[Archived] Sensitive Topic

[leftfooter]

This phenomena is reflective of the huge transformation in moral sentiment: specifically the rise in the currency of politicised compassion. We consume sentimentality as part of the air we breathe. Disciplined moral thought has been usurped by an inchoate sentimentalism that has taken on an almost atavistic socio-religious impetus. Attempt at rational discussion is mere tokenism.

It's no coincidence that at about the time of this tragedy Liverpool was in the grip of extremist militant tendency leftists that sought to replace virtue of the individual with a variety of state sponsored moralism, in which the supreme moral virtue was a socialised compassion.

Whilst Philip's confected conviction of his own moral superiority never ceases to amaze, it's surprising to see contributors whose opinions I normally respect succumbing to such collective sentimental nonsense.

Decency and respect are admirable qualities when individuals respond helpfully to one another. This legacy of politicised virtue however does not focus on the real individuals. Rather an undefined collective image reflective of a whole category of people has become memorialised in their place. What ever happened to private grief?

The elevating of private grief into the public forum has seeped in to the national conscience. In such an inflammatory atmosphere public discussion is replaced by imposed social melodrama. The schism between the oppressor is thus mapped to fit any social or international situation. Our sympathies are hostage to dark forces.

Thus hostility is directed towards those somehow considered responsible for the pain and suffering of the conveyor belt by those volunteering to be considered as 'victims': those that knew someone at the match; those that might have been there; those that saw it on television...

Hostility is invoked against any 'enemy' of this mawkish movement. In the case of Liverpudlian mercenary Ken Bigley therefore, the enemy in the eyes of the popular press and the broad left became not the Islamist murderers who chose to decapitate him, nor Bigley himself who made a conscious decision to place himself in the line of danger for remunerative reward; the enemy became rather the Prime Minister who refused to overturn British foreign policy to save the neck of one misguided ex-pat.

Diana Spencer, Jade Goody, Ken Bigley, Hillsboro, the anti-Western 'peace' movement have been used as vehicles to demonstrate this form of socialised benevolence and ersatz mourning. This is not to blame the actual victims personally, but the fact that such political exponents of the new sentimentalism are not likely to be personally generous and benevolent per se is irrelevant. What matters is public adherence to the Doctrine itself.

The raison detre is to banish risk and pain (including the more painful aspect of duty) from our daily discourse. Good conduct is predicated on empathising with the suffering of the other, rather that any rational understanding of one's public role and private duty. Such notional sentimentality is hostile to any acceptance of personal responsibility. Responsibility however is determinative of social order and without social order there can be no justice.

Retribution must be visited on the non-sufferers, whether or not they behaved with negligence or malevolence. What matters in this mawkish whirlpool is that the true balance in a notional moral universe is restored by punishing the non-sufferer. Even if the sufferer might have been responsible in some way for its own misfortune. Hence the calls for public officials to be punished. No mention of the individuals responsibility. It is not the role of the judiciary to mete out justice as a kjind of auto da fe however; rather it is to enforce the law. Those claiming otherwise have allowed their wits to be muddled. Abstract justice is a deceptively noble device, but it generally leads to a spiral of expedients and scape-goating.

The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions, and so is a good deal of democratic politics. But moral vices prosper when cloaked in the mantle of virtue.

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:

If the trees must, let them silently toss;

No bird is singing in them now, and if there is,

Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,

It will be long ere the earliest bird:

So close the windows and not hear the wind,

But see all wind-stirred.

[philipl]

"Whilst Philip's confected conviction of his own moral superiority never ceases to amaze, it's surprising to see contributors whose opinions I normally respect succumbing to such collective sentimental nonsense."

Whatever are you wittering about leftwinger?

Hillsborough was just a horrible event which took 96 lives totally needlessly. Everybody going to football matches in those days knew that there but for the grace of God went I.

[CrazyIvan]

Spot on Leftfooter

[Paul Mellelieu]

Leftfooter's opaque post is bizarre. Grief is not just a private matter, nor should it be. Should we not remember the war dead, and Holocaust victims?

Do you not have a sense of human solidarity or empathy? This tragic episode ruined the lives of thousands of people and you compare it, in some twisted way, to the media circus surrounding Jade Goody. Are you really unable to distinguish between the two?

