Show Me the Bodies: WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023

Product Information

The public inquiry hasn’t reached its final conclusions, which obliges Apps slightly to qualify some of his statements, but there’s no doubt that the combustibility of the stuff around the tower was a major factor in the disaster. That being said no member of any government since Thatcher did ANY bits for social housing and a deregulated housing market and the result was the loss of so many lives that could have been saved.

It's a book that will want to make you want to scream with frustration and weep for the lives cut short and for the grief of those who survived. Sarah Rennie, a wheelchair user who lives in a block of flats with dangerous cladding, after reading government minutes stating that "stay put advise should be kept in place for disabled residents because they might slow down the evacuation of able-bodied people. Interwoven with this is the story of how the fire unfolded on the night which reveals the true horror of the disaster and brings in the personal stories of Grenfell residents.Those who justified the deregulating policies that led to this misery sometimes spoke of the interests of “UK plc”. Whiteman is a less-than-honest copper with a mysterious side-gig, but when he encounters the body, events spiral out of his control. Its residents knew this, spending years fighting against a “regeneration” of the estate that had prioritised aesthetics and local property values over safety and community.

Firefighters on the scene relied on handwritten notes detailing where people were trapped because their radios failed to pick up a signal. Every step of the way government "ideology" puts profit before human lives and don't even get me started on the disregard of the value of disabled peoples lives. Peter Apps is a journalist and editor for ‘Inside Housing’: a trade magazine that serves the UK’s social housing sector.Apps has done a considerable service in bringing all this to light and it remains to be seen when the second part of the public inquiry reports whether lessons have been learnt. Even the horror of Grenfell, it seems, is not enough for the UK government to factor the value of human life into its spreadsheets. But Apps rejects Brian Martin’s claim, made at the inquiry, to being a “single point of failure” in his department; clearly, this was not the case.