Maybe there will be recriminations for those who spread lies after Hillsborough, and these recriminations might take different forms but today can we just be thankful, that after 23 long years there is finally justice for the 96?

Full report here
http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/report/HIP_report.pdf

The guy is scum. He was always scum. Other papers reported much the same as he did – and within days had issued unambiguous apologies for every having believes such horrendous things about people in the heat of the moment.

He refused to apologise. The story was unambiguously wrong – it was unambiguously a lie – but he refused to apologise for it and maintained it was newsowrthy material. For years and year and years.

The arrogance of that is unspeakable – and, frankly, rather underlines the culture of a news organisation that so recently was exposed for allowing such arrogance and beligerance to seep into the deliberate corruption of our police forces.

“. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive ”

He was editor of a national newspaper.

Have you ever heard of an editor of a national newspaper saying that ‘we have no reason to believe that authority figures lie and decieve’.

It’s more the case that what they told him reinforced his prejudices and so he published without checking or thinking about the damage he would do.

“But there is good reason to doubt Kelvin MacKenzie’s sincerity.”

What is it? Some bloke’s tweet?

The Hillsborough coverage was disgraceful, and the apologies should have come long ago. But I’m always confused when someone says that an apology is “too late”. Does that mean that they’d have preferred no apology at all? Once it’s overdue, surely an apology can’t be worse than no apology, even if it isn’t worth much.

Can we have an apology from Gove too? Seeing as he said Murdoch was a great man. It’s clear from this tragedy, and the phone hacking Murdoch was operating a Mafia like organisation, which protected corrupt police officers, in exchange for tit bits of information.

As for the police it seems to have become normal operating procedure when they screw up to 1 Deny, 2 lie, and 3 smear victims. 164 police statements were altered. 31 lives could have been saved. The Sun helped with the cover up. “An attempt was made to impugn reputations of the deceased by carrying out Police Nat Computer checks on those with non-zero alcohol level”

Fuck Thatcher, and her police/Murdoch crime state. And fuck New Labour and particularly Jack Straw who should hold hisd in shame at his failure to get to the truth. Fair play to Cameron for allowing this to see the light of day.

“Murdoch was operating a Mafia like organisation”

The mafia quite clearly issued a denial that they operated like News International.

Chaise

had he apologised the way he just has – three days after the event – it may have been enough.

Doing it now is too little too late because he has now spent over 20 years arrogantly and beligerently belittling the pain and suffering he caused by standing by his faith in the criminals who killed so many people. Apologising for that is also now needed, and he hasn’t offered that apology. Hence the too late makes the same apology too little.

a&ecn @1:

“… can we just be thankful, that after 23 long years there is finally justice for the 96?”

No, because this isn’t justice – merely the truth finally coming out. There won’t be anything remotely resembling justice until all those who were responsible for the incompetence, the bungling, the fabrications, the lies and the rest are put on trial in a court of criminal law, convicted and sentenced to appropriate punishments. That, I’m afraid, is still highly unlikely.

PS. What the hell is it with the font in the Comments box? It’ll be ruddy Comic Sans next!

@ M4E

So, given that he didn’t apologise back when he should, are you saying it would be better had he not apologised now?

@ 8 The Judge

Unfortunately, I suspect it’s one of those cases where you can spread responsibility so wide that nobody ends up carrying the can.

This odious little egoist has only apologised because he is now afraid of losing his BBC work. A hollow apology is no apology at all. He knew 23 years ago that what he did was morally reprehensible, he rode roughshod over his own reporters and now those chickens are coming home to roost.

Weren’t the ones truly responsible the organisers of this fixture? The owners of Liverpool FC, Notts Forest and Hillsborough, and the FA, who all had access to the knowledge the fixture was unfit for purpose, because of concerns over saftey? There is no mention of them, yet…

BTW I am not defending either the police or a tabloid editor at all, they were worse, because they played patsy!

Actually, Mackenzie did indeed apologise at the time.

He spent the next 20 years privately telling everyone that he’d been forced into it by Murdoch to try to stem the Sun’s falling sales, that he didn’t mean a word of the apology and that the Sun’s dishonest and fictitious coverage had been “the truth”. When his private retraction was made public in 2006, he initially refused to comment, then later confirmed it and said that though he was no longer certain that some of the lies he told were true, he stood by the coverage and did believe that some of it was true.

