People were pointing to the bamboo as the cause of these
things. This city is built on bamboo.
It's actually more the other materials that we used in this
big renovation project. Some of the workers scrambled to
go and buy some compliant netting, but they only affixed
it to the lower floors so that they would pass the safety
inspections. Above this, of course, is the
general, you know, the massive amount of grief and anger that's
in society right now. They have been able to stop all
the protests and stop most of the dissent from Hong Kong in
the past five or six years, and this may undo that.
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
It's been called the Fire of the Century.
The blaze that engulfed 7 high rise residential buildings in
Hong Kong's Taipo district was the deadliest the city has seen
in over 70 years. 156 people are known to have died, 30 are still
missing, while fifteen people have been arrested for alleged
manslaughter in connection with the fire.
Grief has understandably overwhelmed the city and fuelled
an uncontrollable anger towards those in power.
Today, almost a week after the file, we ask how did this
tragedy unfold? Why is Hong Kong still enraged
and what does it tell us about the city that once prided itself
on its transparency and democracy?
Well, joining me now from Hong Kong, Tom Grandy, founder and
editor of the local media, Hong Kong Free Press, and Selena
Chung, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association.
Welcome to you both. Tom, if I could start with you.
I mean, we've, we've seen the pictures of this fire.
It was truly extraordinary, even for those, you know, living in a
city that had the Grenfell fire from a few years ago.
How did this thing happen? Initially people were looking at
the bamboo, especially international observers.
It may look disastrous to folks, you know from outside and we can
talk about that a bit later, but it's actually more the other
materials that we used in this big renovation project, this
£32,000,000 renovation project whereby there was netting to
prevent things from falling down that at first was thought to be
compliant. It had passed tests and in the
last couple of days we've learned that it indeed wasn't.
There was also Styrofoam, some foam boards put on the outside
of windows that exacerbated the spread of the flames and the the
fire alarms were faulty. But to get down to the nitty
gritty, what has occurred is that this renovation was costing
about 17 and a half, 1000 lbs for each of the households.
Now, workers had allegedly installed substandard netting to
replace some damaged material after a series of typhoons in
Hong Kong that were always also international news.
And then there was a chain of other fires, other bamboo
scaffolding, sort of renovations going on around the city.
So some of the workers scrambled to go and buy some compliance
netting, but they only affixed it to the lower floors so that
they would pass the safety inspections.
Compliant role of netting cost £5.40, the dodgy stuff cost a
pound so they saved just over £10,000 and now 156 people are
dead. Extraordinary, I mean, I must
say, you know, with the first time I've arrived in Hong Kong
many years ago and saw bamboo scaffolding outside, you know,
some incredibly, you know, granite, glass, funky
skyscrapers. I thought, what's going on here?
But actually bamboo is an incredibly efficient way because
it's so elastic and so sturdy of using scaffolding around high
rise blocks. I just didn't know that.
Tell us about the area, Selena, where you know these people
lived. I think it was called 1 Foot
Court exactly in Typo. So tell us about 1 Foot Court
and tell us about Typo. What kind of people live there?
So 1 foot court is a kind of like government build subsidized
housing, but they are owned by property owners who bought them
years ago. So a lot of the people living
there are middle class or they build their families up from
decades ago in the 80s and the 90s.
It's located in an area that is quite central to a region we
call New Territory. So it's sort of in an urban area
that's right at the outskirts of the bustling business business
districts of Hong Kong. It's very residential, but it's
also close to nature. And so a lot of people will live
there because the cost of living is relatively lower than if
people were living on Hong Kong Island or in the central areas
of Kowloon. And they would then commute to
the town. It would take maybe around an
hour until recently when a new train line was extended.
So yeah, so it's got a lot of population in just in that
district. And the one for court is a
pretty big housing estate close to the train station.
And a lot of people commuting into a typo area will have
passed by one for court. And next is another sort of
lower income housing estate. So there's sort of side by side,
which is very common kind of urban planning in Hong Kong.
So I think overall the the population in Bonfour Court, the
the sort of around the middle class, they're not the lowest
income kind of population, but they're not either very well.
And Tom, just to get back to the fire briefly, what really struck
me and I think, you know most observers here is that you had
not just one tower block that went up in flames, but but many.
How did the fire manage to jump from 1 tower block to another
with such ease? Well, that that's been
investigated now by the police and an anti corruption watchdog.
