Today the BBC announced that a report that someone, from 2009 to 2012, using a government computer, had altered the Hillsborough tragedy’s Wikipedia page adding insults to it, was the BBC’s lead story.
Indeed it did seem to be so with a not inconsiderable amount of coverage for what might seem a small story in the scale of things…though naturally distressing to the families….. though the abuse was removed almost immediately from the page when posted.
The Liverpool Echo broke the story:
Exclusive: Shocking Hillsborough insults added on Wikipedia from Government computers
A series of sickening revisions to the site began on the 20th anniversary of the 1989 tragedy, when “Blame Liverpool fans” was anonymously added to the Hillsborough section of the encyclopedia site.
Computers on Whitehall’s secure intranet were used again in 2012 to change the phrase “You’ll never walk alone” to “You’ll never walk again” and later “You’ll never w*** alone.”
The words “nothing for the victims of the Heysel stadium disaster” were also added to a description of the Hillsborough memorial at the Reds’ stadium.
The BBC, as said, has been highlighting this all day. This is its web page:
Hillsborough Wikipedia posts: Government pledges ‘urgent inquiries’
I have heard only a single mention of Heysel…in a text message read out on 5 Live suggesting we don’t forget it….that suggestion didn’t spark any interest in the presenter and was indeed instantly forgotten. It was rare to hear a mention at all during the BBC’s coverage of Hillsborough recently.
Hillsborough seems to have caught the BBC’s imagination….no doubt who was in government at the time, the police mistakes and coverup, and Murdoch Sun’s infamous frontpage all contributing to it being so keen to keep this one running.
No headlines or lead story from the BBC about this…not hard to find the culprit…or which ‘government office’ seems to find it OK:
Or how about the BBC’s own involvement in a ‘disrespectful’ insult….remember ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is dead’ chart manipulation after Mrs Thatcher’s death?……..
“The BBC finds this campaign distasteful, but does not believe the record should be banned.
BBC director general Tony Hall said: “I understand the concerns about this campaign. I personally believe it is distasteful and inappropriate.
“However, I do believe it would be wrong to ban the song outright as free speech is an important principle and a ban would only give it more publicity.”
However even the Guardian thinks it may have gone too far in some of its coverage of Hillsborough:
Mix and Match of the Day turns tragedy to cliche
Adam Curtis did a brilliant piece on Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe on BBC4 last week about “Oh Dearism”, the trend for television news to show shocking events about which we can do nothing but feel helpless and sad, and to which the only possible reaction is “Oh dear”.
I wonder if anybody in BBC Sport saw it. I only ask because Saturday’s Football Focus and Match Of The Day used the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster to indulge in the kind of crass grief tourism that has become a media staple since Princess Diana’s death.
Had the coverage dealt with this issue, there might have been some point to it, but interviews with the parents of two teenage girls who died on the terraces were there merely to fill our eyes with pointless tears. It is a kind of pornography. Anybody who knows anybody who has lost a child to sudden death or can imagine what it might be like to lose one’s own knows how unspeakably sad it must be. But what can you do, other than say, “Oh dear?”
At Heysel in Belgium in 1985 (May 29) Liverpool fans caused 39 deaths and around 600 injuries…so just a reminder to put things in perspective:
Just a few days earlier on May 11 Bradford City’s stadium burst into flames…in the 5 minutes one stand took to burn to the ground 56 people died and 250 were injured despite the best efforts of police officers to rescue many stricken fans putting themselves at great risk to do so.
Bradford fire: forgotten tragedy of the Eighties
“All of a sudden, a sheet of flame went up to the roof and along the entire length of the stand. Within five minutes of it starting, the whole stand was burnt down. In fact, I think it was timed at 4min 35sec. The strong wind was fanning it from the end where the blaze had started.
“It didn’t receive much comment at the time, but the roof was bitumen, with slats, and as the flames ran along the top of the stand the bitumen started melting and falling on the people below. People were coming out of there with their hair and clothes singed and big drops of bitumen all over them.
The tragedy lacked both the global reach of Heysel – a European Cup final, between Liverpool and Juventus – and the outrage and sense of injustice that came with the Hillsborough disaster. Bradford was commonly regarded as a product of widespread ignorance about general safety at football grounds, and the lethal combustibility of wooden seats (there was an echo here, in wider society, with the King’s Cross fire -itself blamed on the presence of wooden escalators on the London Underground).
With Bradford there was no stampede by drunk and belligerent fans (Heysel), and no policing or stewarding issues of the sort that keeps the Hillsborough Campaign in sad and grinding motion to this day. Put the three calamities side by side and you wonder how football ever emerged from the Eighties. With so many dead in four short years, our national game had become a killing field. The Popplewell and Taylor reports into Bradford and Hillsborough, respectively, were among the most important social documents of our times.
A BBC Five Live Bulletin has just given Andy Burnham a platform to say, like a rat out of a trap, that it was a disgrace that the alterations to the Wikipedia page came from ‘within government’, no doubt to ingratiate himself with the people of Merseyside.
