Thursday 13 September 2012

THE UTTER UTTER SHAME OF HILLSBOROUGH

I listened only a few short days ago to the Noble Lord, the Rt Hon., the Baron Coe tell us Brits how the Olympics, just like everything else made in Britain, was marked by quality. 

I've heard recently any number of people from the UK government telling us how proud we should be of our country, after a summer of the diamond jubilee of the Queen and the joint triumphs of the Olympics and Paralympics.

By contrast I also listened with growing disbelief to the list of misdeeds perpetrated by the football authorities, Yorkshire Police, the Coroner, the tabloid press (most especially the Sun and its evil editor Kelvin MacKenzie) the then government of the UK, and subsequent governments (for maintaining the secrecy) in relation to the disaster at Hillsborough 23 years ago.

I can't begin to understand how it is that our "leaders" can conceivably talk about British values (which they tell us we share with our closest ally, the United States of America), when the facts fly in the face of that at every turn.

We can't trust the banks, the newspapers, the police, politicians, the royals, the House of Lords... and Coroners appear to bring forward verdicts that are suitable to the government of the day...not just this one, but the one which looked into the death of Jean Charles De Menezes.

Pride, my butt.

Yesterday we heard that the Hillsborough ground was a death trap about which the management, despite being warned, did nothing, presumably the better to make more money. (Next time you feel tempted to sneer at "Elf and Safety", just remember what can happen when there are few regulations and no one MAKES companies adhere to them.) 

We heard that police were so incompetent and badly trained that they had no idea what they were doing, and when they got it wrong (and opened the gate allowing hundreds of people through) they lied through their rotten teeth and said that the "football hooligans" broke through. They changed witness statements; they searched criminal records files to see if they could pin something on the fans, the victims. The said that fans had been stealing from dead bodies, and urinating on them. In fact fans had been the ones who actually helped, while the police messed about. Proud of that? 

They are a set of evil bastards. They should all be in prison.
Evil personified
The tabloid press took up the police's lies and printed them, disgracing the fans. What happened to investigative journalism Kelvin? Proud of that?

The Coroner refused to accept any evidence that related to events after 3.15, by which time he said everyone was dead. He lied and he used his position to make a final and unarguable decision. Proud of that?

And worst of all, the lying scum ministers at the Home Office and Number 10 Downing Street, including Mrs Thatcher, were compliant in the deceit and in hushing the whole thing up and keeping the "secret" papers hidden from grieving family and friends, and the rest of the country, for 23 years.

These people went on to have titles thrown at them, and the prime minister of the day, who was warned that the police had been deceitful (and did nothing), was recorded in Cabinet Papers as having been concerned about how the original report made the police look bad, had a statue raised to her in Westminster.

These titles should be taken away and the statue should be removed and placed somewhere at the bottom of the North Sea with all the respect it deserves.

Mr Cameron apologised to the victims' families who have fought long and hard to clear the names of the dead. These people should be saluted. Without them this would have remained a secret.

But the prime minister apologised on behalf of the House of Commons, the government and of the people of this country.

I'm not sure why he did that. The people of this country didn't lie and cheat; the people of this country did not hide the evidence away as if it were a matter of national security, it was the government that did that.

Cameron should have apologised to the families AND TO the people of this country. The people of this country were lied to.

Cameron, to his credit, has indicated that investigations will be made to see if the inquest verdict can be overturned. (Likewise the Sun has made a profound and grovelling apology.)

I trust that he will ensure that anyone who lied over this, no matter how grand they are, faces justice. And if that means right at the top so be it. Of course the people who really made the decisions are all old and will doubtless manage to wangle their way out of it on the basis of age, infirmity, and unfitness to stand trial. It was ever thus in these matters. 

Values? Proud to be British? Don't make me laugh.

34 comments:

  1. But surely the Olympics left a warm glow?

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  2. You mean the half an hour when they brought the torch to Dundee, and distributed a pile of their nasty goodie bags from Burger King and Atos and Kraft Foods and the rest of their greedy sponsors, which needless to say were left all over the park, and the surrounding streets?

    Yeah, warm as...erm....hell...

