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…more prominently than grassy has already.
deaths caused needlessly by the stupidity of Liverpool supporters.
best regards
wit
Of course the anniversary of Heysel should be properly and prominently commemorated. It was appalling.
But I don’t see what it has to do with Hillsborough. Unless it is suggested that the majority of the people who died in Sheffield were also involved in the violence at Heysel? I wasn’t aware that this had been demonstrated?
I don’t like the idea of treating thousands of people as if they were one and the same. I know for a fact that supporters of my own little club have been involved in unsavoury incidents, but that has nothing to do with me. I may be British, but that doesn’t mean I am responsible for the murders committed by Harold Shipman, the Iraq war or any of the other outrages committed by other members of the society to which I belong.
The people who died at Hillsborough were individuals first and there is no reason why the commemmoration of their deaths should have to involve caveats about other tragedies for which they were not responsible.
hi andrew
totally agree with you – every premature death is a tragedy in its right to those personally involved.
the thing about hillsborough though is that it seems ( a la Princess Di) to have attracted an element of "grief tourism" by those not by any measure personally involved.
those "grief tourists" have devalued the real tragedies and are the reason for the – otherwise very irrational and unappealing – phenomenon of folk using words such as mawkish, whingeing, hypocritical in relation to the way it seems enough scousers use that event.
best i understand (but always open to correction) neither Liverpool FC nor any of its supporters have ever as much as apologised, never mind taken any responsibility or paid any compensation, for the deaths directly and needlessly caused by the Liverpool supporters at Heysel.
yet somehow they seem to expect everyone to share their grief tourism on the other event, which was a true accident.
the target is the hypocrisy of Liverpool FC and the grief tourists, not the personally bereaved.
(although even to them, after 20 years, personally i think the point is well made that it can at this distance be said – tragedies happen, get over it, life is short, if you live in the past, you just rob the future. even though that’s never a popular thing to say.)
best regards
wit
People can often only move on when they get closure, something which cannot be achieved while they feel that the victims have not gotten justice, or at the very least, a fair hearing with consequences for those responsible.
It’s only human nature
hi david
but what is "justice" in that context ?
what the term too often really means when used by the bereaved, is that they want to undo the event and get their loved one back – which won’t happen.
acceptance of responsibility and contrition might help, but you’ll still hear that’s not justice.
allocation of responsibility onto a non-contrite party even less seldom tends to satisfy the expectations of the bereaved.
whether the non-personally-involved can give genuine sympathy is always moot ("how can you know how I feel? it didn’t happen to you")
tough statement, but my suggestion is that life isn’t fair and never has been, and its a mistake to expect it to be.
its just the way things work that even the most hardened murderer of the most innocent victim is going to win out in terms of lifespan.
sure, strive for "the right thing" – but don’t get wedded to expecting it.
imo.
best regards
wit
That’s twice this week that posters I enjoy reading have gone and made d**ks of themselves.
Wit, your posts on this thread are as daft as anything ever written on this forum and certainly the most ludicrous posts you’ve ever written. I can’t believe you’ve written this stuff. What is going on with the forum lately?
I’m putting this on the Liverpool MAD Forum so expect some feedback from them. (No, I wont, mods, I’m too nice).
What is a "grief tourist"? Define personal involvement in a tragedy? Is that related to the old Stalin quote about a million deaths being a statistic. What’s a
real
tragedy? I’m intrigued.
those "grief tourists" have devalued the
real tragedies
and are the reason for the – otherwise very irrational and unappealing – phenomenon of folk using words such as mawkish, whingeing, hypocritical in relation to the way it seems enough scousers use that event
I cannot even be bothered to dissect this total drivel, Aside from the fact it’s possibly the most incompetently scribbled paragraph I’ve ever read in the Lounge – or on the forum – it’s subliminally expressed sentiments are so inhuman as to be beyond rational comprehension.
Here’s something simple.
96 people died, Wit
,
Kids. Families. Some of them asphyxiated in plain sight. Kids. You can see their open mouthed faces against the bars. The air literally left their bodies.Where’s your compassion, Wit. Where’s your humanity? As for personal involvement, I go to football weekly and that could have been my kid.
And btw, I grieved for the Juventus fans at Heysel. I watched the game live and after the shock and the horror, I realised that something had ended that night.
We’d reached a nadir as a nation, not just Liverpool.
I watched Hillsborough unfurl in a bookmakers and have friends who were there. My best friend was Forest and he still can’t talk about it. My team got relegated on the same day of the Bradford fire and there was a hush around Craven Cottage that afternoon when we heard the news. Any football fan would have grieved all three.
Here’s something simple. 96 people died, Wit,
Kids. Families. Some of them asphyxiated in plain sight. Kids. You can see their open mouthed faces against the bars. The air literally left their bodies.Where’s your compassion, Wit. Where’s your humanity? As for personal involvement, I go to football weekly and that could have been my kid.
And btw, I grieved for the Juventus fans at Heysel. I watched the game live and after the shock and the horror, I realised that something had ended that night. We’d reached a nadir as a nation, not just Liverpool.
I watched Hillsborough unfurl in a bookmakers and have friends who were there. My best friend was Forest and he still can’t talk about it. My team got relegated on the same day of the Bradford fire and there was a hush around Craven Cottage that afternoon when we heard the news. Any football fan would have grieved all three.
Perfectly put. Very little need be added to that.