That’s why it’s too late. That’s why we doubt MacKenzie’s sincerity.

@3. Planeshift: “He was editor of a national newspaper.

Have you ever heard of an editor of a national newspaper saying that ‘we have no reason to believe that authority figures lie and decieve’.”

That point demands and requires repetition. I would slightly paraphrase to “always believe that authority figures may lie and deceive”.

As an editor, Mackenzie was able to direct journalists to investigate the story immediately after the tragedy. If those journalists had been pointed towards their instincts — to find out facts first hand from the survivors — we’d know a bit more about what happened. We might know a little bit more about how to manage unpredictable occurrences in crowds.

When editors accept the words of authority figures, informal censorship kicks in. Planeshift overstated the point, but the job of an editor is always to question.

so GS he was playing patsy!!! Like the redhead…

@Charlieman
we have learned, that is why there are no longer the kind of standing only with barriers infrastructure in large stadiums. What we have seen in all the posturing from tabloid editors and police is an attempt to shift blame…

@12. Dissident: “Weren’t the ones truly responsible the organisers of this fixture? The owners of Liverpool FC, Notts Forest and Hillsborough, and the FA, who all had access to the knowledge the fixture was unfit for purpose, because of concerns over saftey? There is no mention of them, yet…”

That question may be addressed to the owners of the Hillsborough stadium and the FA. The visiting teams cannot be questioned because their influence was minimal.

My hackles rise whenever “unfit for purpose” is mentioned. Once upon a time, the expression had meaning but I feel it has been lost.

Hillsborough had hosted hundreds of major games before the tragic one. As a venue, it was fit and appropriate for the large number of fans attending the game. That was the FA decision and on any risk assessment, it is/was reasonable.

The tragedy arose from mistakes made at admission gates and by the police. Hillsborough was a fit venue but people fucked up, and when they fucked up they made the problem worse. (Yes, the FA/government order to fence in fans made it even worse.)

[8] ‘No, because this isn’t justice – merely the truth finally coming out’ – quite right, judge, thanks for the correction.

The ‘accidental death’ verdict recorded after the first inquest (by coroner, Stephan Popper) is no longer tenable, not least because the new report suggests 41 lives might have been saved, making a nonsense of Popper’s arbitrary 15:15 cut off point – the attorney general is already looking at it.

MacKenzie must have known some of this, or least he would have done had he bothered to read Phil Scraton’s measured account
http://downloads.hfdinfo.com/4HFDContext-n-Consequences.pdf

As a venue, it was fit and appropriate for the large number of fans attending the game.

Incorrect.

From the earliest safety assessments made by safety engineers commissioned in 1978 by SWFC, it was apparent that the stadium failed to meet minimum standards under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 and established in the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (known as the ‘Green Guide’), 1976. Documents released to the Panel confirm that the local Advisory Group for Safety at Sports Grounds carried out inadequate and poorly recorded inspections. There is clear evidence that SWFC’s primary consideration was cost and, to an extent, this was shared by its primary safety consultants, Eastwood & Partners….

Recommendations to feed fans directly from designated turnstiles into each pen, thus monitoring precisely the distribution of fans between the pens, were not acted on because of anticipated costs to SWFC …The fire service …raised concerns about provision for emergency evacuation of the terraces. As the only means of escaping forwards was onto the pitch, concern was raised specifically about the width of the perimeter fence gates which was well below the standard recommended by the Green Guide. The gradient of the tunnel under the West Stand leading down onto the terrace also significantly breached the Green Guide’s recommendation …

While modifications were made inside the stadium, the issue of congested access to the turnstiles outside the stadium remained unresolved …Following alterations, the safety of the existing maximum capacity for the Leppings Lane terrace was questioned repeatedly yet the decision was taken by the Club and the safety engineers not to revise the figure.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/hillsborough-apology-sheffield-wednesday-say-1320702

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtzHVe2mEN0

thaks Charlieman

at the moment I have ringing in my ears what was on the news earlier about this tradgedy. “unfit for purpose” could be the 20/20 of hindsight… It is however interesting to note that strapline was in the context that there was advice about that before, which was ignored, precisely because there wasnt that tragedy long before!