OscarRaven and Modes, you posts are actually quite upsetting, disgusting in fact. Even if you what you say is true (and I don't believe it is) in blaming ticketless Liverpool fans for some of the pressure in the Lepping Lanes end, do you really think that they, and not the officials in charge of policing the game are responsible for killing 96 people?

Catch yourself on.

[Hughesy]

+1 thenodrog - agree 100% with your original post - it bugs me most years - this year the amount of it in the press is just over the top.

[Aberdeen Blue]

As someone who actually survived Hillsborough I have read with utter disgust some of the comments on here.

96 football fans, yes like you and me, died because of a combination of both an inadequate stadium and inadequate policing. That's terrible enough but then for the authorities charged with protecting the public to then instigate a wholesale cover-up of the actual facts to cover their own arses is what drives the need to keep this fresh in the nation’s consciousness. Or do some of you think it’s OK for the authorities to get away with manslaughter?

Imagine for a second how you would feel if it was you or your friends / family that had been involved.

[Hughesy]

"96 football fans, yes like you and me, died because of a combination of both an inadequate stadium and inadequate policing"

So it had nothing to do with Liverpool fans climbing over the fences and busting thier way in??

[Aberdeen Blue]

"So it had nothing to do with Liverpool fans climbing over the fences and busting thier way in??"

I suggest you read Lord Taylors Report you sadly deluded person. I really feel sory for your lack of understanding of the events.

[Ozz]

No it didn't. Do some reading Hughesy- there is plenty about at the moment.

[Hughesy]

Dont believe everything you see in black and white. A lad I work with is a scouser and his dad was there that day - he was however sat in another stand but has always maintained that fans without tickets forced thier way in... that what I was told...it happened in Athens too.

[LeChuck]

I often get annoyed that everything that is football related and not to do with Rovers is treated with intense cynicism (especially if it involves any top four/rich clubs), but even I didn't think people could extend that to something tragic like Hillsbrough.

I'm almost ashamed to participate in this forum after reading a lot of this.

[den]

It was only ever going to go one way Le Chuck.

[Tris]

Someone close and hide / delete this thread - it's an embarassment that it's on the MB as the families are congregating at Anfield for the memorial service

[Ray-Von]

On that day, I think at the time it was the happiest I have ever been at a football match when Garner completed his hat-trick. There were rumours going round the Nuttall Street stand that there had been trouble at the Liverpool semi, it wasn't until I got home that the extent of the story hit home.

The fact is, it could quite easily have been the Man City fans with their inflatable bananas at Ewood in the Darwen End that day, or the Rovers fans on the Blackburn End.

[philipl]

On that day, I think at the time it was the happiest I have ever been at a football match when Garner completed his hat-trick. There were rumours going round the Nuttall Street stand that there had been trouble at the Liverpool semi, it wasn't until I got home that the extent of the story hit home.

The fact is, it could quite easily have been the Man City fans with their inflatable bananas at Ewood in the Darwen End that day, or the Rovers fans on the Blackburn End.

Ray-Von, that was my experience exactly.

Going from the elation of that win and Garner's record to the devastation of turning on the Radio in the car in Tockholes. In fact I can see where we were now when I heard David Jones' voice (the presenter) on Radio Blackburn cracking as he described what had happened.

[Blue n White Rover]

Justice for the 96!

Tragic event and my condolences go out to those families that were affected by this. You do not expect to go to a football match and not return.

[leftfooter]

Leftfooter's opaque post is bizarre. Grief is not just a private matter, nor should it be. Should we not remember the war dead, and Holocaust victims?

Do you not have a sense of human solidarity or empathy? This tragic episode ruined the lives of thousands of people and you compare it, in some twisted way, to the media circus surrounding Jade Goody. Are you really unable to distinguish between the two?

OscarRaven and Modes, you posts are actually quite upsetting, disgusting in fact. Even if you what you say is true (and I don't believe it is) in blaming ticketless Liverpool fans for some of the pressure in the Lepping Lanes end, do you really think that they, and not the officials in charge of policing the game are responsible for killing 96 people?

Catch yourself on.

Mellers, you might care to hawk your conscience barefoot and wearing sackcloth from thread to thread. I choose not to.

Victimhood is not a definitive argument for being correct. If we must so publicly indulge in public mourning for Liverpool FC because of the real tragedy that was Hillsborough, so shall Liverpool FC not escape personal liability for the scores of dead Italians in Brussels.

