To think that there should be prosecutions over Hillsborough

[DreamingofSummer]

Even after 23 years

hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/

True, Boney, but that doesn't mean the fans there on the day were hooligans or trouble -makers . And if the police hadn't let too many people into the stand then it wouldn't have happened, pens or not.

Widespread corruption? The beating of suspects?

Certainly not been a good couple of years for the Murdoch press.

Undoubtedly there was (and is) police misconduct. Most police officers, like most football supporters, are law-abiding, however. I'm not sure what your point actually is, Narked; if you're suggesting that football hooliganism was justified because of police misconduct I think you'll struggle to make it fly, but have a go by all means

Hooligans didn't shit themselves and lie. And alter statements, and tamper with evidence. And treat the families appallingly. And take blood alcohol samples from children. And make relatives identify their loved ones in a gymnasium, where officers were eating chicken. The police did that.

princelypurpleparrot

If the fences had not been there the fans could have gone directly on to the pitch.

If the fences/pens had not been there the incoming crowd would have been able to fan out into the stadium as a whole instead of being herded into one area.

Yes I am partially blaming the hooligan element of the time.
I am also blaming the FA for choosing Hillsborough as the venue.
I am blaming hooligans for causing such an atmosphere that a train full of supporters was searched three times making it late.
I blame the council for the roadworks making fans late causing a greater rush of fans.
I blame the organisers for not putting the start time back to allow safe entry of the fans.
and I blame senior police for not being better organised and covering their own incompetent arses.

SpudtheScarecrow

"True, Boney, but that doesn't mean the fans there on the day were hooligans or trouble -makers"

I didn't say that it did.

"The effect of the identification process and immediate investigation had a profound effect on people. There was no attempt at grouping the photographs so for example if someone was looking for a female they were still subject to looking through all the photographs. In one case a young man who had come across his wife dead on the pitch and had accompanied her body to the gymnasium still had to go through the ridiculous procedure of being transported to the boys club, waiting and then going back to the gymnasium were he was forced to look through all the photographs were he would find what he already knew to be there - a photograph of his dead wife."

The fact is this has become one of the topics in respect of which there is a "right" way to think and any dissent will be treated with disproportionate hostility, because reason has been thrown out of the window and if you don't join with the herd, you are automatically morally suspect.
I've never indulged in this sort of thinking, if you can call it that, and I don't plan to start now. I'm as keen as anyone to see conspiracies to pervert the course of justice punished, if that's what they were; though in my experience these things are rarely as clear cut as that, unless actual destruction of evidence is the issue. I don;t see the necessity for some of the hysteria on display here, though.

Karlos, today really is not the day for spitting on the graves of those who died at Hillsborough. There's been enough of that over the years from those in authority attempting to cover up their own culpability.

Good grief, have the innocent not suffered enough, that even today you have to attempt to demonise them all over again?

Many of the failings of procedures on the day could have been forgiven, if accountability and justice had been swift and transparent and if seemingly ever other fucker in authority hadn't fallen over themselves to whitewash their respective organisation's involvement while painting a totally untrue picture of the victims as drunken louts who colluded in their own deaths.

One of the victims was 10 years old, for fuck's sake. A "drunken ticketless hooligan" at ten years old?

OrangeFireandGoldashes
"Many of the failings of procedures on the day could have been forgiven, if accountability and justice had been swift and transparent and if seemingly ever other fucker in authority hadn't fallen over themselves to whitewash their respective organisation's involvement while painting a totally untrue picture of the victims as drunken louts who colluded in their own deaths."

I completely agree.

Karlos are you really ashamed of where you were born and brought up?

*actual destruction of the evidence"

You mean like the footage from two CCTV cameras which would have proved those in the control room could see the extent of the over-crowding and crushing mysteriously having gone missing?

Karlos I'm sure you're very proud of your free-thinking challenging of assumptions. But this is not the thread and now is not the time. Give the INNOCENT victims some respect.

Remind me never to engage you as a lawyer, Karlos.

Not so much free-thinking challenging of assumptions as a deliberately cruel attempt to continue to smear the dead.

Even though tens of thousands of pieces of evidence have been painstakingly collected and analysed to show, finally and demonstrably, that the victims were innocent, that the disaster was caused by police incompetence, and that the legal system, the government and some elements of the media at the time colluded in a depraved cover up.

"Karlos are you really ashamed of where you were born and brought up? "

I believe it was the Duke of Wellington who said that just because a man is born in a stable, it doesn't make him a horse. In short, no; it would be absurd to be ashamed of something I couldn;t help. But when I go back there, I do feel myself sinking into to something pretty deadening and hopeless. The Merseyside mentality can be pretty unhealthy, sometimes. the attitude to the Hillsborough issue is one example.

I'm wading through the full report made available online by the Independent Panel. I suggest one or two posters on here do the same.

This is about how and why 96 men, women and children died, most within a short space of time on one day.

'The majority view'? Karlos, you appear to be showing off about how big and clever you are. Well done, wow, posing on the dead bodies of 96 innocent people is so impressive.

The whole point is that the official view was a cruel lie. That innocent people were killed by those in authority and then betrayed even after they were dead.

Karlos, you're entitled to an opinion. And up till this pint I was trying to be as balanced as possible. Yes there was a problem with hooliganism (or a perception of it), yes that may have affected how the situation was handled on the day by the police. But it doesn't justify anything at all after that.
And then you said :
"The Merseyside mentality can be pretty unhealthy, sometimes. the attitude to the Hillsborough issue is one example."
What the actual fuck are you talking about??? A Merseyside mentality?

By the way Karlos, I'm not from Liverpool. I think I've been there once. My "attitude to the Hillsborough issue" is based on empathy, basic human decency and outrage at one of the worst state-sanctioned cover-ups in the history of this country.

HTH.