But you can imagine as these, you know, netting is, is flying
around that I mean, when we were down there on the first night,
some of the embers seemed to end up in a nearby school and the,
the the firefighters had to go and put out that.
So one of them remained unaffected.
And some residents are going back to retrieve their
belongings in the next day or two.
But it it spread very fast. It was a #5 alarm.
We haven't seen one of those. It's the highest level in like
17 years. But Hong Kong does have a
history of dramatic lethal fires over a century.
And each time, because this is a laissez faire, you know, not
many regulations in Hong Kong economy.
Each time they've bought in more and more safeguards.
But ultimately, you know, this this as as the months and years
pass, we might get down to the real nitty gritty here, which
which could be, you know, corruption in the ranks of these
building committees, which has long been a story in Hong Kong
as well. So one thing Tom has come up is
this, you know, is the importance of bamboo as a
scaffolding, but also more than that, bamboo and identity
politics in Hong Kong. Can you just explain that to me
please? People got a little bit, you
know, hot headed about having the early parts of this crisis.
People were pointing to the bamboo as as the cause of these
things. This city is built on bamboo, if
you will. And like the neon you've been to
Hong Kong. It's an iconic site in the city.
It may look disastrous to foreign eyes.
You know, it's it's metal that's used everywhere else, but it's
super fast. It's versatile like Lego.
You can create sort of shapes very awkwardly in in nooks and
crannies in a city that has the highest population density in
the world. And any Hong Konger downstairs
will tell you that it's stronger than steel.
You know, mainland firms have really struggled to bid for
construction projects sometimes in Hong Kong because they're
just used to using steel and and bamboo scaffolders, you know,
are highly skilled. It's a dying art.
They are going to phase it out even before this crisis.
So I think some people jump to conclusions a bit here, but Hong
Kong is here and especially abroad see it as a kind of
iconic identifying sort of thing.
In Hong Kong. It's something that, and this is
the key thing differentiates a city from the mainland and the
Hong Kong identity is constantly perceived to be under threat.
And so people were very defensive about the robustness
of bamboo. And actually, you know, I went
down today and you can see that the bamboo has has largely
survived this blaze. And, and the real cause was of
course, the netting, the Styrofoam and, and things like
that. So it looks like.
That's fascinating. So they're not using bamboo in
Shanghai or Beijing, they're just using it in Hong Kong.
They do still in parts of the mainland, but but it's, it's
very iconic in Syria. I've been walking around today
and you're kind of seeing these naked buildings because they've
been pulling down this netting. You know, I saw it happening in
real time. But but it, it's still an
incredible sight to behold. And like spiders, these highly
skilled construction people go up and down to dying art.
It's a little more expensive I believe, but it's it's very
versatile and fast in this fast moving, very dense city.
And if the if your main point of differentiation between you and
Hong Kong supposedly free and the mainland not so free is
bamboo scaffolding, I guess you've got a bit of a problem,
haven't you? It's not the only point of
differentiation. The entire identity crisis, I
suppose this city that is a borrowed place on borrowed time
a lot of the time always going down to some countdown.
You know, it's identity was often based on on what
differentiated it from China. And now we see whether it's
through the demographics, the economics, the physical sort of
changes in terms of the new border crossings or structures
like the bridge to Macau or, or the, or all of the ports, the
economic links. It is, as you mentioned, the
authorities want it to be seen as a sort of great Greater Bay
Area identity with that area in southern China, you know,
Shenzhen, Guangdong. So people can be very defensive
about those things that still make give Hong Kong its charm or
or the difference between here and just 20 miles north in
mainland China. Selena, we know that there are
investigations going on and you know, I think 15 people have
been charged with manslaughter. Who are the people of Hong Kong
blaming? Interestingly, the people of
Hong Kong are not so much passing the blame onto the
construction company or the workers or the executives of
these companies, but the whole system around which the
renovation project came about. So it was in around 2009 when
the government passed a policy where certain buildings would be
issued with mandatory inspection orders.
And if the inspection didn't go well, they would be required by
law to hire a renovation company to do exterior renovation.
Basically to make sure that the, the, the bits and pieces are not
falling from the building and hurting people or other things
around the safety of the building.
And so this means when entire housing estate is under an
inspection order, they are required to do the renovation
within a certain period of time. And the ownership corporation,
the building committee, you know, formed by people who are
property owners will have to go through the tendering process.
And a lot of the renovation companies are basically ganging
up on the property owners because they have limited time
to do this and they have to do it.
