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The BBQ Pit
161

I’d like to rebutt that so-called “reference”, since it was in reply to my own argument. Here it is:

Who are the “authorities” that are mentioned? The police? The event organizers? Who? Little green men? If someone knew that this sort of thing was going to eventually happen and they were in a position to do something about it are they not at least somewhat responsible? .0001% perhaps? If so then the police aren’t entirely at fault. Which is the point most of us so called “ignorant” people have been trying to get across to you know it all types.
[/quote]
OK - by “authorities” I mean the police as well as those more generally responsible for crowd control, such as those who decided that these stadiums combined with these sized crowds were suitable for such matches.

Indeed the tragedy can be seen as the apex of a movement of football authority greed, crowd culture and police indifference. This trend had been continuing for years. But the direct responsibility on the day falls on those who could have directly prevented it on the day - the police. They could have done something about it. It was within their control to stop the tragedy occurring. How many more different ways can I put this? The only people that on the day were actually physically capable of stopping this from happening were the police. It was their job. They failed to do so. They shoulder the blame.

Is it worth addressing this again? You know my arguments are going to be the same as before, the same as TomH, Biggirl, 2sense, ruadh, casdave, TwistOfFate, London_Calling et al have elaborated on at length. Physical contact isn’t violence. Anyone who lives in a city has engaged in physical contact with strangers. We do it when we want to get onto an overcrowded train. We do it when we need to get to the bar in a nightclub. It is violent if it can be reasonably expected to do harm. That simply wasn’t so in this case. See TomH’s points a few posts up - nobody involved that day thinks that the fans were violent. Not the police - including the police chief who was actually prosecuted - not the law lord who investigated the case, not the families of the dead and not the country as a whole. Shall we continue to repeat this again and again?

Excuse me? You think that they needed to be “gods” to stop this? You really are showing your ignorance of the events there. The police absolutely 100% could have stopped this from happening at many junctures. They showed incredible indifference and callousness to the sight of thousands of people being squashed, whilst they could have eased it at any time by simply lifting the appropriate gates. Not to mention their incompetence in allowing the events to unfold in the first place. Good god man - have you read anything about the case?

Well quite clearly you don’t know what happened.

pan

162

Supermen as in blue suited Christopher Reeves, Supermen as in bizarre uberlords of Alistair Cruxley, or Supermen as in Seymore Cray’s cronies?

Flymaster. The crowd were not being violent.

There was an official report by a Senior in the British Judicial System that said that the responsibility lay on the shoulders of the Police in charge that day.

You have read the evidence of many posters on this subject, but you still assume that you have the best ability out of everyone to say who was to blame.
You seem to think that the crowd was made up of drunk lager louts who were trying to start a riot.

If you want to continue with that blinkered view, by all means continue to do so, but dont be surprised if I dont take you seriously.

163

I can’t be fagged addressing the point about crowd dynamics again, kabbes has had yet another go at it but it seems that some people will never learn.

But we now have this weird conspiracy theory about “The Authorities” which will not appear to die. I apologise in advance for he length of this post, but the conspiracy theorists seem to be labouring under an impressive array of misapprehensions.

I don’t know if you have independent judicial inquiries in the USA, but it’s a fairly standard way of dealing with scandals like the Hillsborough disaster in the UK. The Government appoints a senior judge to lead an investigation into the matter and he is given a small team of officials to assist him. British judges are fairly incorrubtable and (unlike their US counterparts) almost entirely free of political interference. More information about exactly how they are appointed can be found on the Lord Chancellor’s website but all you really need to know is that British judges are politically independent and impartial and are appointed by open competition based on their legal abilities, not on the basis of their political affiliation. They are not simply the cats’ paws of their political masters.

Because they are genuinely independent, these judicial inquiries are often highly embarassing to the Government. One of the the most famous recent example was the Scott Report, which was pretty much the final nail in the coffin of the Major Government.

The independent investigation into the events at Hillsborough was led by Lord Justice Taylor, a Lord Justice of Appeal (i.e. one of the most senior judges in the country). He produced two reports: an interim report on the events at Hillsborough and a final report which dealt with the subject of all-seater stadia. The former was highly critical of the police, the latter of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.