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  3. Damn.
    Did i miss the torch in Dundee?
    I must have been at the chiropracter.

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  4. Them's the breaks!!! :)

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  5. General Pinochet; murderer, political despot, serial rapist and practitioner in every other abomination he could indulge, internationally shunned yet given political asylum by UK PM Thatcher - that iron lady! Proud of being British - I don't think so and longing to shed the very association.

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  6. tris

    If you think there are no bent cops in Scotland(only in Britain) you are deluding yourself.

    Independent or not will not stop corruption no way jose!


    anyway those lot must of been what Red Riding was based on...

    The North! The North! Where we do what we want! The North! The North! Where we do what we like"

    and I thought it was all fiction.

    I Alex has bowed to the inevitable and will now publish the legal advice.was he ever on the north Yorkshire force he has the same way with the truth

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  7. Any lies Salmond has told or may tell pale into insignificance by the corruption, deceit and fabrication engendered by Thatcher and her clones Blair and Brown,

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  8. Bownlie

    well at least you admit of Alex Salmond lies.
    The problem with a Hierarchy of evil is eventually even the worse mass murderers become not so bad.

    Ole Alex seeing how the HILLSBURGH cover up and denial of access to relevant information.
    Would be used to point out how Alex was behaving in the self same way.

    Meant Alex shite a brick and has quickly caved in to the common sense position and is publishing the materiel.

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  9. I posted this over on Stu's site earlier, but I think it kind of got his back up as the article was not actually about Hillsborough. Perhaps I should have waited for this article Tris.

    "Can I just say that I think there is one organisation that does not appear to be in the firing line with regards to the Hillsborough disaster but, in my view, they should be at the top of the list. I’m talking about the English F.A. They were they people, if my memory serves me right, who arranged the cup game to be held at Hillsborough. This, in my view, was stunningly ignorant at best and downright stupid at worst. As soon as Liverpool made it through to the round that was to be played at Hillsborough the F.A. should have without question moved to game to a bigger ground. Failure to do so was a major contributing factor to the disaster.

    I am no expert on anything to do with football but I recognise that Liverpool is one of the biggest clubs in the English game. When you tie that together with a cup quarter final or semi final then anyone will realise that there is going to be a massive Liverpool support wanting into the game. This game should NEVER have been arranged to take place at Hillsborough. From what I remember at the time the ground’s capacity was too small. Any one who was involved in the game at the time SHOULD have known that.

    I have not read the report but from what I’ve heard on the news etc it would appear that the F.A. have been left untouched by the inquiry. One question, why? Their inept, in my view, organisation of this game was tantamount to the disaster that took place that horrible day."

    I must admit that I'm not surprised in the slightest that those at the top who "failed" before,during and after the Hillsborough disaster were well rewarded, promoted, given peerages etc. THIS is the standard of how Britain "deals" with failure at the top. Does any one who "fails" at the bottom end of the feeding frenzy get promoted, a peerage etc as result of their failure....erm in a word NO!

    Every one, and I mean EVERYONE, who is found to have been complicit in this disaster OR subsequent SHOULD be imprisoned, immaterial of either WHO they are or their age! Failure to do so will only prove that conspiracy is alive and well and living in good old London town!

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  10. In a political state formed under corruption is it any wonder that we are where we are and this is what 'Better Together' are protecting. Lets hope this is the start of the collapse of the british empire.

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  11. Hello Baron. Nice to see you at Munguin's Republic.

    Mrs Thatcher wasn't in power though, by the time that Pinochet was required for extradition. It was Labour's time (2000), but you're right, she spoke up for him.

    And possibly as a result of her interference, when she had no position at all, Jack Straw overruled a House of Lords (the then supreme court) and let the murderer stay here.

    She visited him for tea. It was the kind of company she must have felt comfortable with. A man who tortured women with rats: who dropped people out of planes into the ocean..

    It says a lot about her, but at the same time it says a good deal about Tony $ Blair's government was like.

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  12. Yes Niko. I have no rosy idea about about Scotland being full of nice people. I'm aware that the police can be corrupt here just as well as in Britain.