Unchallenged, Burnham was not asked, ‘who in government?’ Was it someone from number 10, a government minister? A former Labour Minister, perhaps? (for the first alteration came in 2009).
Where is Burnham’s evidence? What did Labour do about the alteration when they were in charge?…or was Burnham’s objective more cynical?
To paraphrase, ‘There is something of the night about Burnham’
Yes…have to suspect it is the ‘within government’ that is being subtly emphasised and the 2009 quietly sidelined…..a ‘trick’ to associate the present government with this?…more than possible.
The narrative has been set in stone for two decades. It was the incompetent and malicious police who caused the deaths. The fact that thousands of Liverpool fans decided to drink Hillsborough pubs dry and turn up en-mass at the gates as the game was starting has been ignored and suppressed. The result of the Taylor Enquiry was pre-determined. How else do you account for Taylor’s suppression of the huge volume of direct evidence from independent witnesses that was presented to own enquiry? Also, if drink wasn’t a factor, how come Taylor recommended a new offence of entering a football ground whilst drunk? That one slipped through all the sanitization of the Liverpool fans.
There’s also the allegation that the Police blamed those who died as being drunk. That is a myth perpetuated by the Hillsborough families and their hangers on from Liverpool grievance industry. The police actually blamed drunkenness on the fans who turned up LATE at the ground.
I’ve seen the ground CCTV evidence that showed hundreds of Liverpool fans pouring into the Leppings Lane stand actually beating back those who were getting crushed and trying to move away from the front.
The Police on that day were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. The crush at the gates was so great that it lifted Police Horses off the ground ( that can also be seen on CCTV). If the gates hadn’t been opened many would have died in the crush at that location. Nothing has been said of the Liverpool fans turning up late who charged the main gates at Chelsea a couple of weeks later. It was a regular ploy by ticketless fans at that time to gain entry to football grounds. .This is all on record now conveniently “forgotten”.
The verdict of the new inquest has also been pre-determined. Nothing now will change the “official” version of events. The lie will be perpetuated, probably to the detriment of individuals from the emergency services on duty a the ground that tragic day.
yep, and the latest inquiry that ‘cleared’ Liverpool fans was an inquiry into event on the field etc AFTER the crush (Police behaviour, ambulance timings etc). The whole thing stinks but as soon as you mention fans you are screamed at about the ones who died (i.e. the real innocent ones!) and not the drunken hoards that caused it. Until Liverpool fans stop their whinging and admit what we all know nobody – except Liverpool fans – will call the incident resolved.
Even a tragedy can become boring after 25 years of constant repetition.
Some tragedies are commemorated more often than others.
In just over two years time it will be the fiftieth anniversary of Aberfan. I hope that terrible day is remembered.
Perspective needed here.
However distasteful the alterations, they are just words. These days the idea of giving offense is not tolerated. We all must think correctly like good boys and girls.
Meanwhile, out in the world of real actions (as opposed to offended sensibilities), we hear from yet more former Provos that Gerry Adams, party leader of Sinn Fein, gave orders for abduction and murder. Allegedly.
Perspective, Andy Burnham/BBC?
Andy arsehole get your facts straight. There is plenty of shit being peddled at the moment that is why when all the evidence has been heared the right decision can be made . Do me a favour and stop shooting your mouth off and selecting half truths and innuendo and passing it off as fact. What’s wrong lad can’t you take Liverpool winning the premmiership ? By the way Burnham is a wanker !
Smell the glove…..it’s you who is the arsehole, football idiot, drunken Liverpool morons, not fans, morons like you, killed those people at Hillsborough and Heysel, drunk and violent, scum, the police should have crushed their heads.
Smell the Glove YOU are the arsehole peddling half-truths. I was at both the Inquest AND the Taylor Enquiry. I was privy to most of the evidence given, including the CCTV evidence. If you weren’t there then you are just peddling the same myths through absolute ignorance.
By the way, the inquest heard from a number of Liverpool fans who admitted drinking to excess and turning up at the ground without tickets. That will be documented in the transcripts of the inquest. Where’s YOUR evidence I’m peddling half-truths? I’ll not be holding my breath for you to produce some. My evidence is a matter of public record including Taylor’s suppression of any evidence showing the drunkenness. I remember the families of the deceased being very aggrieved that evidence of fans’ drunkenness and being without tickets was included at the inquest. I wondered to myself then if they actually wanted the whole truth and nothing but the truth instead of the sanitised version later given the public.
Once again any troll disputing what evidence was given at both inquiries should keep their gobs shut if they didn’t attend at the time. Were you there, smellyglove?
You were doing well to see the CCTV footage then… considering that the ‘loss’ of this footage was one of the first signs of just how low these people were prepared to go.
Destruction of evidence is a crime even if you’re only investigating the Great Pie Theft Of ’09.
We get it: you really, really hate Scousers, but as Larry Flynt told Christian Conservatives, they should be happy he was allowed to publish filth since as long as he was, no one could seriously argue for restrictions on their First Amendment rights.