And this means that there are a lot of corruption going on.
Some of the construction companies, they are basically
the same people forming different companies in the
process to join the tender together.
They fix the prices and or they either or they may be colluding
with the owners corporation, the people running that committee to
forge the whole building to chip in for the project.
So this is a very, very common problem in Hong Kong.
And basically all of the property owners would know
something about the process or have been through how painful it
is. It's difficult enough to get a
building with thousands of property owners to agree to chip
in on something that is very expensive.
And so there's been a lot of effort in Hong Kong trying to,
you know, tell the government that this policy is not working.
And instead it's fostering the corruption of the construction
industry in Hong Kong. And so in in this situation,
people see that happening because the Wonford Court
residents last year basically revolted against our own
ownership corporation, thinking that it was corrupt and
disagreed with the contractor that was being hired, the ferry
contractor. Now that is accused of
manslaughter and they were unable to do that.
They were able to basically overthrow the ownership
corporation, but they were not able to cancel the contract that
was already signed. And if they were to, why
weren't? They able to do that?
Who blocked them? Property owners formed factions
among themselves and they were able to call extraordinary
general meetings and, you know, votes of no confidence to
overthrow the previous ownership corporation.
And however, by then the contract for the renovation has
been signed and they were not able to avoid it.
If they did, they could be sued and it would be a very lengthy
legal process and could increase the ultimate cost of the
renovation. So they just went ahead with
with what was said by the previous term basically.
And so a lot of people in Hong Kong understand this process
very well and they understand how it came about, how negligent
company was selected and, you know, led to this outcome.
So no, I wouldn't say that people were passing the blame or
feeling very, you know, at least emotionally passing a blame on
to those 15 people arrested. But they very much notice the
system that created all these failures and ultimately I'd say
everything that can go wrong has gone wrong for this housing
estate that led to probably 6 lives being lost.
And you know, Tom, the way Selena describes it, you know,
it's quite a familiar tale. We have similar issues between
leaseholders and freeholders and big construction companies in
this country. But to what extent does this
kind of problem, this systemic problem, we get coverage in the
Hong Kong media? And do the people that are now
being blamed get cover from the political class, from the
political leadership in Hong Kong?
I mean, while talking about the UK, this does have echoes of the
Grenfell disaster, you know as well.
But to to actually dig down into how that kind of scam works with
these building committees, there will be vested interest that
sort of stage a coup to take control of of that governing
committee, stay in store friendly security companies, you
know, cleaning firms, shops with some kickbacks going on and
ultimately the property management company.
But it's the building repairs that are the most lucrative.
That's where you see the inflated costs and the kind of
substandard word work that you you saw at Wankford Court.
So with bid rigging, you're going to see some parties that
were sort of taken in turns to to liaise with each other,
generally over the phone with no paper trail, of course, to
ensure a pre selected winner through artificially inflated
bids. And the losing bidders might
get, you know, lucrative subcontracts or whatever.
But that's sort of how it works. And there is meant to be some
sort of accountability process that you're asking about.
You know, unhappy residents can approach the Lands Tribunal, but
the, and there is this building management ordinance to govern
this stuff. The fact is it's very slow and
it's very expensive. And Chief Executive John Lee,
Hong Kong's leader this morning did sort of allude to this kind
of problem in Hong Kong in terms of reform.
But the real questions now is, is when he he says there's going
to be an independent inquiry, Is it going to go through an
ordinance we have for that which actually is empowered to
subpoena, subpoena people? And he talks about a judge
leading it. We've seen a lot of hand picked
judges for like national security cases.
We're now under the national security era.
So how is this kind of investigation going to pan out?
And the ultimate question, you know, there seems to be a bit of
impatience with people so far who are pointing the finger at
the government is, is this this new era in Hong Kong?
Is, is it going to be that capacity to sort of self
criticize and see if there are any wrongdoing or any issues or
things that need revamping, you know, within the government and
all these it was inspected a week before this fire as well as
much as it has been said that they they have pulled the fast
one with this netting. So the question is, how deep are
they going to go with this kind of probe?
Onto the new national security law that was imposed by Beijing
onto Hong Kong in contravention of the one country 2 systems
arrangement, you know in the in the early stage of the pandemic,
to what extent can these grievances be aired in the
media, for instance, or in the public space without leading to
repercussions or people getting arrested or getting fined
Selena, first you. We have already seen the started
seeing some of the repercussions.
