Today the London Review of Books publishes a 60,000 word investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire. Written by Andrew O’Hagan, the piece draws on more than one million words of interview notes and ten months’ research to chronicle the tragedy. O’Hagan told the Today programme this morning:
“Like most people I came to this with an incredible sense of anger and dismay… there seemed to be so much editorialising going on from the beginning, from the very first hours of the fire people wanted faces on a wanted poster… much of that understandable dismay and anger, it couldn’t stand up alongside all the evidence… people wanted accusation to stand for evidence in this case, to call out the leader and the deputy leader of the council as being somehow patently responsible for this, it didn’t at all stand up to the evidence… people are away with the fairies if they think that people who work for councils in housing hate the poor… the evidence goes the other way, the council responded as well as they could under tremendously difficult circumstances.”
The report raises questions over the responses of the emergency services, especially the fire brigade’s ‘stay put’ policy. The Public Inquiry into Grenfell is ongoing. The immediate, crude politicisations of the disaster are unraveling…
Kensington Tories are continuing to handle Grenfell with their customary sensitivity. They’ve sent this questionnaire to voters asking “how important” the tragedy is to them on a scale of nought to ten: “0 – not important at all, 10 – very important”. What do you reckon…
H/T @mshapland
.@johnmcdonnellMP says he does not regret saying Grenfell tower victims were “murdered by political decisions” #marr pic.twitter.com/GJe0E3rVVq
— The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) July 16, 2017
McDonnell is unapologetic and doubled down on calling Grenfell “murder” on Marr, this time dubbing it “social murder“. That’s a quote from Engels:
“society in England daily and hourly commits… social murder… it has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long”
Stay classy…
Corbyn to PM: “When you cut local authority budgets by 40% we all pay a price in public safety” #PMQs pic.twitter.com/vjWXJ9A4X0
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 28, 2017
After Corbyn blamed the Grenfell fire on austerity – and by implication the Tories – Theresa May claimed that the cladding of buildings happened under Labour during the Blair years. Never let the facts get in the way of an opportunity to rile things up, eh Jezza…
Alok Sharma only got the housing brief the day before the Grenfell fire. Today he was on BBC2‘s Victoria Derbyshire programme to face questions from very angry residents, live on air. Brave decision to put him up…
“I am being honest about what people are saying to me” @DavidLammy on the number of people thought to be killed in #GrenfellTower fire pic.twitter.com/cbb6m8NXlr
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) June 26, 2017
In his defence it has been a stressful couple of weeks. But peddling conspiracies about the government and police is not exactly responsible…
