Hillsborough

boltonbonce wrote:

wessy wrote:Not sure that this subject deserves an answer in terms of the unbelievable lack of empathy shown for the death of 96 people including women and children shown by the posters on here.

 Many pre Hillsborough fans will remember being in a crush at a big match it was scary even when well policed. For that reason i am against bringing standing back.

In this case, the policing was diabolical, but worse than that the police lied to cover up the many mistakes made. Even worse than that the government of the day aided the cover up. Only the constant pressure of the family's brought this information out. 

 If my child was involved then i would have wanted the truth.

Many instances can be found that supports factually that the majority of fans were not pissed, but i bet some of those above criticising the Scousers have been bevied up themselves at a big cup game.? but you returned home on a bus not in a box.

 It is also in doubt that many ticket less fans caused the problem, one eye witness says that the fans had tickets but the police opened the gates to let the crush disperse outside the ground.

Evidence exists that says the capacity in that part of the ground was 10,100 estimates made by CTV at the tribunal shows counts of around 9800. 

So sorry that someone else's grief pisses you of it must very hard for you to cope.

Couldn't agree more.

Add me to that as well!

Oh god,no one is not sorry for the passing of 96 innocent souls,they were in the front section of the central terrace and had been in the ground in good time to watch the match. The issue is with the hundreds who didnt have a ticket,under the influence or not. The central section of the terracing where the deaths occurred was directly opposite the main gates,the people who rushed in didnt disperse to either side they went straight to the central section as it was closest and easiest to escape detection for not having a valid ticket.The tv footage/evidence plainly shows a central densely packed section far above the normal ticket allowance for that section,the sections to the right and left were not affected by any overcrowding and hence no deaths. Its not fucking difficult !!!

I stand by what I said.

I've not disrespected the dead of Hillsborough, I have however said what was common practise by a significant minority of Liverpool fans back then - indeed I even used to work with one who often did this if he could not get an away match ticket.

I don't doubt that the people in the queues did have tickets - not much point queueing up without one - no, the ticketless used to wait until the few minutes before the match started and try to 'push' through the barriers in the crush to get inside the ground before the game kicked off.

This practise obviously worked - otherwise why else would people attempt to do the same thing at every big away match - and back then Liverpool was THE big team in town.

It happened - there's no doubt about that - even if the official enquiry found no prove to say it did.

How would anybody even get such prove?  Do you think those who had done it would openly want to admit it to the police investigating 96 deaths?  Do you think their mates would grass them up, or they are the types of people who would want to repent and turn themselves in?

Mistakes and cover ups did happen of course but the culture of the time was that if you didn't have a ticket you still went to the match and you did try to get in illegally - and more often than not they did!

Take away from the equation these 'loveable scallies' and the problems would have been that much less to deal with.  Would the tragedy have still of happened - who knows?  

Nothing anyone can do now after 20 years but there's certainly more to what happened than just police failings, newspaper lies and a Conservative Government of the day with an agenda to deal with football.

karlypants wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:

wessy wrote:Not sure that this subject deserves an answer in terms of the unbelievable lack of empathy shown for the death of 96 people including women and children shown by the posters on here.

 Many pre Hillsborough fans will remember being in a crush at a big match it was scary even when well policed. For that reason i am against bringing standing back.

In this case, the policing was diabolical, but worse than that the police lied to cover up the many mistakes made. Even worse than that the government of the day aided the cover up. Only the constant pressure of the family's brought this information out. 

 If my child was involved then i would have wanted the truth.

Many instances can be found that supports factually that the majority of fans were not pissed, but i bet some of those above criticising the Scousers have been bevied up themselves at a big cup game.? but you returned home on a bus not in a box.

 It is also in doubt that many ticket less fans caused the problem, one eye witness says that the fans had tickets but the police opened the gates to let the crush disperse outside the ground.

Evidence exists that says the capacity in that part of the ground was 10,100 estimates made by CTV at the tribunal shows counts of around 9800. 

So sorry that someone else's grief pisses you of it must very hard for you to cope.

Couldn't agree more.

Add me to that as well!

And me too!

Justice for the 96 dead will only come when senior police figures like Duckenfield and the truly odious Sir Norman Bettison are brought to book for their roles in either the events of the day or the truly disgraceful cover up and its organised attempt to shift blame on to decent ordinary football fans.

It's not a case of "somebody else's grief pissing (anybody) off."

I can't speak for anybody else, but for me it's like this:

I have nothing but sympathy for those who lost their lives and their families.

And yes, we all acknowledge that the police are culpable of mis-handling things on the day and subsequently trying to cover their failings up by blaming the fans.

But the point stands that without the irresponsible actions of a large part of the travelling Liverpool support, this tragedy would never have happened.

And if it had been "pay on the gate" and it was simply an over-subscription of people trying to pay at the turnstiles, then you could sort of understand how it could have happened.

But it wasn't - it was all ticket and the thousands of ticket-less scallies who pitched up and made a run on the gates knew this fact.

This tragedy would never have happened if those fans hadn't done what they always did back then - turn up without a ticket, with no intention of paying to get in and tried to force the authorities' hand.

But nobody in Liverpool will even acknowledge this fact. If you listen to them, butter wouldn't melt in the mouth of the average loveable scally, because they're all salt of the earth, cheeky-chappy types who are a bit rum, but deep down, are good boys who love their mums.