I think the problem with the coverage Hillsborough is getting is that it starts to come across as a case of ‘My tragedy is more important than yours’.
Heysel, Bradford, Ibrox, Hillsborough…………..all events involving the deaths of innocent people at football stadiums, involving UK teams.
Three of those tragedies were accidents, which hindsight shows us could have been avoided. The other was the result of pre-meditated action on behalf of one set of supporters.
If any of these tragedies requires ‘elevation’, or demands more introspection to ensure it never happens again, it was the completely avoidable one in Brussels. The others were caused by fate playing out its cruel hand.
Hillsborough was an accident waiting to happen, due mainly to the outmoded nature of our football grounds, but coupled with inadequacy of stewarding and policing at this particular game. Anyone looking for ‘justice’ needs to understand that no single individual or organisation was culpable – it was no more or less than fate – and all the lessons that needed to be learned from that particularly tragedy, were implemented long ago.
Only one of those incidents involved the printing of blatant lies by a supposedly respectable news organisation and lies from a public organisation (SY Police).
Never at any stage during the Hillsborough disaster did any of the following occur (all of which were reported in The Sun and supported by the SY Police):
1. Urinating on the dead
2. Stealing personal possesions from the dead
3. Sexually assaulting a dieing woman.None of the above accusations were addressed at any stage nor has there been a proper apology to the genuine victims of the tragedy.
think the problem with the coverage Hillsborough is getting is that it starts to come across as a case of ‘My tragedy is more important than yours’.
Exactly
Memorable for many Chelsea fans at the time of Heysel was the statements from the self regarding and up themselves LFC that t was "Chelsea fans" that "started it"
Pathetic….
Never retracted but was never worth responding to anyway. But the "it couldnt be us" mentality was not unexpected
Some very interesting and heartfelt postings here, especially the one from Max.
However there are some points I would like to pick up on.
Where’s your compassion, Wit. Where’s your humanity?
Just because people are fed up and unhappy with the ongoing coverage of Hillsborough does not mean they lack compassion and humanity and I do think that is an unfair comment. I am fed up with the coverage but it does not mean I lack either humanity or compassion.
Here’s something simple.
96 people died
,
Kids. Families. Some of them asphyxiated in plain sight. Kids. You can see their open mouthed faces against the bars. The air literally left their bodies.The number who died is irrelevant – it would have been no less tragic had there been only one death
In the last fortnight 200 people died in an earthquake in Italy. Some of them will have died due to human failings. They died asleep in their beds – something we can all relate to.
290,000 died in the Boxing day Tsunami in 2004 – again a large number of those deaths were avoidable and the result of negligence, incompetence.
Are we going to be commemorating either of these events with blanket TV coverage twenty years on? I would go 1.01 not.So why is Hillsborough and not other, arguably worse, disasters being singled out in this manner?
Those who died already have a “legacy” – as a result of Hillsborough we had the Taylor Report which led to the Safety of Sports Grounds legislation which should prevent future a future Hillsborough. Therefore it could be argued they did not die in vain.
There is no single cause to what happened that day in 1989, there were many contributory factors, there is no single “scapegoat” and lets be honest that is what the families seem to be looking for.
40,000 people turned up for the service yesterday – very commendable and yes it should have been reported as part of normal news coverage.
What is the point of the wall to wall coverage we were subjected to yesterday? Why open up old wounds? What is it suppose to achieve? As many have pointed out Hillsborough is one of those events where you know where you were when it happened – most know what happened and the questions, some of which remain unanswered and frankly never will be answered. I know where I was, I know what is alleged to have happened, I don’t need reminding again and again.
A popular retort is, what would you do if it was a member of your family? Quite simple I would be advocating what I am advocating now. I certainly would not want to be reminded of the event with emotional television and radio coverage and analysis twenty years after the event.
I would be ‘happy’ that some good has come of the disaster in terms of the improvement to safety at sports grounds, for me that would be a worthwhile legacy.
Perhaps I have a too pragmatic approach to death but my, perhaps simplistic, view is we are all going to die one day – it is not negotiatable.
It is a fact of life that some will die young and some will die in tragic circumstances. It is not nice but it is still something we have to accept.
When people do die in tragic circumstances there is nothing that can be done to bring them back, no matter how much we would want it to happen. The important thing is we learn from these accidents and if the lessons result in saving just one live then the premature death will not have been in vain.
The number who died is irrelevant – it would have been no less tragic had there been only one death
In the last fortnight 200 people died in an earthquake in Italy. Some of them will have died due to human failings. They died asleep in their beds – something we can all relate to.
290,000 died in the Boxing day Tsunami in 2004 – again a large number of those deaths were avoidable and the result of negligence, incompetence.
Are we going to be commemorating either of these events with blanket TV coverage twenty years on? I would go 1.01 not.So why is Hillsborough and not other, arguably worse, disasters being singled out in this manner?
Apart from the contradicting first and last sentances Paul, any anniversary commemorating the loss of our own (more so a 20th than either side if we’re talking Hillsborough…but we’re not!) of a domestic tragedy caused by accident or incompetence is still more felt and will always be given more coverage than anything that happened anywhere else in the world, and that’s the way
that
is.
We’re a big footballing nation (allegedly!) and it’s no real surprise, surely?
I’d say, and with the greatest respect, that anybody ‘fed up’ in the least bit about the ‘over doing it’ of any commemoration needs to relax a bit more. Forgive me, but I really don’t understand. It comes and it’s gone. End.
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