The suggestion that a Law Lord should have sought to blame the police for a disaster which was in fact the fault of a crowd of football fans, especially seen in the context of public attitudes towards football supporters at the time, is nothing more than laughable. If there was any bias at all on his part, it was likely to have been in favour of the police. In the interim Report itself, where he discusses the work South Yorkshire Police, he takes care to praise them outside the context of what happened at Hillsborough. Bear in mind that this was a force which had an unusually high degree of dealing with large, unruly crowds, since it had been at the centre of the miners’ strike a few years previously. Taylor goes out of his way to praise their handling of the strike and of previous football matches, including the exact same fixture a year previously.

Again, all the argument that the Taylor report was some kind of cover-up by The Authorities does is demonstrate the ignorance of those advancing it.

164

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by kabbes *

Indeed the tragedy can be seen as the apex of a movement of football authority greed, crowd culture and police indifference. This trend had been continuing for years. But the direct responsibility on the day falls on those who could have directly prevented it on the day - the police. They could have done something about it. It was within their control to stop the tragedy occurring. How many more different ways can I put this? The only people that on the day were actually physically capable of stopping this from happening were the police. It was their job. They failed to do so. They shoulder the blame.[\QUOTE]

I agree with you 95%. But no matter what you say the police did not kill anyone. The force of the crowd did all the killing. I think that they have to share some of the blame even if they didn’t know all the consequences of their actions. You mention football authority greed. Did they know that people could get hurt in these crowded situations? If they did and allowed it to continue then they are also at fault due to their inaction. If the stadium had been designed properly to eliminate, or reduce, the human factor (in this case the inaction and incompetence of the police) then the tragedy had a far less likely chance of occuring. I don’t see why this is so hard to accept.

This is partly the reason why I think we disagree on this issue. We, for the most part, don’t push to get on a train. We wait for the next one. If someone tries to push onto the train when it is clearly full there is usually a general outcry stating that it is full and to go get the next one. I have never seen people pushing to get into a nightclub here, either. Usually the doorman would deal with any sort of offense like that.

Someone else said that pushing equals violence. As was stated the crowd was moving forward at a shuffle pace. I have a problem that they continued to move forward even when they were packed like sardines in a can. If they were running I might believe that they could not stop their forward momentum. That they were shuffling tells me that they could.

I agree, but that still shouldn’t let others off the hook due to their inaction. See my point above (and no I don’t mean the one on my head, thank you very much). If the police had raised a particular gate. If the owners of the stadium had removed, or redesigned a particular gate so that the police, or anyone else for that matter, didn’t have to raise, or lower it, etc. If, If, If… No one is perfect, not the police, not the event organizer, not the people in the crowd, not the judiciary, not even you.

Were all the police there that day 100% responsible? Each and every one of them? Or were some more responsible than others? If they are not all equally guilty then is it so hard to say the the least guilty is no more guilty than the guy who designed the gates and allowed people to be placed into pens of this sort in the first place?

Lots of info on this site (they tend to agree that there is more than enough blame to go around, I’ll leave it up to you to determine the validity of what they present)
http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough/

Some trial stuff of the judges decision
http://www.hfsg.org/

And a site showing that this was, and is, a very politicised issue. Hopefully demonstrating that any findings are going to come under dispute by someone no matter who does the investigation. In this case Labour supporters are accusing the Labour government of a coverup.
http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/feb1998/hillf23.shtml

So far all I have found that supports your position is conjecture by one group, or another. There is nothing definite that leads me to think that the police are 100% guilty. At most you, and others, have proven that the police are the ones who must shoulder the majority of the guilt. Something I will not dispute.

165

If I gave you the impression that some group of people actively tampered with an investigation then I am sorry. I was trying to demonstrate that there are a lot of factors in determining who is at fault in a situation. And that there are a lot of things that are considered before a conclusion is reached. Influences placed upon judges and elected officials have been major ones in the past. Why not in this case? You assume that the judiciary is more trustworthy than the police. I know that both are human like you and I. And as such have their own prejudices and foilables. What one judge finds to be true another in the same circumstances might not.

You and others have been claiming that the police are 100% at fault as if there is no other possibility that someone else might share some culpability.

Hey, you don’t have to keep telling me I am ignorant. I know I am. I bet there is shitload of stuff I don’t have any knowledge of whatsoever.

166

Uzi,

There’s a shitload of stuff I don’t have any knowledge of either, but the difference between you and me is that I tend to keep my mouth shut on those subjects about which I know nothing and you tend to go mouthing off about them.