“These deficiencies (at Hillsborough) were well known and further overcrowding problems at the turnstiles in 1987 and on the terrace in 1988 were additional indications of the inherent dangers to crowd safety. The risks were known and the crush in 1989 was foreseeable.
1. In 1981 before the FA Cup Semi-Final (Spurs vs Wolves) there was serious congestion at the Leppings Lane turnstiles and crushing on the confined outer concourse. It resulted in the opening of exit Gate C to relieve the crush.
2. What followed was a serious crush on the terraces in which many people were injured and FATALITIES NARROWLY AVOIDED (p6).
http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/report/HIP_report.pdf

Additionally ‘From the earliest safety assessments made by safety engineers commissioned in 1978 by SWFC, it was apparent that the stadium failed to meet MINIMUM STANDARDS under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 and established in the Guide to Safety
at Sports Grounds (known as the ‘Green Guide’), 1976. Documents released to the Panel confirm that the local Advisory Group for Safety at Sports Grounds carried out inadequate and poorly recorded inspections. There is clear evidence that SWFC’s primary consideration was cost and, to an extent, this was shared by its
primary safety consultants, Eastwood & Partners’ (same page)

Acknowledging comments from a&e and Dissident, two quotes from the new report:

“Hillsborough was not used again for an FA Cup semi-final until 1987, and then again in 1988.” Hillsborough was judged as a dodgy venue by the FA.

“At that time lateral fences did not divide the Leppings Lane terrace into pens, and fans were able to move sideways along the full length of the terrace; others escaped onto the perimeter track through the narrow gates in the perimeter fence.” Events in 1989 were worsened by fencing of fans.

I back off on my former approval of the FA’s judgement.

It is also worth pointing out that particular police force did not cover themselves in glory in the miners strike a few years before.

They had learned that Thatcher’s friend, Murdoch would take care of them. After all, this was the era of the “enemy within.” It was civil war, and Liverpool was not seen as being on the right side.

The weirdest thing about the last 22 years of Hillsborough coverage is that Lord Taylor’s report in 1990 was fundamentally correct, in that it exonerated the fans, slated the police actions on the day, upbraided them for lying to cover up their actions on the day, and set out recommendations (which were followed almost in full) on how to prevent the same thing happening in future *based on the view that the fans did nothing wrong and that the fault was with stadium design and policing*.

Everyone involved in football, including government, the FA and the teams, based their post-1990 actions on Taylor’s findings – not on the South Yorkshire Police/Scum view that the fans were thugs.

The junior police officers who (rightly IMO) won employers’ liability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder from SYP also based their case on Taylor’s version of events, with some extra revelations of incompetence and bullying from senior officers.

In other words, in order to have believed the SYP/Scum version of events before yesterday, *even if you assumed the families were just whining Scousers with an axe to grind*, you’d also have to have assumed that everyone at the senior end of football was lying out of political correctness, and that the courts had awarded workers’ comp to the PTSD cops out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

In other other words, McKenzie is a dishonest little fuck, and refusing to accept his apology is completely reasonable. See also: Boris.

In the interests of non-partisanship, it’s also worth noting that Mrs Thatcher’s behaviour was not particularly discreditable – she was initially briefed by SYP with their lies and believed them, but subsequently came to accept Taylor’s narrative and to express concern about SYP’s behaviour.

McKenzie seems to be ‘apologising’ to me to try to keep his media slots. I was at Hillsborough that day-Trying to stay alive in the terrible crush outside the ground.

To get back to Merseyside and then be confronted by the lies promulgated by this apology for a human being, which seemed designed to hurt as much as possible is to go beyond the pale of human behaviour.

‘I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie’ But apparently that would stand above the testimony of thousands of people like me who actually witnessed the events of that day.

We didn’t count in his calculations of how much money would be made by printing such falsehoods. He felt it furthered his career to suck up to those in power and try to do their dirty work and cover up ‘The Truth’.

Well it is ‘only’ 23 years later but the consequences of Mr McKenzie’s actions then are coming home to roost. Not very nice to have your name dragged through the mud is it? Well try it for the next 23+ years and see how you feel by the end of that time.

He has apologise before (1994) and admitted he never meant it then. Why should anybody believe a self-confessed liar now?

Chaise

Given that he’s clearly only using his “apology” to get his fizog on the telly and to get his version of events across – one could well argue that yes.

Frankly – a half-hearted and disengenuous apology is worthless and insulting.