    In my opinion Alex should have published his advice when he was asked to. I don't believe in secrets unless they are absolutely necessary.

    We should know for certain what the position is vis a vis the EU.

    I understand that the White Paper to be published October next year will lay out the whole legal advice.

    Nicola and Mr Moore met this afternoon and apparently made progress. This is good news.

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  13. Yes John. That's true. I don't know whether he has or hasn't lied (well, that's silly, everyone lies sometime...even Niko).

    But Labour just can't say anything about anyone telling lies. Dodgy dossiers are their game.

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  14. Thanks for that contribution Arbroath. I should have said the FA, instead of just blaming Sheffield Wednesday.

    It's probably true that it was an inappropriate ground for such an important match.

    I agree that everyone who lied or cheated these people out of the truth; who slandered them by trying to make them take the blame for their incompetence, and who further added to the general erosion of trust that we all have in any kind of authority, should be imprisoned and have titles and baubles taken away.

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  15. True CH. It was corrupt from the start. Let's hope that this corruption will bring the whole rotten edifice falling down.

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  16. I think we all agree that anyone found to have lied etc over the Hillsborough disaster SHOULD have their titles and baubles etc taken away from them. However there is one one question. Will they? Will the corrupt, cheaters and liars REALLY have their titles etc taken away?

    Personally I can't see it happening. The ONLY time Westminster is prepared to REMOVE titles etc is when the after effect of such a move will adversely affect Scotland or the Scottish people. You need only look at how many titles have been revoked, erm ONE!, Fred Goodwin. Why was he "De Sired"?

    Did he commit a criminal offence NO! Yet we have had over the years, most notably the recent Westminster "fraud" cases where we had Lord's etc sent to prison for committing FRAUD with their Westminster expenses. Were ANY of these individuals "De Sired or De Lorded?" erm NO! I wonder WHY!

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  17. A British disease?

    There’s something a lot bigger that is wrong. When a state turns to protect those in power instead of the powerless in their time of greatest need, we are truly sick.

    For investors info buy buy 'whitewash producers' as there sales will continue to outperform all other stocks.

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  18. No Arbroath. I expect no one to pay.

    I just caught the tale end of a programme on STV. The policeman who pushed Ian Tomlinson over minutes before he died of trauma (although it took a second pathologist to find that, as the "chosen one" of the authorities managed to find a heart attack that hadn't happened) has walked away free and will face a disciplinary hearing this week.

    Not bad.

    No one at the top ever pays.

    Never have.

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  19. This is CH's link for those who didn't click it. It is SO right.

    What is it with Britain? Because whatever else went wrong at the Leppings Lane tunnel, it points yet again to a dispiriting and deeply corrosive British disease.

    I don’t see many today even trying to diagnose it – let alone grope towards a cure. Yet, the pathology is clear for all to see. The symptoms occur over and over again whenever there is a major incident in the UK involving the safety of individuals.

    First, the disaster or incident: The Marchioness, Jean-Charles de Menezes, Ian Tomlinson, the Mull of Kintyre, Bloody Sunday…

    Depressingly reader, you will be able to add your own to this list. Now consider the pathology and symptoms which will occur in Britain again and again and again.

    In some cases we have seen the police or military cover up, bury the truth, blame the victims who unable to answer because they are dead: Bloody Sunday, Mull of Kintyre and now Hillsborough.

    Then they will co-opt sympathetic media – tabloid newspapers in particular, to put out the lie. Are you listening Lord Leveson?

    So the lie becomes the story “the truth” as Kelvin Mackenzie insisted. The scene is set. The public have the message and critically so do the politicians – note Jack Straw’s apology today.

    The next symptom – public and politicians now prepared – will be for a limited and flawed judicial inquiry, inquest, investigation which one way or another will deliver the verdict, the least damaging to those with powerful careers at stake.

    Thus Lord Widgery’s inquiry (which Ted Heath publicly stated should be “limited”) whitewashed Bloody Sunday. The RAF Board of Inquiry into the Mull crash was simply over-ruled by two Air Chief Marshalls who blamed the victims – the dead pilots, incapable of defending themselves.

    Move on and we have the Hillsborough coroner deciding nobody after 3.15 could be alive.