Well I'm sorry, but the ones who turned up and tried it on have every bit as much blood on their hands as the South Yorkshire Police.

And it's that bit that sticks in my craw.

I'm not well versed enough to really say anything meaningful on this.

tragically sad events obviously, but there does seem to be a sort of religiosity surrounding this event that no other sporting tragedy carries or demands.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:I'm not well versed enough to really say anything meaningful on this.

tragically sad events obviously, but there does seem to be a sort of religiosity surrounding this event that no other sporting tragedy carries or demands.

I expected a better response from the sites most intelligent poster, and Bolton Banter's "Funniest Poster 2010".

Or maybe you don't have the skills to adequately understand the nuance of the point I made there.

Did you just call Whittam a nonce?

Hipster, Hipster, Hipster, Hipster ,Hipster ,Hipster   .

There will always be an element that try to lets say break the rules (can see that Sluffy), and we will probably never know what impact those who bent the rules had on this tragedy. 

BUT you have to ask, if it was so simple, that the fans behaved so badly that this caused the death of 96 people then WHY would the police need to cover this up?  Why did the government need to protect the reputation of the police?

My take is that the police made one giant mess of this. And used the press (Sun)to discredit the fans because football fans are such an easy target? 

What i always remember from that day was the fear on fans faces crushed at the front, pleading with the police to unlock the metal fencing, it seemed such an obvious thing to do, but they even screwed up on that, and even then they kept the ambulances queueing to get on to the pitch because some jobs worth screwed that up. 

I believe that this went right to the very top and Thatcher was behind the police cover up.

Reebok_Rebel wrote: Slag me off all you want, but they are milking it. More died in the Burnden park Disaster (same thing as Hillsborough) and at the Valley Parade fire - both of these were caused by human error or neglect by SOMEBODY, yet they never get a mention.

  

You slag yourself off by writing utter bollocks, Take your statistic re your own clubs disaster, you haven't a clue how many died at Burnden?  The answer is 33 people died. much less than the Hillsborough disaster. but it's not about comparison or numbers one death is one to many. its about Justice. and being able to rely on the people who should be there to protect the public.

I don't think anyone is saying any differently that once the crowd was let into the ground that the police failed and there was a subsequent cover up but that is not the point I and one or two others are trying to make.

What we are saying is WHY the crowd was so big in the first place and even more specifically than that pointing out those who needlessly inflated the crowd on the day and exacerbated the whole problem - namely the countless number of chancers who turned up without tickets and 'shoved' their way in.

Without these people who simply should not have been there trying to get in for free - and adding significantly to the dynamics of the crowd - would the problem leading up to the deaths of the 96 even have happeded at all that day?

I believe from personal experience from similar crowds at games around that period in time that this was the first domino that toppled leading to the chain of events that followed.

No one could quantify how many people in that crowd had tickets but I assure you that if somehow they could they would have found a significant proportion of those at the back causing the crush went to the game without any chance of getting into the ground by legitimate means.

It was these that sparked the fire, the ones that pulled the trigger, they that started the ball rolling - or any other sort of analagy you want - that led directly to the deaths.

Take away the spark / trigger / ball - and maybe those people would still be alive today.

That is the point we are making - and one that most people seem to have ignored for the last 20 years.

Sluffy.

     

According to The Taylor Report,there were fewer than 30 ticketless fans at best estimate.

I do wonder what part of 'all ticket' Sluffy and others don't understand.

They didn't climb over to get in, they were let in and there's nothing to say that if the ones who had been let in all had tickets that they wouldn't have all gone in the same pen.

The pens' official combined capacity was 2,200. It was later discovered this should have been reduced to 1,600 as crush barriers installed three years earlier did not meet official safety standards.

I don't see how you can back any of those points up. You haven't a clue who did and did not have a ticket, you may have this view of Liverpool fans it doesn't mean it was the case. (as Bounce says above no proof in fact the complete opposite) which means a full tribunal says the opposite !! In fact you yourself says that no one can quantify the number of those who did not have a ticket.

Then you take the leap of faith that this means somehow that if you could quantify then a significant proportion were involved based on what?

 The press reports cannot be believed. What we do know is that the police got it wrong. I have no axe or no favour in terms of supporting the Liverpool fans case. But i say again that it is blatantly obvious that the police were negligent and that a cover up and a ploy to discredit the fans was employed.

Wow! We have some so called experts that didn't even attend that day, but they know what really happened!  

Bonce - how was the 'estimate' done?

Did the police keep everyone behind and check - I doubt it very much.

Probably linked to Coppers point.

Copper - if the gates were opened to the 'crowd' and they were not 'counted' in via the turnstyles - then how the authorities know how many people were actually in the 'pens'?

Are they not simply saying 2,200 tickets were sold but they should only have sold 1,600?

There may have been 3,000 or more people in the pens that day if no one counted them in and no one really knows how many people got in without tickets.

Let's be honest an official total of just 30 fans without tickets at a game where the norm was to travel to the game if you hadn't got a ticket anyway - and the gates were thrown open for anyone to get in - seems ridiculously small wouldn't you both say based on your own experiences of games 20 years ago?