@ 28 m4e

Fair. I’ve been annoyed in the past by people demanding an apology, then triumphantly shouting “too late!” the moment one is offered. But in this case it does seem like anything short of an unreserved, complete and most of all honest apology is not good enough.

Chaise

true – and in fairness – most of those involved have not demanded an apology from that scumbag in a very very long time – since they long ago realised what filfth he is and how meaningless an apology would be.

Better to call for a boycott of any TV show or radio show that allows him air time – or publication that puts him in print.

” which was ignored, precisely because there wasnt that tragedy long before”

There was the bradford fire a few years before, and lessons were not learned.

Pretty much anyone who regularly went to football in the late 80s could describe conditions accross numerous stadia as a disaster waiting to happen.

“responsibility so wide that nobody ends up carrying the can.”

I think this probably will happen, but altering the statements of officers is as clear an example you can get of perverting the course of justice and those involved in this should get jail time.

I guess this must have escaped his notice: white paper Cmnd 2176, published in 1963 with the title: Sheffield Police Appeal Inquiry – extracts from which are here:
http://recycledbogrollblues.blogspot.com/2010/04/putrid-1963-police-rhino-whips-year-of.html

The inquiry found that some members of the Sheffield Police were using rhino whips to beat confessions out of suspects.

The inquiry is cited in Geoffrey Marshall: Police and Government (1965).

Planeshift: Bradford was only relevant to Hillsborough in a counterfactual sense. Because that ground didn’t have cages, the death toll was relatively low (double figures rather than high triple) and fans largely escaped onto the pitch- if it had had them, the carnage would have been almost unimaginable. The lesson learned from Bradford was more like “don’t make things out of wood you twats”.

A large quotient of the MSM was at Hillsborough – there was even real time footage of the disaster as it was happening – yet none of the reporters seemed to understand the nature of what was unfolding.

MacKenzie was so busy servicing the needs of Murdock (as well as his own gargantuan ego) that he and the truth had long ago become strangers – but I still can’t figure out why none of the other reporters thought, hang on a minute, fans, some of them children are dying in front of our very eyes yet the police have blocked off ambulances from getting onto the pitch – I mean, imagine if it was members of the royal family who were being crushed.

Why did none of the MSM report an alternative version of events, were they blind or just indifferent?

I think there needs to be a bit of honesty here.

Yes Kelvin MacKenzie should have apologised. But let’s not try and pretend we can’t remember this happened in the context of the Heysel Stadium disaster 4 years previously where Liverpool fans caused the deaths of 39 Italian fans.

I would like to see commemorations for the 96 people killed at Hillsborough linked with comparable commemorations for the 39 Juventus fans who died as a result of rampaging Liverpool supporters.

It’s my opinion that the events at Heysel were foremost in the police’s mind when in charge at Hillsborough and can in some small way explain their indifference to the Liverpool fans before it became absolutely obvious the tragedy was real.

[35] in short, we finally have to accept that even though we can’t blame the fans for Hillsborough we can at least blame them for Heysel – and this really is the most important issue here isn’t it (blaming fans) rather than a high level cover up, and abuse of families that followed in the wake of football’s biggest disaster.

As to the death of 39 Juve supporters – well, there were certainly echos of Hillsborough at Heysel – and if after the event the authorities had properly investigated the tragedy what would they have found?

“Built in the 1920s, the Heysel Stadium was quite simply the worst venue in the world to host such a volatile encounter. The game was due to be the last match ever played at the ground, as it had been condemned many years previously for failing to meet modern standards of safety and design. As a result, little money had been spent upon it, and large parts of the stadium were crumbling. There was little segregation of supporters, a factor exacerbated by the indiscriminate selling of black market tickets by touts. Many fans found that it was possible to enter the ground by simply lifting a section of the flimsy fencing that surrounded the terraces. There had been skirmishes around Brussels all day, and local police responded by getting fans into the stadium as quickly as possible, rather than arresting and detaining offenders”.

And “The belgian police were heavily criticised after the disaster for not beeing prepared. The police had already been warned that violence could occur and that they had to carefully divide the supporters of the two teams. Instead only 5 police officers divided the rival supporters and they couldn’t do anything when the Liverpool supporters stormed against the Juventus supporters. Had there been a high fence, a wall or much more police officers the disaster wouldn’t have happened”.
http://bianconeri.tripod.com/heysel.html

Still, they are only footie hooligans – why bother organising the biggest night in European football properly, eh? – and even if things do go wrong a bit of a cover up and blaming of the fans will suffice for most, even for those who have evidence contradicting their simplistic interpretation of what really happened.

where Liverpool fans caused the deaths of 39 Italian fans.