    Victims, ordinary people, blamed by police, judiciary and senior military – agencies designed to protect the powerless from injustice – not to inflict further pain and injury upon their names and their relatives.

    To the next symptom. Unfortunately for the state, however apparently powerless, the victims’ families won’t lie down and they begin the long, long years in the wilderness, demanding justice.

    Eventually sympathetic MPs and media (not media with close ties to the police we note) take up the cause and the search for truth.

    To the next stage of the British disease: there will finally be a real investigation at enormous public expense which will likely get at the truth of what happened.

    Final stage and symptom: apology.

    True – in some disputed tragedies it does not always happen quite like this – but there is a real pattern here nonetheless which should make us look well beyond Hillsborough.

    Why do key institutions of state – police, military and legal – so often cover-up the truth and blame the victims?

    The simple answer appears to be to protect the careers and livelihoods of those running those institutions.

    A generation on when the truth is finally delivered, it is probably too late for justice – they have got away with it.

    In short, when the heat’s on, the disaster’s recent, the record shows that the British state cannot be relied upon to do its job – protect and provide justice for the victims and their families.

    There is indeed a sickness. To cure it we as a nation have to raise our gaze beyond the Bogside, Leppings Lane tunnel and the Mull of Kintyre lighthouse.

    There’s something a lot bigger that is wrong. When a state turns to protect those in power instead of the powerless in their time of greatest need, we are truly sick.

    Follow @alextomo on Twitter.

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  20. Exactly Tris.

    The whole crux of the scenario is that Westminster will ALWAYS look after their own and those they classify as "close friends and allies!"

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  21. "The European Commission has today confirmed that its position on an independent Scotland’s EU membership remains unchanged from previous statements, following yesterday's comments about the possible secession of Catalunya from Spain. The EC said that comments made yesterday had been misinterpreted by many and that they wished to make it clear that they would not interfere in the internal affairs of Member States – including on Scottish independence." Liberty Ecosse

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  22. , the record shows that the British state cannot be relied upon to do its job –

    Er! Alex has said


    he would be breaching the ministerial code by disclosing legal advice on the issue.

    "The fact that legal advice has been given to ministers or its existence must not be revealed outwith the Scottish Government unless under some clear circumstances," the First Minister told her.

    Any British Prime minster over the last 300 years could of would of said the same.
    Alex could of decided to change the ministerial code at a stroke he didn't.
    He behaved just the same as all the rest.

    The problem with you nats is you actually believe an Independent Scotland would be full of Angels..

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  23. Your fixation on Alex Niko is worrying, I suggest you seek help from a psychiatrist urgently before you are sectioned or hung drawn and quartered which is the british way I believe.

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  24. tris

    We had some redundancies at work today the first two people laid off...........guess???? what were Disabled and as such were not as flexible and lacked the range of ability of others.
    well that Olympic spirit didn't last long all legal and above board we are told.

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  25. I don't really. I've lived in Dundee long enough to know some of the chancing sods that there are in politics in Scotland...and let's be honest, you only have to look at Glasgow.

    Michael Martin, Jim Sillars, George Foulkes, that wee right wing blokey with the Labour Hame blog, Michael Forsyth, Gordon Brown,... on and on (and you'll see I've put in an SNP man, or ex-SNP man, who is also ex-Labour).

    There's thousands of them, of all parties.

    I don't expect heaven.

    I don't think life in Switzerland is perfect; I don't think (for all I wish I'd been born there) Scandinavia is perfect. It's just all a bit better...no, a lot better, than Britain.

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  26. Oh yes. The cameras have stopped rolling. Cameron, Osborne, hunt and May can stop pretending they think disabled people are equal to them.

    Now they are just expenses to the Tories, like the unemployed and the elderly and sick.

    I see mr Fox wants to give companies a three year tax free period and pay for it with a reduction in benefits.

    He also wants to make it easier for people to be sacked.

    They are poor excuses for a human beings, him and his young friend Werrity.

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  27. Taz is a nationalist. He knows Scottish bones are better!

