The scandal of Grenfell: Dishonesty, Greed and Decades of Denial
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The tragedy at Grenfell seven long years ago was one that was entirely avoidable. That was the conclusion today of the inquiry, which stated baldly that those 72 deaths in a high rise fire in west London would not have happened without a culture of dishonesty, greed on the part of the construction companies, and denial by the government who knew the dangers of flammable cladding but did nothing.
What happens now for the families of the victims? Does this give closure? Or provoke rage? And will anyone face prosecution for the part they played?
Lewis and Emily take you back to the night it happened, and their reporting in the days and weeks afterwards - that interview with PM Theresa May - and ask what now for the hundreds of thousands of people who still live with the consequences of buildings that are deemed unsafe.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Producer: Natalie Indge
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.2 | This is a global player original podcast. Today we send a message to Kirstarmer and his government. |
| 0:17.7 | This country has been failed by governments of all political persuasions. |
| 0:22.6 | Our expectation is your government will break old habits and implement all the recommendations |
| 0:28.6 | made by Sir Martin Morbock's report without further delay. Because the time to address this |
| 0:34.9 | is already three decades too late. |
| 0:39.9 | For the report to be worth anything, it must be... That was Natasha Elcock. |
| 0:41.5 | She's the chair of Grenfell United, a residence group, a supporters group, |
| 0:46.7 | who have been fighting hard to understand what went wrong at Grenfell Tower on that fateful night seven years ago, the 14th of June, |
| 0:57.1 | when more than 70 people were killed in a fire in the 21st century in Britain. |
| 1:04.1 | The Grenfell inquiry has taken years to reach its conclusions. But today we have its final report. And those conclusions, |
| 1:13.6 | what it says is searing. It is searing in every direction for governments over decades, |
| 1:20.6 | for the companies who provided the cladding, for the council, for the groups that were supposed |
| 1:25.3 | to run this tower block and ensure its residence |
| 1:28.8 | safety. Seven years on, what have we learned? And isn't the truth that actually this could all |
| 1:35.1 | happen again? Welcome to the newsagents. The news agents. It's Emily. It's Lewis. |
| 1:44.7 | And the reading of this report, 1,694 pages long, is both grim and in some ways unsurprising. |
| 1:54.5 | What we learnt, what we had confirmed, is that the deaths were all avoidable. |
| 2:01.4 | If things had been done differently, |
| 2:04.0 | if it hadn't been, as the chair of the inquiry, Sir Martin Morebic says, |
| 2:08.6 | for dishonesty and greed in some cases, |
| 2:11.8 | he's talking about corporate construction greed as well, |
... |
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