At least three people have been arrested, I think questioned and
on grounds of sedition after they've come up with petitions
asking for an independent investigation or coordinating
some of the aid efforts surrounding this disaster.
The government hasn't started, you know, as big of a widespread
crackdown on speech like it is in 2020 and 21.
But I wouldn't be surprised to see more arrests being made.
And so today there were several people, I think they were
somewhat of former, former politicians forming a group and,
you know, urging the government for action going.
They were going to make some policy recommendation to
discuss, you know, viewpoints and called a press conference.
And it was called off this morning and three of the
organizers were called in by national security police for
questioning. And they were asked not to
discuss what police, you know, told them or asked them to do.
That's kind of extraordinary, isn't it?
I mean, so, so we're dealing with a, you know, with a
construction issues, some dodgy materials, some very localized
corruption. And yet you've got the national
security, the police or the people who enforce the national
security law getting involved at this level, you know, calling
people in for questioning, arresting some.
What are they afraid of here? What do you think they're afraid
of, Selena? Yeah.
My sense is that the cause for people to seek independent
investigation, to look at the systematic failures may touch on
some nerves. And I would have to rewind a
little bit into how these ownership corporations are run.
They're very much tied to local politics.
And you know, when you have district elections, different
political parties in the past and politicians, they will try
to exert their influence through these ownership corporations.
So sometimes some of the ownership corporations would
have advisors, external advisors, and some of these
external advisors would be district councillors.
They are. They used to be mostly elected
representatives, and so people would view some of the ownership
corporations as being leaning towards a certain political
party. And then, of course, by
extension, if problems arise, they will, you know, blame the
influence that was going on and, you know, wonder if, you know,
there were other kinds of conspiracies going on.
And within housing at states in Hong Kong, other than ownership
corporations, there used to be a kind of body called mutual aid
committee. They kind of were complementary
with ownership corporation in the past, but with fewer powers
to take decisions for their state.
And those mutual aid committees were seen as a kind of
counterweight to ownership corporation after political
problems and exacerbated. So the government disbanded.
Almost all of these mutual aid committees prevent activists or
the pro democracy elements from being able to act as account.
So I think there is a very strong sort of political
undertone in all of this and the government will see it.
And that's why that's part of the, I think it's part of the
motivation for them to really clamp down on this heavy
handedly. But above this, of course is the
general, you know, the massive amount of grief and anger that's
in society right now, that's boiling, that's risking boiling
over. They have been able to stop all
the protests and just not most of the dissent from Hong Kong in
the past five or six years. And this may undo that, that
work that the Hong Kong government has been doing.
And that's why during this delicate moment, I will not be
surprised that the government tries very hard to control what
people will will do in public space to express that anger and
grief. Tom, describe that anger,
because I mean, the last time I was in Hong Kong was in 2019
when there was a lot of anguish and anger about an extradition
law that was going to be introduced by the then chief
executive, Carrie Lam. She then ditched it.
But there were a lot of people on the streets and of course the
students took over some of the universities and there was real
trouble there and there was anger.
But how does that anger then compared to the anger that you
see now? It's hard to really say how
folks feel. 11 student, 19 years old.
Miles, He was handing out a petition urging accountability,
asking for an independent probe. He was seemingly arrested.
The police will not confirm it, but he left the police station
yesterday and his petition disappeared.
But look at the context here as to what happens in China when
there are similar tragedies, disasters, whether it's Sichuan
earthquake, train crash near Shanghai or construction or
financial scandals. There seems to be a little bit
of breathing room for expression in the moments it occurs.
But ultimately, to answer your early question, it is about
control in terms of people organizing.
And so an hour ago in this newsroom, I asked my staff, make
sure you get people's contacts, folks who might be victims
talking about this online. Their posts might disappear.
They may be more reluctant to speak later.
We've seen these sedition arrests, arrests for inciting
hatred against the government, the kind of thing I thought
might happen in weeks or months, not so quickly, to be honest,
because, you know, you need a kind of pressure valve after
these things happen. And yet here we are.
But yeah, people are, the authorities are allergic to
people organizing. And I think that they're getting
a bit of 2019 protest vibes from some of the things they've seen
in terms of the speed of the reaction, the support networks,
the websites that came up overnight at at at at a level
that really the government can only dream of in terms of
instant response, let alone messages on certain walls that
resemble the pro democracy, so-called Lennon walls.
Those were taken down last night.