If you can’t even get the basic facts straight, why would anyone listen to anything else you have to spew.

[35] more education for you Kojak – ‘Albert Roosens, the former secretary-general of the Belgian Football Union (BFU), was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for “regrettable negligence” with regard to ticketing arrangements. So was Johan Mahieu, who was in charge of policing the stands at Heysel. “He made fundamental errors,” Pierre Verlynde, the judge, said. “He was far too passive. I find his negligence extraordinary.”
http://www.twtd.co.uk/forum/230934/fao-lucan

Sound familiar – flagrant disregard for fans, shitty ground, lack of proper policing, MSM failure to understand the bigger picture.

As a matter of interest I wonder how much money has been wasted by the british authorities conducting feeble investigations post hillsborough – investigations, that up until this month, virtually guaranteed that those responsible would never have to face any kind of legal consequence.
Christ, the whole thing was practically filmed for TV, yet nobody has ever been brought to book – doesn’t any of that bother you?

@33. John b: “The lesson learned from Bradford was more like “don’t make things out of wood you twats”.”

cf King’s Cross fire. I used to love wooden escalators.

My oh my 36, 37 and 38.

I’m beginning to sense an aura is descending on the 96 who died at Hillsborough which is rather similar to the one which enveloped the memory of Dianna in 97. Dare I say anything slightly off topic and I’m served public information announcements to educate me. Thanks.

37 and 38: At Heysel the Liverpool fans broke through a cordon look ing for a fight and gave chase to Juventus fans who fled over a wall which collapsed killing many of them and the people below. They are the facts, nothing else with no spewing involved. Inquiries into the events could find the Kings Leopold guilty as far as I’m concerned, but the tragedy would not have occurred had the Liverpool fans not gone on the rampage. Sometimes the little picture gets lots when civil servants are being blamed.

36: If you read post 35 you will see it seeks to discuss why might the police have been so indifferent to the plight of the crush which killed 96 fans at Hillsborough. Up to that date the live broadcasting of the Heysel Stadium disaster was the most traumatic event to happen to a British club and by virtue of the judgement against Liverpool a European ban was placed on English teams. To pretend it was of no bearing on the attitude of the police would be like trying to understand World War II without considering the Treaty of Versailles.

At Hillsborough the authorities didn’t heed the warnings and tried to wing it. The police were badly organised to deal with a disaster and refused to recognise it for one until far too late. What people here are refusing to acknowledge is that the lies spread about the Liverpool fans had some kind of credibility because of the deaths of the Juventus fans 4 years earlier. It was an attempt to say ‘bloody Liverpool fans, again”. Without Heysel I think the stories of terrible behaviour would have been rejected out of hand.

Thinking back on that period I can hardly believe I used to go to matches to stand on terraces and be squashed against the barriers of the caged fencing whenever a player scored. But just like the smell of tobacco that stuck to your clothes after visiting a cafe or pub it’s what we put up with – it was normal.

I suppose that like so many thinks during that period we made do with facilities designed to suit a time when people were more ready to respect authority, behave themselves and not test things to breaking point. At Hillsborough thing broke beyond repair.

[40] ‘At Heysel the Liverpool fans broke through a cordon looking for a fight and gave chase to Juventus fans who fled over a wall which collapsed killing many of them and the people below. They are the facts, nothing else with no spewing involved’ – the facts, eh, are they as reliable as the so called ‘facts’ espoused about Hillsborough for nearly 23 years after the tragedy?

Here are a few more facts.
Heysel was not fit for purpose – numerous warning about the structural inadequacy of the stadium had been issued, and ignored long before the final ever took place.
There was no effective crowd segregation in the ground.
There were too few police officers to deal with trouble makers.
Clashes between fans had been predicted (after the experience of Liverpool fans who had been attacked in Rome the year before) and there was more than enough police intelligence to develop an effective strategy for such a routine eventuality.
Ultimately senior officials were found criminally culpable because of their catastrophic mishandling of the final.