Let's look at Liverpool fans during the 1980's shall we from the perspective of a home fan at Ewood Park watching Rovers play them in the cup? Drunken, loud-mouthed yobs forcing their way in to the pubs, into the ground, robbing cigarette machines from said pubs, urinating all over the street and gratuitously leering at and insulting passers-by. In short enthusiastically hamming it up (or down) to every nuanced sterotypical view of the archetypal Scally.

Whilst such an event as Hillsborough was generically foreseeable during such an era of endemic rampage and mayhem, I can conceive of few clubs in England, if any, where such an accident would have occurred and on such a scale. Indeed it already had done - just a few short years previously at Heysel. The same set of fans, except this time the victims were English and fans of Liverpool. So of course it was foreseeable, but memories are short and calls for justice entirely selective.

Let's jump a couple of decades forward shall we? It should go without saying, but the fact is it is unfortunately necessary to spell out the obvious to some. The manifestation of personal grief dressed up as public breast-beating is suggestive of a new world order where true understanding and genuine empathy has been replaced by a culture of vicarious victimhood.

Liverpool is a city hooked on public grief.

The same city where whole families and communities connived in the concealment of the killers of 11 year old Rhys Jones. Everton FC subsequently subjected Rovers fans to the obligitary emotionally charged minutes silence, whilst possibly there were some in the home crowd that were harbouring the perpetrators and could have brought the killers to justice thus bringing the parents' dignified grief to a much sooner end.

In Ken Bigley's case flags were lowered, floral tributes despatched, black armbands donned and and army of Scouse mourners, who never even knew the man, worked themselves up into a state of pornographic mourning for one of 'Liverpool's own sons' (he lived abroad actually and was planning to move to Thailand with his Thai bride).

Liverpool FC (naturellement) duly pandered to the climate of hysteria with the standard minutes silence, which chimed nicely with the obligitary candlelit vigils and yellow ribboned festooned railings.

The calls for 'justice' are lightly bandied about by some, but the last time I checked justice was a universal concept. Why I ask are these deaths any the less terrible if the victims had been supporting Juventus, Bradford or the Ivory Coast?

The fact is that this outpouring of ersatz emotion tells us more about ourselves and the level to which public discourse has sunk than about the entirely personal grief of the families involved.

[Tom]

I agree with Tris thats it's time this thread should be closed.

For what it's worth I have mixed views on the thing, it was a horrible tragedy that should have been prevented but I'm too ignorant on the subject to know the small details about who is to blame and who is 100% blameless, although I think maybe if this was a club like Accrington Stanley there wouldn't be as much media attention (all hypothetical so irrelevent).

Although at times it seems on this board you're only allowed to express an opinion if it's the popular opinion of the masses, otherwise you get laden with personal insults, Hughsey expressed an opinion and gets called a prick? C'mon if you don't like what he says contructively present a case against it or ignore it.

Anyway I digress RIP the 96 I hope the families have been able to move on in some way but it seems some people need someone to blame before they can.

[modes98]

Even if you what you say is true (and I don't believe it is) in blaming ticketless Liverpool fans for some of the pressure in the Lepping Lanes end, do you really think that they, and not the officials in charge of policing the game are responsible for killing 96 people?

The fans didn't die because the police forced them against the barrier, it was people like themselves who forced there way in and showed little regard for there fellow fans. The blame lies at the polices door for opening the gate, but that doesn't give free rein to anyone without a ticket to pile on in. It's not like todays over stewarding and they should have showed some self restraint IMO.

You can point your fingers at the police all you want but they are not 100% to blame, just like the fans aren't. It's just one of those situations that shouldn't occur and failed to happen at matches involving other teams fans at the time.

Liverpool is a city hooked on public grief.

Totally agree.

[Jonnolad]

Dont believe everything you see in black and white. A lad I work with is a scouser and his dad was there that day - he was however sat in another stand but has always maintained that fans without tickets forced thier way in... that what I was told...it happened in Athens too.

So that's your basis for your opinion? Some bloke you know who was in another stand maintained "that fans without tickets forced thier way in".

Are you simply ignoring the full inquiry that took place which found that categorically wasn't the case at all?

If I was you I would keep it to your opinions to yourself if it is based on such flimsy evidence and it flies in the face of proper investigated findings, especially with such an emotive subject as this.

[leftfooter]

I agree with Tris thats it's time this thread should be closed.

