Hillsborough Disaster

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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Prufrock » Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:07 pm

Hardly looks 'independent' though, does it?
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by thebish » Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:12 pm

Prufrock wrote:Hardly looks 'independent' though, does it?
The rest of Mummy's post - fine - it would have simply have sufficed to have said he is the bishop of Liverpool to make that point... the idea that him signing himself "Liverpool" in some sense makes a difference is simply ludicrous - it's what bishops have done for centuries.

If Alex Ferguson became bishop of Liverpool, he would sing himself "+Alex Liverpool" - but I doubt it would make him biased towards Liverpool...

that's all!

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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by mummywhycantieatcrayons » Sat Oct 13, 2012 7:12 pm

Ha, of course I know that. In the same way I have an F.E.Smith signature that is simply 'Birkenhead'.

It's a helpful visual illustration of my point though!
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by bristol_Wanderer3 » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:12 am

mummywhycantieatcrayons wrote:
Harry Genshaw wrote:
mummywhycantieatcrayons wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19922092

So another enquiry.

I don't know why sensible people are playing out the charade that entertains the possibility of any of the police involved being convicted of a crime.
It was alleged around the time and has been hinted at in recent news stories, that the Press coverage (mainly the Suns) was as a result of senior Police officers peddling stories they knew to be untrue that shifted the blame onto the fans from their own organisation. Even before the alteration of statements (for whatever reason) - there could be a case for 'perverting the course of justice' - no? :conf:
No. I don't think so.

For a start, the Taylor Inquiry was not a criminal investigation and none of the statements was taken under Criminal Justice Act rules and none of the evidence was sworn under oath.

And, at any rate, as I have discussed at some length above, not even the Hillsborough Independent Panel of Scousers report alleges that any police officer said things that were knowingly untrue, apart from Duckenfield's statement about the gates in the immediate aftermath.
The report you mention doesn't allege that police officers said things that were knowingly untrue, but does very, very strongly suggest it. Do we need to have the urinating fans discussion again?

It will be interesting to see what, if any, charges are brought as a result of this new inquiry, and how far up the tree it goes.

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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Zulus Thousand of em » Sun Oct 14, 2012 7:07 am

mummywhycantieatcrayons wrote:Ha, of course I know that. In the same way I have an F.E.Smith signature that is simply 'Birkenhead'.

It's a helpful visual illustration of my point though!
F E Smith is one of my heroes too, as you know Mummy. I never realised that the bastard was a Tranmere Rovers fan though!

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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by bw@bw » Sun Oct 14, 2012 10:33 am

Zulus Thousand of em wrote:
mummywhycantieatcrayons wrote:Ha, of course I know that. In the same way I have an F.E.Smith signature that is simply 'Birkenhead'.

It's a helpful visual illustration of my point though!
F E Smith is one of my heroes too, as you know Mummy. I never realised that the bastard was a Tranmere Rovers fan though!

:D
Well, I had never heard of FE Smith, though I had heard of Lord Birkenhead. Just read up on him on Wikipedia. Fascinating.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by mummywhycantieatcrayons » Sun Oct 14, 2012 1:55 pm

bristol_Wanderer3 wrote: The report you mention doesn't allege that police officers said things that were knowingly untrue, but does very, very strongly suggest it. Do we need to have the urinating fans discussion again?
I agree there seems little point - you still won't get it.

There were fans urinating in the terraces. One policewoman thought some urine had come in her direction and said so. The Sun then decided to change this into 'fans urinate on dead'.

What is so hard to understand about that sequence?
bristol_Wanderer3 wrote:It will be interesting to see what, if any, charges are brought as a result of this new inquiry, and how far up the tree it goes.
There will be no criminal charges. Well, ok - I suppose I can't guarantee that in the current climate, but there will not be a criminal conviction.

Suppose somebody could prove that police said things that they knew not to be true (and to reiterate, even the panel of Scousers only paint a picture of distorted Chinese whispers rather than outright lies), that would be a misconduct issue to interest the IPCC, but it would not be a criminal offence. "Perverting the court of justice" is not some vague offence that encompasses telling lies in the aftermath of any accident in which people have died. It's telling lies under oath - think Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitken etc.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Bruce Rioja » Sun Oct 14, 2012 4:14 pm

Harry Genshaw wrote:
It was alleged around the time and has been hinted at in recent news stories, that the Press coverage (mainly the Suns) was as a result of senior Police officers peddling stories they knew to be untrue that shifted the blame onto the fans from their own organisation.
I heard Kelvin MacKenzie come out with something pretty much identical to that quite recently. Still, you've never seen Kelvin MacKenzie and Billy Fisher in the same room now, have you?!
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Lord Kangana » Sun Oct 14, 2012 5:10 pm

Still its a good excuse to be able to call Kelvin Mckenzie a lying c*nt without fear of censure, seeing as its now in the public domain.