  1. This would be a stronger statement if you could back it up with some examples (two or three maybe).

  2. Which elected officials were involved in the Hillsborough inquiry?

  3. Are you suggested that some improper influence was brought to bear on Taylor? If so, what evidence do you have? If not why do you persist in insinuating that there might have been?

  1. Are you suggesting that Taylor had some prejudice against the police? If so, what evidence can you provide? If not, why do you persist in insinuating that he might have had?

  2. Why can you not just accept that the official inquiry reached the right conclusion and you are wrong? Do you have access to some evidence that they did not? Is your mighty intellect so powerful that you can see things that mere mortals were not meant to wat of? Or are you a self-opinionated cretin?

167

Define “we”?

168

The first “we” meaning myself and the person I was disagreeing with.
The second “We” meaning the people in the city where I live.

Yeah, I know it ain’t to clear now that I read it again myself.

169

Uzi, You’re fortunate to have a train service which is sufficiently frequent to allow you to just wait for the next one if the first one is crowded.

I see you still haven’t been able to substantiate your claim that the Taylor Report was biased. Care to withdraw it?

170

I never claimed that the report was biased, or that Taylor was influenced in any way other than the way any person is influenced by their environment. When I said prejudices you thought I meant he had an axe to grind against the police. That is not what I meant. Any person has a set of assumptions that they know to be true. Even judges like Taylor assume certain things. Those things effect everything he does, good and bad. What he may find to be true given a certain set of data, you might not. Understand?
Example: We are in a discussion here that seems to be quite heated. When I mentioned prejudices you took it for a meaning that I did not intend. Do you think that everyone who read my message took it your way? Maybe, but probably not. It is a matter of your perception, which is influenced by your set of assumptions about the world (which I call prejudices and foilables) and my lack of ability as a writer to sufficiently get my point across.

Next point: I never made the claim the Taylor was influenced in any way by an elected official, or any other individual. I said that it is possible that he could have been influenced, if not by any specific person, then by the events themselves. Maybe he thought that given the pain the survivors have over this incident that he would give them some closure by laying the blame in one place, in this case the police. Did he actually do that? I don’t know. It is a supposition that I put forward as to why I think he made the decision to blame the police exclusively. He may have looked at the evidence and based his conclusions upon what was before him. Does that mean that he had all the evidence? Of course he didn’t. It is impossible for any person after the fact to have all the evidence. Did he have enough evidence to make a good decision? Yes, he did. Do I agree with it? Not entirely.

Let me use an analogy as to why I think the way I do in this matter. Imagine you were having a house built. The electrician does the wiring, but makes a mistake. The electrical inspector doesn’t pick up on the mistake and signs off on the job that everything is ok. Your house burns down due to this mistake. Going by what you have posted here I would say that you think the only one responsible for the fire is the electrical inspector. I would say that both the electrician and the inspector would be a fault.

That is why I think that while the police were responsible for the crowd safety at the event and could have stopped the tragedy from happening if they had done this, or that, does not absolve the organizers of the event and the people who designed the building in the first place from any responsibility. You seem to think so, I do not. You say Taylor made the right call, I say he didn’t go far enough. Nuff said?

171

Uzi,

Yes, I understand. But what’s your point? The eternal frailty of the human condition?

But I think you’ve retreated significantly from your original position: “influences placed upon judges” has a perfectly clear meaning which is far stronger than environment, upbringing and personal world-view. In that case, I’ll accept it graciously as a retraction.

Taylor did not say that the police were exclusively to blame. You would know this if you had read the reports, or even some of the posts in this thread. He also blamed the design of the stadium, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, the Football Association and Sheffield City Council, all of whom were responsible for certain factors which contributed to the disaster.

I have certainly not suggested that the police should bear 100% of the blame: see my first post on p. 2 of this thread.

What I and others have been arguing all along, as is perfectly clear from Biffer Spice’s OP, is that crowd violence did not cause the Hillsborough disaster.

You now appear to accept that conclusion.

172

I was referring to the way you used something that Hail Ants said as if it had been said by me.

You respond to an accusation of using straw men with another straw man? I have never said that people are responsible for things that they know nothing about. Why are so very opposed to actually trying to understand someone else’s position before arguing against it? I believe the former to be a necessary precondition of the latter, yet you seem to think of it as a waste of time.

