Displaying items by tag: anger

Following Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in recent memory, a visit by King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia to Valencia became the target of public outrage, with protesters hurling mud at them. The recent devastating floods claimed at least 217 lives, with the toll expected to rise. When the royal couple appeared, alongside Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and other leaders, many locals expressed their fury at what they saw as inadequate warnings and slow government response. Protesters shouted ‘Murderers!’ and ‘Get out!’ at officials, blaming them for the disaster’s aftermath, and there were several clashes with police. Queen Letizia burst into tears after speaking to several grieving people. One commentator noted that the crowd's anger was directed at the politicians, not the royal family. Public resentment over the government's handling of the floods has intensified. One week after the floods struck, many people still did not have drinking water.

President Erdogan labelled mainstream German political parties and their leaders - including Mrs Merkel - ‘enemies of Turkey’, and called on Turks not to vote for them in Germany’s elections on 24 September. This raised hackles on the German side; Mrs Merkel called it ‘meddling’ in German elections, saying that voters had the right to vote freely, regardless of background. SPD leader Martin Schulz said Erdogan ‘had lost any sense of proportion.’ Meanwhile, AfD leader Frauke Petry faces a perjury fight. Ms Petry moved the AfD to the right after it was founded as an anti-euro movement. In 2016, amid the influx of migrants and refugees into Germany, she suggested that police should ‘if necessary’ shoot at migrants seeking to enter illegally. Now there are calls for her to lose her immunity from prosecution over allegations of perjury (she is suspected of making false statements under oath before a parliamentary committee in November 2015). AfD hopes to enter Berlin’s parliament in September’s election. See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40961113

It is over two weeks since the Grenfell Tower fire disaster, and people are still very angry. Many believe that people need not have died that night. Successive governments presided over a progressive weakening of regulation and inspection systems that would one day lead to tragedy. They had been warned again and again, by fire officers, buildings inspectors, MPs, insurers - everyone who knew anything at all about fire safety. In Scotland, after a man died in a 1999 tower block fire, the rules on permissible building materials were changed and the inspection regime tightened. The same was not done in England. In 2013, after six people died in a London tower block fire, a coroner recommended a review of fire safety regulations ‘with particular regard to the spread of fire over the external envelope of a building’. The review was never carried out. May health and safety rules never again be mocked.