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  28. [Niko,
    Does your comment at September 13, 2012 3:29 PM mean that you accept that Scotland is not part of Britain? - "If you think there are no bent cops in Scotland(only in Britain) you are deluding yourself"]

    Anyway,
    On both counts, Niko is correct. There are bent cops everywhere and there were many more in 1989. The Hillsborough (NOT Hillsburgh, FFS) disaster happened only four years after the end of the miner's strike, when similar cover-ups of excessive police violence against ordinary working men were a matter of routine. Old Bill had become used to getting away with murder, literally.

    Thatcher was a strategist. When she froze public servants pay in 1981, police pay scales were not just exempted but generously increased. Qualification standards were also significantly lowered. As a result the ranks of our protectors were swollen by hundreds of officers who were unemployable elsewhere in a civilised society. Many of them are still serving.

    We should not allow the Police Services to recover from these revelations. They have been subject to radical reform before and now is the time to reform them again. It is not enough for them to bleat "It wisnae me. It wis the big boy wha did it years ago and ran awa". They did it, they must pay.

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  29. As you point out Tris, in the 1980's qualifications for entry into the police were lowered. However, I wonder if you have seen this.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19562626

    It would appear that Teresa May is planning to recruit top Police officers from OUTSIDE the force.

    I know we all have varying views about how good,bad or indifferent our police service is but surely the one thing we can all agree on is that the Top officers have worked their way up the ranks.

    Further more by working up the ranks the Top cops have years, if not decades of police service. They therefore have an in depth knowledge not just of how the police service works but also of the law and legal requirements for officers to follow. (whether the officers follow such requirements is another issue)

    What level of police operational requirements or even the law and legal requirements are these "outsiders" going to have? Extremely limited in my view.

    This is, in my view, just another example of Tory lunacy at work.

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  30. Arbroath:

    I agree completely. You can have absolutely no idea how to run policing unless you have been out there, on the beat, never knowing what is coming at you next.

    I have not a great deal of time for the police (despite what Niko seemed to think, even in Scotland). They nearly always seem to be rude and unpleasant, with a rather inflated idea of their own importance. I've never met one socially that I liked, and if you ask two for advice on a matter of what is legal, you will surely get two answers.

    But, it is true that they do have to deal with some horrific things. Being the manager of a biscuit factory doesn't qualify you to deal with that, or to manage other people who have to.

    Fortunately the Mad May woman is nothing to do with our police.

    I note too that they are going to be electing police commissioners in England...

    There is so little interest from the public that they could be elected by a tiny percentage of the population, and could be one issue people, with massive salaries huge powers...and weird ideas.

    Whoever came up with this nonsense wants their bumps felt!

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  31. Oops sorry Barney...

    Funny way to spell burgh... but ...

    I will correct. :) Thanks.

    You're bang on. The police could not be dealt with. Not only did she massively increase their size often with unsuitable people, she also made herself so unpopular with the public, that she could not afford to pull their horns in. She might need them to protect her... and the country... from people who couldn't take any more.

    (It's something that I've always thought Cameron was rather foolish about. If you are going to hack everyone off, best to keep the forces of law and order on your side.

    But he is so thick he's upset the police [in England] and the armed forces everywhere. Or maybe he's so arrogant he thinks he won't need them. And he may be right, but somehow I doubt it.)

    But this dependence of Thatcher's would be the reason that she wanted the original report to be watered down so that the police came out of it well. They were her friends. She relied on them. She knew the truth. She was briefed on it. She did nothing.

    She should be stripped of her title and her statue melted down for something useful. Not only was she a friend of right wing terrorists; she was a corrupt and wicked woman.

    But I've only heard criticism of the Yorkshire police and the Sun. Mrs Thatcher has got off with it.

    Was there not a statue of her somewhere in London that someone decapitated, and that's why the replacement has to be within the confines of the palace of Westminster?

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  32. I assume we are not supposed to take Niko seriously?

    He's trying to make a slandering comparison yet, despite the news being full of the info, he specifies the "NORTH" Yorkshire force instead of the "SOUTH"

    What a tit

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  33. Ha ha...noooooooooooo, anon, we never take Niko seriously.

    He's a Labour man... and a unionist....

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