And a few other elements that have made them, I think, a
little bit nervous as we go into a Patriots only election on
Sunday. And Selena, I guess there must
be a lot of pent up frustration and anger ever since the
national security law was imposed and the whole democracy
project was kind of shut down. Is that, is that what we're
seeing now? That this pent up anger and
frustration, the diffuse for that has literally been lit by
this extraordinary fire? Yeah, during the pro democracy
movement, a lot of the anger is towards the Hong Kong political
system, how the government was formed and whether people were
given a choice of their own government and representatives.
This is different. This is preceded by immense
grief. Anyone seeing such huge fire, so
many lives lost will feel, will feel immense grief.
And we saw this yesterday and the day before when there were
sort of memorials set up for people to lay their flowers and
express that grief. And the queues were almost 2
kilometers long. People had to queue up for 2-3
hours before they even reached a memorial to just lay their
flower, make a prayer of some sort.
And I think over the five or six years past, the at least four
people who've stayed in Hong Kong instead of immigrating to
places like UK or Canada, they have accepted the current
system. They know that it's futile to
resist it or to do much about it.
They go about their lives and they will accept it to the
extent that Hong Kong is able to guarantee them personal safety
and some level of good governance.
And now we see that as pierced. And so people realize that even
if they didn't come out with political demands, their lives
could truly be threatened by the system that is currently in
place. So that makes this anger
dangerous and a challenge to the current government.
And and Selena, just on the question of grief, I mean, you
know, most of Hong Kong, I'm guessing lives in places like
the ones like the tower blocks that burnt down in the, you
know, these tall high rise buildings with, you know,
relatively small, you know, quite cramped apartments that
cost a lot of money given the space that you're living in.
That's how Hong Kong lives. So there must have been a real
identification amongst those people, even those who didn't
know anyone in the buildings that burned down or didn't lose
any friends or relatives. They they must really identify
with those poor victims. Yeah.
And we see that multiple housing estates similar to one for court
their owners corporation, the property owners have caught
emergency meetings questioning the renovation projects that's
going on at the same time at this current moment to ask
whether the materials used there were compliant.
They asked the construction companies to come and test the
materials in front of their eyes.
And if they can't find the answer, the some of the
ownership corporation decided to just take down the netting
material around scaffolding right away while they try to
find out. So and for myself, one of my
friends living in a relatively well off district, they I think
in the process they hires at least one company that has the
same one used in one full court. I don't know which one it is
exactly, but my friend's father basically has been retired.
He's in the corporation and it's been a battle to just get this
done. And now this happens and he
literally said his blood pressure goes goes up every time
he sees the news because thinking of what is going going
to happen or could have happened to where he lives right now.
So yes, a strong sense of identification and and sympathy
for the victims there. And Tom, I mean, there's, you
know, I guess there is a difference between this sort of
raw grief around these, you know, these terrible fires
compared to the more abstract issues of, you know, democracy,
freedom or security that we had in 2019.
You know, that, you know, the abstract issue of the
extradition law, which which did sort of touch on fundamental
issues of freedom and and law and order inside Hong Kong, but
nothing, as, you know, as in your face and as raw and as
tragic as this fire. Now, given where Hong Kong is
politically, do you think that this will translate into
something bigger, you know, than the demonstration we've seen
before? Or are people so cowed by the
political system now that they'll eventually the the
authorities will just count on them going away quietly?
To be honest, I think it's more the latter.
I'm more of a in the cynical camp.
We are 10 years into running an independent news outlet here.
Most of that time has been during the security law era, and
much of any kind of resistance you may imagine has been stamped
out that we're going into these Patriots only elections.
What does that? Explain that patriots only
elections. Explain that to our.
Audience only patriots can stand.
I would think it's more comparable to the Iranian system
maybe where the candidates are pre approved and the traditional
opposition, the pro democracy figures that were famous, you
know, all these years during a 30 year mostly peaceful Martin.
Lee, Claudia MO, all those people that they're either in
jail, right? Or they've been.
Claudia's died out but but many are in jail, they're in self
exile or they've quit politics and rarely do you hear from
them. So and 50 civil society groups
at least have been disbanded. A lot of the independent media,
Apple Daily, etcetera. The newsrooms have been raided.
1000 Journalists out of work. Jimmy Lai in jail.
Exactly. So all these channels of
accountability, elections, you know, the media, etcetera,
they've either been minimized, wiped out, you know, the
district councils, the local representatives, it is all now a
patriotic affair. And the government is very
concerned about turn out on Sunday.