Yet despite all of the warning signs events at Heysel still unfolded in the way that they did – a few years later we had another disaster at a structurally dangerous football ground, again with a familiar pattern of warnings, contempt for supporters and inadequate organisation by the authorities.

Perhaps one of the reasons these patterns persisted in the way that they did was because too many people, rather like you, were busy pointing the finger in the wrong direction instead of asking themselves why fans were routinely expected to endure such abject conditions (a question finally addressed in the Taylor report).

Even so parts of the MSM in the shape of heroes like Kelvin MacKenzie did their bit to promote toxic and pervasive myths which kept the spotlight away from those who really should have done more to ensure that a popular sporting event was just that instead of the terrible disaster it was to become.

Rogan Taylor from 05:24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNIPcU2hLJs&feature=relmfu

A&E re comment 41,

Why don’t you ask the families of the dead Juventus fans who they blame for the deaths? Who do you think they would suggest?:

The police for posting inadequate forces,
The football authorities for selecting Heysel,
Heysel stadium for not maintaining their ground to withstand the force of feeing fans, or
Possibly the Liverpool fans who went on the rampage, broke through their cordon and chased the Juventus fans over the wall causing it’s collapse?

If they chose the last one (Liverpool fans) perhaps you might like to go round to there homes and task them why
“too many people, rather like you, were busy pointing the finger in the wrong direction instead of asking themselves why fans were routinely expected to endure such abject conditions”?

You are falling into the trap whereby everything is the fault of people other than those who started the incident. Thank goodness the Belgian police didn’t fall for that to the same degree as 14 fans were deported back to Belgium and convicted for their part which lead to to the tragedy.

@ 43 Kojak

“Why don’t you ask the families of the dead Juventus fans who they blame for the deaths? Who do you think they would suggest?”

I’m intrigued. How, exactly, does bereavement turn people into experts at assessing culpability in disasters?

…And why do you want A&E to go and harass the grieving relatives of the dead?

[43] ‘Why don’t you ask the families of the dead Juventus fans who they blame for the deaths? Who do you think they would suggest?:’

Well they might start with the behaviour of AS Roma fans who had stabbed Liverpool fans at the final the year before in Rome – the fact some Italian fans had a reputation for such behaviour set a menacing undertone that was to be seized upon by both Juve’s Ultra’s and hooligan element amongst the liverpool fans.
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/story?id=99834&page=1#.UFhAPtBWo5Q

Most of the boards I have read since the event (many posted by italian fans) ultimately raised similar questions to those the authorities tried to cover up after Hillsborough – such as why the majority of peaceful fans were treated like animals (parts of the ground were even referred to as ‘pens’) – or why footballing authorities were willing to take such risks with dilapidated stadia, with either an ineffective, or intimidating police presence.

Ask yourself this – would another Heysel have been possible in the new breed of stadia used for the likes of the olympic opening ceremony (for example) – of course not, because such a catastrophe requires a number of precursors including some degree of official complacency or indifference, mixed with a smidgen of class hatred.

Yes, there was a mob mentality on the terraces in Heysel and this resulted in 39 deaths (including children) – as a consequence 14 Liverpool fans were convicted for manslaughter – a few of the Belgium officials were found criminally negligent as well.

Mind you – you can bet those 14 will be 14 more that are ever convicted of anything following the 96 deaths at hillsborough.

A&E,

“Yes, there was a mob mentality on the terraces in Heysel and this resulted in 39 deaths (including children) – as a consequence 14 Liverpool fans were convicted for manslaughter – a few of the Belgium officials were found criminally negligent as well.”

Thank you for picking up on the point I was making. I think we can stop talking against eachother as we are in agreement about many things here.

What happened at Hillsborough was really terrible and could be viewed as yet another example of how facilities are designed to cope with outdated patterns of behaviour – and disasters are not dar away.

Covering up for our mistakes is something I expect people to try and do – at least that’s what I expect so perhaps I sound a bit relaxed about it.

But the delay of 23 years is quite insightful as it shows how much of everyday like and expectations have changed.

Completely and utterly incensed by the latest episode in the lowlife of Mr Lowlife: Kelvin McKenzie. He wants an apology from the police for his offensive headline! Some spectacle of hypocrisy as he turns himself into a victim. Unbelievable!
In oh so true and immortal words of Trevor Hicks on Kelvin McKenzie “low life”, “clever lowlife but lowlife”