For what it's worth I have mixed views on the thing, it was a horrible tragedy that should have been prevented but I'm too ignorant on the subject to know the small details about who is to blame and who is 100% blameless, although I think maybe if this was a club like Accrington Stanley there wouldn't be as much media attention (all hypothetical so irrelevent).

Although at times it seems on this board you're only allowed to express an opinion if it's the popular opinion of the masses, otherwise you get laden with personal insults, Hughsey expressed an opinion and gets called a prick? C'mon if you don't like what he says contructively present a case against it or ignore it.

Anyway I digress RIP the 96 I hope the families have been able to move on in some way but it seems some people need someone to blame before they can.

TCO you make your point eloquently.

Regarding your point in respect of the reaction to posters that adopt a contrary line on any issue, I agree.

Those that subscribe to the general consensus (as spoon fed to us by the BBC/Nu Labski) tend to be the ones that feel they have a licence to insult and disparage. It's not surprising actually as those that advocate a less orthodox line also tend to be judged more harshly when their comments are being moderated.

[Flopsy]

OscarRaven and Modes, you posts are actually quite upsetting, disgusting in fact. Even if you what you say is true (and I don't believe it is) in blaming ticketless Liverpool fans for some of the pressure in the Lepping Lanes end, do you really think that they, and not the officials in charge of policing the game are responsible for killing 96 people?

It was the Liverpool fans that rushed into leppings lane end that caused the crush, if they hadnt, then no one would have been crushed to death.

However the Police and the ground's design are responsible as well, but when it comes down to it, why were all these people in the ground? Because a large number of fans decided they were going to try and get in without tickets.

At no point do I mean to take away from the tradgedy of the people who died, or how and why they died, but although the Police deserve blame and criticism about their handling of the crowd before and during the unfolding events and their subsequent response and cover up. Liverpool fans need to look at themselves and see that some blame should be aimed at those who decided they didnt want to pay, but rushed the gates anyway.

Still, we should remember the dead, because it could have been anyone of us, or our loved one.

[CrazyIvan]

It was the Liverpool fans that rushed into leppings lane end that caused the crush, if they hadnt, then no one would have been crushed to death.

However the Police and the ground's design are responsible as well, but when it comes down to it, why were all these people in the ground? Because a large number of fans decided they were going to try and get in without tickets.

At no point do I mean to take away from the tradgedy of the people who died, or how and why they died, but although the Police deserve blame and criticism about their handling of the crowd before and during the unfolding events and their subsequent response and cover up. Liverpool fans need to look at themselves and see that some blame should be aimed at those who decided they didnt want to pay, but rushed the gates anyway.

Still, we should remember the dead, because it could have been anyone of us, or our loved one.

Totally agree Flopsy, I've always thought this and will continue to do so. While I still feel sadness watching those events unfold on TV now, I cannot in good conscience agree with the way everything has been and continues to be portrayed on TV and by the Liverpool fans themselves. 96 people should never have died and 96 people should be mourned respectfully and honourably. Justice for the 96? Liverpool fans who were there and were pushing forward need to stand up and say they were sorry for their part in it as well as those who were in charge that day. That's it.

[dellinsert]

I'm sure I read somewhere at the time that it would never have happened at Ewood as it was side-loading.

[Blue n White Rover]

Totally agree Flopsy, I've always thought this and will continue to do so. While I still feel sadness watching those events unfold on TV now, I cannot in good conscience agree with the way everything has been and continues to be portrayed on TV and by the Liverpool fans themselves. 96 people should never have died and 96 people should be mourned respectfully and honourably. Justice for the 96? Liverpool fans who were there and were pushing forward need to stand up and say they were sorry for their part in it as well as those who were in charge that day. That's it.

That's it? The gates hsould never have been opened by the police. As soon as the gates were opened the chaos started. The super-intendant at the time was asked first time whether the gates should be opened, he rejected the claim, he also rejected the proposal of the match being delayed. The game should not have gone ahead. The gates should never have been opened for others to get in.

A 10 year old child was killed in there. What if that was your child? His mother bought him a ticket so that he could see his childhood heroes, he didn't return home. How distressing is that for his family? Can you not show that little ounce of respect for them.

The police need to take the blame for the incident, The super intendant at the time handed in his resignation straight after the disaster. Why? According to some of you the police have done no wrong, well the fact is they have and they should take the blame for those that died on the day.

JUSTICE FOR THE 96!!!