Hillsborough. Police did doctor evidence in a bid to avoid blame.

[Darkesteyeswithflecksofgold]

A report in the Independent about the cover up. RIP to the people who lost their lives on 15th April 1989.
And condolences to the families who are still suffering.

www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/exclusive-hillsborough--police-did-doctor-evidence-in-bid-to-avoid-blame-8126233.html

CherryCheesecake as well of the film linked up thread, which is accurate, you read the Hillsborough Report itself. There is a summary of the events starting at page 7 and is very well written and easy to read (ie not official gobbledygook type English).

Why the need to refer to 'football fans' as one homogenous grouP who all act the same? The vast majority of fans at this time were good, law abiding people who just enjoyed a good game of football. But there was a group of 'fans' whose behaviour in the 70s and 80s totally ruined it for everyone else.

And it was because of those 'fans' that those death trap fences were installed.

When Jimmy McGovern's film came out, there were yells of 'trial by media' - as if the victims hadn't been tried and wrongly convicted by the Sun, ffs. Now we know he was right and the film was justified.

I think that was my point Salt - why did the police not take manage the risk of trouble on a match by match basis?

Ok let's refare it to 9/11. We know that the terrorists were Muslim. We know there are pockets of Muslims who spout the beliefs of the terrorists. However the vast majority of Muslims are law abiding citizens who are kind and caring who strongly disagree with the actions of terrorists.

So what is the right way to deal with it? Do we tar all Muslims with the same shitty stick. Of course we don't because that is wrong.

Football fans were tarred with the same shitty stick as the hooligans looking for trouble. Nowadays, its different. There are still hooligans who like to go to matches and cause trouble. We use police survelence (sp) to keep track of known trouble makers, anybody causing trouble inside a ground is usually issued with a lifetime ban.

BOF, thank you for posting the link to the BMJ blog - very moving. Stunning detail that the impromptu death certificates he pinned to the dead were removed - wonder if that was due process (replacing impromptu certificates with proper ones) or already a cover up - replacing the findings of a doctor who was there on the spot with doctors who weren't there and were influenced by the official view of the fans?

One thing that has really struck me after reading the details of the Hillsborough Report is just how bloody the '80s were in terms of preventable human tragedies - the Bradford Stadium fire, Kings Cross, the Herald of Free Enterprise, the Manchester airport disaster, Hillsborough - and those are just the ones that come to mind without thinking.

The '90s and '00s have been far safer. The '90s rail disasters marked a systemic failure in what used to be British Rail, but even there the improvements made have been wholesale.

Next time I hear someone complain about health and safety gone mad, or the Human Rights legislation - I will remember Hillsborough, and an awful time when certain lives were counted as inconvenient and expendable.

Just spotted in my TV guide that Jimmy McGoverns reconstruction of Hillsborough is being shown on ITV3 tonight but not until midnight (12.05) Maybe there will be a change and they will move it to an earlier time in light of the fact that this weeks revelations were much worse than anyone could have imagined.
I just thought i would mention it here in case anyone here cant access you tube for any reason.
I wish they would move it to an earlier time.
The pressure needs to be kept up on the authorities who were responsible for the disaster and the despicable treatment of the families afterwards and the corruption and cover ups.

I agree about elf and safety bores cinnabar

Life used to be so much more exciting back then, unless it ended prematurely in a completely avoidable accident and your family got told to dry their eyes and stop going on about it.

darkesteyes the sound has packed in on my PC so I'll record that. Thanks

I was listening to 5 Live just after 12.30 last night and they had Owen Jones and Jerry Hayes on there.
Jones intimated that Kelvin McKenzie was involved in the cover up and called him a disgrace and a thug.
The presenter immediately had a go at Jones for calling McKenzie a thug. Bloody Jerry Hayes also stood up for that other bastard Patnick. Ugh.
Ive always had my suspicions but after reading about the printworkers and what happened there,Owens accusation certainly does not seem far fetched to me.

No prob limited Just keep an eye out tonight though in case they do move it to an earlier time.

I hate to say this but Chris Grayling is removing a lot of the health and safety laws. this Government is trying to take us backwards.

Jerry Hayes was a Conservative MP at the time of Hillsborough.

I always found him okay so am a bit surprised at his defence of Patnick. He used to annoy Thatcher by being a bit of a Wet. She didn't like his beard, apparently either.

I'm sure she'd approve of his loyalty now.

Who was the presenter?

Owen Jones also asked the presenter why on earth the BBC keep asking McKenzie on to their programmes as some sort of media "expert"
Jerry Hayes replied "Because hes entertaining"
If the BBC have got ANY bloody sense at all they will not even have him in any of their buildings again.
I clearly heard Trevor Hicks say on the news that if the BBC continue their media relationship with McKenzie the families will have no more contact with the BBC. Hope ive explained that ok. I cant remember word for word what Mr Hicks said but that was the gist of it.

The presenter was Stephen Nolan.

I heard about Grayling's plans yesterday. I'd managed to put it out of my mind.

What gets me is one of the loudest critics of H&S legislation is the Mail's Littlejohn who used to trot out the same tired old tripe in The Sun.

If Mail readers don't like to think they'll ever be in such a working class situation as an industrial accident they should remember that their elderly parents are at risk of unsafe conditions in hospitals - which is one of the Mail's great obsessions.

And of course, loads of those who drowned on the Herald of Free Enterprise were on a cheap offer from The Sun. Not sure the paper goes on about that much, though they should, because their readers died because of the ferry company's cynical negligence.

Don't know him. Perhaps he used to work for McKenzie or hopes to.

I didnt realise that about the Herald of Free Enterprise. Bloody hell.
My facebook feed has been very quiet about Hillsborough. Some of the kids who used to bully me at school are now right wingers who buy the Sun and the Mail.
A friends daughter bangs on about the cheap holidays they go on through Sun offers and another friends daughter joined the Suns fan page (it comes up on the side of my feed. likes the Sun.
Why cant people see it FFS.

CherryCheesecake - if you're interested in reading a bit more about Hillsborough, I can recommend Phil Scraton's book 'Hillsborough The Truth'. Scraton was on the Independent Panel and is very well informed.

The Sun's headline the day after the report came out read 'The Real Truth'. That summed up for me how utterly hollow and laughable their 'apologies' are, as my four year-old refers to 'the real truth' when we've been kidding around with him. 'Is that the REAL truth,' he says.

Steve Bell also had a great cartoon in the Guardian. I'll see if I can link to it.

Spot on as ever

Yup

It's funny because Sun readers were ridiculed and vilified for similar reasons then to people from Liverpool now - working class, poor, ignorant, rough, coarse, probably criminal - definitely tax dodgers.

A friend who worked for The Sun was organising a competition for a reader to win a date with a celebrity. She couldn't get anyone to agree - not even people like Linda Lusardi who owed her career to the paper - because she didn't mind Sun readers staring at her tits on Page 3 but not across a dinner table. Fuck knows who she thought these people were and who she thought she was.

My friend was approached by the fearsome dwarf Neil Wallis to explain her failure. She said in trepidation: 'You know what it's like. They're Sun readers, Neil.'

He laughed and said: 'Yeah, fuck 'em, Love.'

That's what they think of the people who make them rich.