173

Is this nitpicking really necessary?

I said "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all you have produced is a blatant appeal to authority. " If you can’t figure out from that that I want real evidence, that is hardly my fault.

No, I quite clearly implied that I would accept extraordinary evidence. You’d have to be incredibly dense (which you apparently are) to think that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” means “I will dismiss all evidence”. If you can present a study that conclusively shows that people lose their free will when surrounded by a lot of people, or are “packed as tight as sardines” or whatever you want to call it, I will reconsider my position.

It is illegal to sell cocaine because it encourages irresponsible behavior.

That is quite a leap. Leaving a thousand dollar bill on the ground almost inevitably leads to someone picking it up. Does that mean that people lose their free will when they see a thousand dollar bill?

Telling your opponent that “you’re just as violent” most certainly is an ad hominem attack, as is kabbes’ “you weren’t there so your opinion means nothing at all”.

174

“By that definition”? I saw no definition. All I saw was one instance being referred to “violent”, and you making a completely unfounded induction to other situations. I was quite clear as to why I consider this to be violence: the fans used physical force to compel others to follow their will. Simply being in physical contact with someone does not fulfill these conditions, and if you had included the context in which I called these actions violent, that would be obvious. Instead you present a straw man argument, implying that Flymaster and I believe that all physical contact is violence. I am amazed by the dishonesty of your side. It seems as if people are simply incapable of arguing against me without distorting my position.

175

Classic. You distort an argument and then make accusations of nitpicking. What an intellectually dishonest person you are.

I shouldn’t even need to say this, but the distinction between the size/density of the crowds is fundamental to the argument.

Give it up, you liar. You said you “manifestly” know these studies to be untrue regardless of what “some academic” thinks. That isn’t implying, clearly or otherwise, that you’d accept the evidence if it were strong enough.

Bolding added to show what a hypocrite you are, complaining about (alleged) ad hominem attacks.

Cite?

You clearly don’t understand the concept of speech being brigaded with action. It isn’t just that A almost inevitably leads to B, it’s that A practically must inevitably lead to B, which isn’t the case in your example.

Uh … ok. Accuse someone of making ad hominem attacks, and use as evidence two things that they didn’t say.

I don’t even think I need to respond to that.

176

The Ryan,

Not only did you see the definition, you wrote it:

If you can’t keep track of your own arguments, no wonder you can’t follow anyone else’s.

177

Anyone else, in experiencing The Yarn’s worldview, reminded of the Simpson’s episode in which Principle Skinner takes over the driving of the schoolbus and then spends the whole day trying to turn into a major road?

Ah - he thinks - if only people were a little more like robots. If only they responded to stimuli in the way that I think they should. If only an embullient youth full of joy and excitement would calmly just stand around whilst the match he has paid handsomly to see is going on inside the stadium, despite the fact that he has been in similar crowds all his life and is used to the standard accepted procedure of gently pushing forward. After all, all physical contact is violence! If only when the police directed people into narrow tunnels they would realise that they should ignore those directions and stay exactly where they were.

Well, from my point of view the little faith I had left in DNFTR’s ability to follow an argument evaporated when he denied the existence of his own definition of violence = pushing. Thankyou and goodnight.

pan

178

**DEAR GOD, THIS THREAD ISN’T STILL *ALIVE?!?!?!?

179

I was arguing that the police were not 100% responsible for what happened. So we agree on that. (I had assumed that you thought they were 100% to blame like Kabbes. Excuse me for that assumption.)
If I have changed my opinion on anything about this it is the level of crowd responsibility in what happened. I still have a problem with people acting like cattle and allowing themselves to be penned up so as to watch any form of sporting event, but if that’s what is considered normal over there, I’ll agree there is little that any one individual in the crowd could have done to stop it.

180

Woah there hoss! There is a big difference between saying

and saying that the police were 100% responsible. I believe that I have mentioned many times in this thread that other parties, such as those making the decision that the stadium was safe to that capacity, were also responsible.

But this is not at odds with saying that the police could have stopped the tragedy at several junctures. They could have done.

The point is that one of the responsible factors was not “fan violence”. The police take the blame for events on the day. The police and other authorities in and out of the game take responsibility for the tragedy overall.

All clear?

pan