That’s the issue. If you’re down with the idea of police officers doing the full Ronnie & Reggie routine on awkward witnesses when there are Scousers involved, where do you draw the line? Warrington? Eccles?……How about Rochdale?
The exact same tactics the police used to intimidate awkward witnesses into silence here were used to suppress reports of Jihadist gang rape in Rochdale. At least the Scousers understand the stakes here.
There is CCTV of the outer gates (Gate C in particular) at Hillsborough it is here.
Hillsborough was a tragedy for those who lost family but do we really want the sort of justice system that runs off the emotions of the bereaved and not cold hard facts?
Whatever the causes of the disaster we need to know them all and not ignore those that are hard to hear.
But where’s the CCTV from inside the ground?
Oh dear, another axe grinder in denial. DJ, ask the families of those who died about the CCTV footage played at the original inquest. They saw it as well as I did. Check the transcript and record of the proceedings. What is it about the truth that some people don’t like and deny it exists? Some people, mostly lefties with an agenda seem to believe that if the truth doesn’t fit with the fabricated myths then go with the myths and bugger the truth. All you’ve done DJ is what lefties have done for the past hundred years or so – make personal attacks and allegations against those with a message you don’t like. Where have I said I don’t like Scousers? Get back under the rock you crawled from you slimeball!!!
Liverpool is a Labour/BBC heartland.
And yes, the Heysel disaster is never mentioned by the BBC. But in Italy it is.
The BBC didn’t care about this one at all either…..Mind you, the Leeds fans were stabbed and killed by a member of the religion of peace..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-112395/Turkish-man-jailed-stabbing-deaths-Leeds-fans.html
IIRC a similar number of Arsenal fans were stabbed by Galatasaray fans in Copenhagen before a Champions league match. There is still bad blood between the two sets of fans. Again, seems to have been forgotten by the BBC.
But then there are a lot of these incidents and they pale at the side of Hillsborough.
Liverpool fans did not kill anyone at Heysel. They retaliated after stoning by Juventus fans who then ran away. Unfortunately they were trapped against a wall in a tenth rate stadium which collapsed and trapped them. Did you want the LFC fans to just stand there under an onslaught? The fans at Hillsboro were crushed and suffocated because the halfwits paid to control the crowd allowed them to pour into a pen which was overcrowded – an occurrence that had already occurred three times and resulted in injuries in the previous decade. But what did it matter? They were only football fans. All pissed. Including those thirteen year old kids who arrived without tickets after drinking twelve pints of lager. Pissing on the police doing CPR. Robbing the dead. Must be true – the Sun said so. Written by fucking reptiles for brainless cunts like you to slaver over.
“The fans at Hillsboro were crushed and suffocated because the halfwits paid to control the crowd allowed them to pour into a pen which was overcrowded”
And why were they caged in in the first place?
Was this normal in rugby, cricket or the Olympics?
“Liverpool fans didn’t kill anyone at Heysel.” (the courts opinions differed) The ‘disorder’ in the stadium was the direct cause of people being crushed to death.
I don’t know if your virulent abuse is well directed or not in relation to the Hillsborough deaths but as for Heysel is concerned 1) Liverpool fans invaded a neutral area – causing the crush (irrespective of provocation and yes I would expect them to get away from disorder rather than launching an attack) 2) All English football teams were banned by UEFA with Liverpool being banned for an additional year 3) 14 Liverpool fans were convicted of manslaughter.
Irrespective of the terrible crowd control at Hillsborough, the Heysel stadium deaths were the direct result of utterly disgraceful behaviour by football fans and this deserves to be recognised.
“Written by fucking reptiles for brainless cunts like you to slaver over.”
Speaks volumes.
It’s never Liverpool’s fault is it.
Always the victims and you better remember it.
No one does grievance, self pity and hate better than them. World owes them a living.
Wonder why so many people hate you?
I blame St William of Shankly.
When you have heard your Prophet say “Football isn’t life-or-death– it’s far more important than that,” can you blame the morons who took him seriously, and went bazooka in Belgium, and surged into a football ground in Sheffield like those pilgrims in Mecca who trample others?
Have a look at the T-shirt that half-wit is wearing stood by Wallace. Looks like a grave amongst nine thousand plus others at St Honorine, above Omaha beach in Normandy…..i think Mrs T would have been honoured to have been buried among those men that perished on 6th June 1944 and thereafter. Kind of a backfire eh? Labour tossers.
Remember the term ‘fan’ is a shortening of fanatic any one who is ‘fanatica’ about football is by definition a brainless moron!!
Like I said nothing bothers the proles more than a successful Liverpool team ! Ha
Like you said? You sure you want to iterate your silliness?
What was happening over the last several years when Liverpool weren’t successful but Hillsborough/ Liverpool/ football comments were all the same as now?
Span thing
If you followed football you might have noticed that liverpool won the champions league or something in the norties I think. It might irk you that liverpool fans take football a little more serious than others and that we need no gangster oligarch who robbed a country’s gas or a sheik who spends his country’s wealth in Manchester . Is it passion that annoys you.