided by the oil company.