Everywhere you go, every surface you can imagine is plastered
with promotions because it of course has to look as credible
as possible and it has been played with low turnouts since
the the electoral revamp. Now, I don't know how
sensitively they're going to step around, whether they are
expecting or encouraging victims of this tragedy to be voting.
They won't have access to paperwork and ID We'll see how
that's handled. But they initially thought they
might, you know, delay these elections.
But they are going to go ahead on Sunday despite everything.
But I, I wouldn't too over excited as to this blowing up
into any kind of massive protest or anything like that.
The authorities have been very swift to make arrests, you know,
within hours basically. And, and, and it's now up to
like 15. So the the narrative or, or
whatever is being set as to who's to blame here.
It's kind of further along, I think should these families seek
to organize themselves and demand accountability beyond the
construction firms or whatever, then we might, you know, see a
bit of trouble there. But I, I feel that, you know,
this is an all-encompassing, all powerful, multibillion dollar
national security project with its tentacles in every agency
that you can imagine. It is very much a top down,
bottom up affair. And people know the consequences
and everybody. You'll see them in the comments.
You know, when they saw the students speaking out a few
days, kind of felt how it was going to go.
And an example has been set, put it that way.
Celina, do you agree with that? Yeah, I think it could be the
most likely scenario, to be honest.
It's going to be a lengthy process just to investigate it
and prosecute the 15 people arrested.
I think the government has taken some, what I think is correct
steps to allow that grief to be expressed.
They organize the memorials, allowing people in different
districts to go to the memorials.
They've given information from the police interrogation very
quickly. That doesn't usually happen in
any criminal investigation. And so if they, you know, give
sufficient answers to people and prosecute some take some form of
prosecution against against the perpetrators.
So that will help release some of that anger and grief.
And in 2012, there was another ferry disaster in Hong Kong
where around 40 people died. They had an independent
commissioner at the time by a judge who investigated the
police investigated it. It was a very long drawn out
process that just wrapped this year.
And that was 2012. So it took around 15 years, and
13 years later, of course, most of Hong Kong would have moved
on, even though most of the families of the victims or the
survivors still grieve from it and have to grapple with the
outcomes. So I would imagine it takes
another 10 years for this affair to finally come to a conclusion
and hopefully, in the process, some justice rendered.
I don't imagine there will be, you know, dramatic reforms to
tackle this problem at the root. Maybe there will be reform in
fire safety regulation, inspection procedures,
construction regulation, but ultimately, you know, when it
comes to the problems with the ownership corporations, maybe
that system will be in place because it's much harder to fix
something at the root than addressing the the causes or the
things that led to the immediate outcomes.
Finally, Tom, I mean, do you think that this fire and this
situation in Hong Kong, yeah, from the grief to the kind of
lack of, you know, real political change that might
result from it, you know, to the people who are going to end up
in jail for it. Do you think it would feel any
different if this fire were heaven forfend to take place in
Hangzhou or in Shanghai? Or is Hong Kong now,
effectively, even at a tragedy like this, essentially a part of
mainland China? There are some differences
still. There is some transparency here.
We remain in Hong Kong as a news team because you can go to the
courts and bear witness. You can write the first draft of
history from the legislature and see what's going on.
And you can ask tough questions of officials.
And one reporter this morning certainly did ask John Lee
directly, you know, are you going to quit, basically?
And that wouldn't. Happen in Beijing or in
Shanghai? No, you don't get those
opportunities. So we are in a different era in
Hong Kong. I don't think really any
observer, I mean even some Grenfell victims have said, wow,
arrests this quickly. It's hard to complain really
about most of what's how the response has gone.
And 155,000,000, you know, has been raised some of that
government money, mostly from the public, but ultimately a lot
of money flying around as this process, as Selena says, is
going to pan on for the next decade.
Families may have those bailouts or whatnot, but ultimately
they're going to want answers. They're going to want justice.
That's and, and the, and the, and the government knows that
that this is where it gets rather sensitive.
So they're kind of jittery. There's an old Patriots election
coming up, but it's too soon to say, you know, whether all this
is going to sort of blow up and how people are going to feel
about the government in the in the medium, long term.
All right, fascinating stuff. We're going to leave it there.
Thank you very much to both of you for your time and stay safe.
Tom Grandy and Selena Cheng, thanks very much for coming on
to the forecast. That's it.
Hope you enjoyed the programme. See you next time.