So, Kelvin McKenzie is a lying c*nt. In case you missed it.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Bruce Rioja » Sun Oct 14, 2012 5:12 pm

Lord Kangana wrote:Still its a good excuse to be able to call Kelvin Mckenzie a lying c*nt without fear of censure, seeing as its now in the public domain.

So, Kelvin McKenzie is a lying c*nt. In case you missed it.
I'm not sure what it is you're getting at here, LK.

Are we saying that Kelvin MaKenzie is a c*nt that tells lies?
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Lord Kangana » Sun Oct 14, 2012 5:17 pm

Only if he's breathing.

Due to complex medical reasons, he's unable to suppress his own natural lying/cuntishness rhythm.

In plain English, between you and me, this means he's a lying c*nt.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by bobo the clown » Sun Oct 14, 2012 6:38 pm

Lord Kangana wrote:Still its a good excuse to be able to call Kelvin Mckenzie a lying c*nt without fear of censure, seeing as its now in the public domain.

So, Kelvin McKenzie is a lying c*nt. In case you missed it.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Lord Kangana » Sun Oct 14, 2012 6:47 pm

I hope he gets staphylococcus aureus off me.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Lord Kangana » Sun Oct 14, 2012 6:51 pm

A really nasty strain too.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by bristol_Wanderer3 » Sun Oct 14, 2012 9:01 pm

mummywhycantieatcrayons wrote:
bristol_Wanderer3 wrote: The report you mention doesn't allege that police officers said things that were knowingly untrue, but does very, very strongly suggest it. Do we need to have the urinating fans discussion again?
I agree there seems little point - you still won't get it.

There were fans urinating in the terraces. One policewoman thought some urine had come in her direction and said so. The Sun then decided to change this into 'fans urinate on dead'.

What is so hard to understand about that sequence?
No. No no no. The only fans urinating on the terraces were those involuntarily doing so whilst having every living drop of energy squeezed out of them. Look at some of the pictures...no one on the terraces can move any part of their bodies and there is no mention in the report or anywhere else of anybody urinating on the terraces.

There is mention of people urinating at the back of the stands, but if someone can urinate so far that a policewoman can feel a drop on the pitch, from the upper tier of the Leppings Lane stand, then the urinating individual concerned has talents that could earn him a fortune in the circus or the porn industry, talents we would probably have heard about.

The report clearly references statements...referred to above about the policewoman being urinated on whilst tending to the dead bodies on the pitch. There is no evidence to support it. There were TV and CCTV cameras trained on the pitch throughout the whole disaster. So we can interpret that as the urinating was deliberately mentioned to smear the Liverpool fans' names further, or that some magical drop landed on the policewoman and she jumped to the conclusion that it was from a pissing fan. Most observers seem to have suspected the former.
bristol_Wanderer3 wrote:It will be interesting to see what, if any, charges are brought as a result of this new inquiry, and how far up the tree it goes.
mummywhycantieatcrayons wrote:
There will be no criminal charges. Well, ok - I suppose I can't guarantee that in the current climate, but there will not be a criminal conviction.

Suppose somebody could prove that police said things that they knew not to be true (and to reiterate, even the panel of Scousers only paint a picture of distorted Chinese whispers rather than outright lies), that would be a misconduct issue to interest the IPCC, but it would not be a criminal offence. "Perverting the court of justice" is not some vague offence that encompasses telling lies in the aftermath of any accident in which people have died. It's telling lies under oath - think Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitken etc.
You are the legal eagle my friend, so no doubt you are probably right, I will watch with interest. The next interesting development will be to see if the inquests are to overturned and new inquests held...what do you expect to happen there?

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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Prufrock » Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:29 am

Not a chance of criminal charges brought, and if there are, on a wave of public pressure, no chance of conviction - unless they contrive to have a jury trial based in Liverpool. Still predictable worries about the closeness of press and police. The Sun felt they had justification for the infamous 'The Truth' headline. To put it politely, maybe they guessed, maybe they were fed duff info...

There's a great biography of FE by John Campbell which I'm sure Crayons will endorse. Entertaining and inspiring. Long too. But worth it.

Also, Crayons again the expert, Birkenhead was barely a proper town as he was growing up, 'Tranmere fan' is surely a slander (dead or not). Ambition, defiance: a Big Sam Wanderer if ever there were.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by mummywhycantieatcrayons » Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:32 am

bristol_Wanderer3 wrote: No. No no no. The only fans urinating on the terraces were those involuntarily doing so whilst having every living drop of energy squeezed out of them. Look at some of the pictures...no one on the terraces can move any part of their bodies and there is no mention in the report or anywhere else of anybody urinating on the terraces.

There is mention of people urinating at the back of the stands, but if someone can urinate so far that a policewoman can feel a drop on the pitch, from the upper tier of the Leppings Lane stand, then the urinating individual concerned has talents that could earn him a fortune in the circus or the porn industry, talents we would probably have heard about.

The report clearly references statements...referred to above about the policewoman being urinated on whilst tending to the dead bodies on the pitch. There is no evidence to support it. There were TV and CCTV cameras trained on the pitch throughout the whole disaster. So we can interpret that as the urinating was deliberately mentioned to smear the Liverpool fans' names further, or that some magical drop landed on the policewoman and she jumped to the conclusion that it was from a pissing fan. Most observers seem to have suspected the former.
Alright, I have used the word 'terraces' here imprecisely, when I meant 'stand'.

There is no mention in the report of any police statement saying that any fan urinated on the pitch or bottom of the terraces.

Look at the last page of this rank and file policeman's statement: http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/ ... 890001.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

From the various accounts that are out there, it seems likely to me that this is more or less what happened and that it was spun and exaggerated from here by the tabloids.

If that account is true, and I think on balance it probably is (it's impossible to know if anyone was aiming at anyone else, but it's at least plausible that with emotions running high and with a certain amount of (deserved) animosity towards the police in the air, that some police believed they were aimed at), then a news entry along the lines of 'Liverpool fans urinated on police while they tended to the injured and dying' could be ambiguously true: the 'while' could mean that some police were urinated on 'while' other police were tending to the injured on the pitch, or the forming of a cordon to facilitate the passage of the injured and dying could be the 'tending'.

Yes, it's true that the tabloids chose to run the story that gave the impression that the fans were pissing on people giving the kiss of life on the pitch, but I don't believe that's what any police officer ever said.

Of course, none of who pissed where and when has the slightest bearing on whose fault the deaths were anyway.
bristol_Wanderer3 wrote: You are the legal eagle my friend, so no doubt you are probably right, I will watch with interest. The next interesting development will be to see if the inquests are to overturned and new inquests held...what do you expect to happen there?
I think it is now likely that the inquests will be re-opened. It's clear that a lot of evidence was needlessly excluded first time round, so I think they will find a way to make this happen.

However, none of the extra evidence will make the slightest bit of difference to the verdict of 'accidental death', which I think is an absolute cast-iron certainty to hold in every case. The extra evidence would introduce an evaluation of the emergency services' response, yes, but no one person or organisation will be found culpable enough to make them guilty of manslaughter, which is what it would take to get that verdict replaced.

And that's actually the key point to the whole discussion - there was such a perfect storm of blame around, both in the lead up to and on the day, including the police, SWFC, the FA, the emergency services, and, yes, the fans, that it's impossible to pin it all with enough severity on one person or organisation, given what best practice, standards and knowledge were the day before the incident (and that's how they have to be judged). If it's impossible to pin manslaughter on anyone, and it is, then it's impossible to find any verdict other than 'accidental death'.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by Prufrock » Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:56 am

I haven't read the report, though I've read Alcock and White and other reports about Hillsborough.

Judging only from the press reports, I wouldn't be surprised if they gave an open verdict, not having enough evidence to give unlawful killing. The Marchioness disaster is an example of gross negligence causing death which ended in a verdict of unlawful killing. From what I can gather about the police operations there is enough that, minded that way, that could happen. Not clear cut, but not impossible.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by mummywhycantieatcrayons » Mon Oct 15, 2012 3:41 am

Nah, there is now surely no deficiency in the evidence - there's a very detailed picture of who did what and when. I think an open verdict is just as unlikely.

The Marchioness case is interesting - it's unusual in that the captain of the offending ship himself died and so couldn't stand trial. But the key difference is this: people knew that failure to observe good practice in that stretch of water would put lives at risk. Wrongly, with hindsight, that's just not how anyone felt about policing football matches back then.
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Re: Hillsborough Disaster

Post by bristol_Wanderer3 » Mon Oct 15, 2012 4:39 am

mummywhycantieatcrayons wrote:
There is no mention in the report of any police statement saying that any fan urinated on the pitch or bottom of the terraces.

Can you please explain section 2-12-99 (below) in the report then? Do you agree that a policewoman giving resuscitation would be doing so on the pitch, or at the bottom of the terraces?

Some officers were injured and some stories were told to the Secretary [Middup] which were horrific. One story being that a policewoman who was giving resuscitation was urinated on. Other police officers were verbally abused and had stuff thrown at them and spat on. Some officers saw people picking coins up from the floor which had obviously come from the victims. Mr Middup said that was how it was portrayed to him that night by individuals under tremendous strain.

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