Magdalene Laundries payout.

[deiseach]

That answer sums it up. Pointless discussion. And I blame you deiseach for bringing it up!

It's a fair cop (so to speak).

[seafoid]

Thank you.Certainly didn't intend to cause any offence to anyone.

Sure aren't they dead anyway and they probably know it was their own fault by now.

[T Fearon]

Never ever said that.As always in all aspects of life,the innocent pay the price.

[Lar Naparka]

Fair play to ya, Tony; from one inveterate bullshitter to another, I know class when I come across it. Sir, you are one class act.
But sometimes I feel that you get tangled up in a web of your own verbosity and maybe, just maybe, you believe what you post on this board. I'm never quite sure that you're quite sure that you are not taking the piss and that you actually believer what you come out with. (I hope you know what I mean.)
Can I really take it that you think the Liverpool fans are solely to blame for the Hillsborough tragedy; that the police who were there to supervise crowd control can't be held responsible for the actions of the fans they were supposed to well, control?

I'd be interested in your take on the following:
I taught in a primary school in Dublin for many years.
When I began working there, class numbers were huge; I started off with 50 eight-year-olds in a rundown prefab. Discipline wasn't much of a problem because there wasn't enough room to swing a cat, never mind a boot.
When a class was going to the yard or to the gate at the finish of a school day, all walked in line under the eye of their teacher. Talk about orderly behaviour! Teachers were crowd control experts and the mass movement of bodies went off like clockwork every time.
However, as years went by, it became harder and harder to keep the little buggers under any sort of control. Eventually, it got to the stage where pupils didn't give a f**k about law and order and I guess the same could be said of the teachers.
Many times, some teachers beat the kids in the mad rush to the gate when the bell rang at three o'clock.
Luckily for all concerned, nobody ever got hurt in the mad scramble but I wonder what would be the case if anyone got trampled on or squashed when the stampede began.
Going by your logic, the kids should be held responsible if any of them got hurt because they weren't conducting themselves in an orderly fashion. It seems you are suggesting that those who were supposed to supervise their behaviour were innocent of any wrongdoing.
What do you think?

[AZOffaly]

Lads, I think Tony has his opinions, which I find disturbing and disappointing, but I accept he has full right to have those opinions. However, due to the nature of that event, and the incredible angst it causes among people who weren't even within as Ass' roar of Hillsborough on that day, can we just not engage on it? Previous threads have almost shut the Non-GAA section down as wind up merchants as well as strongly held genuine opinions collided with the opinions of people who felt equally or more strongly on the other side. They descended into horrible, horrible threads.

So Tony, I apologise for reacting so strongly, but I do find your opinions on this subject pretty hard to stomach. However, for the purposes of shutting the book on this, I accept that you genuinely believe this way. I would just ask that we don't open this can of worms again. I include anyone who feels they need to challenge Tony on that,  I think we should just steer clear of this completely.

[deiseach]

I think Tom Paulin put it very well when he flew off the handle over Germaine Greer attempting to show some emapthy for the Paras over Bloody Sunday ("thugs sent in by public school boys to kill innocent Irish people. They were rotten racist bastards!"):

'I'm sure there must be a term in classical rhetoric for the act of losing your temper because it's the only appropriate response,' he insists. 'In the sort of Puritan tradition I'm coming from, there is the notion of "sacred vehemence", which is akin to Yeats's "passionate intensity". It maintains that if you don't get angry, you've copped out, and if you do get angry, you've copped out.' He ponders this moral impasse. 'Funny, that, eh? And, very, very English.'

Anger is the only appropriate response. But it gets you nowhere. I dragged it up again, and that'll be the last time.

[J70]

I have read the propaganda.Tell me very simply,why were the police under such duress that they made fatal errors? Who caused this?

Also why has there never been a similar investigation into the murders at Heysel?

Point 1: Perhaps it had something to do with a stadium set-up and police force that was ill-equipped to handle the large crowd at that end of the ground. Perhaps the game should have been delayed to allow the fans to get in safely (how often do the GAA do it, especially for the Dubs?)

Point 2: Are there claims of whitewash/miscarriage of justice with respect to Heysel?

I thought Liverpool fans got the blame. I thought a dozen or more were convicted of manslaughter. I certainly remember English teams being banned from Europe due to Heysel being the final, appalling, straw after years of escalating hooliganism on the part of English fans in general.

[J70]

Lads, I think Tony has his opinions, which I find disturbing and disappointing, but I accept he has full right to have those opinions. However, due to the nature of that event, and the incredible angst it causes among people who weren't even within as Ass' roar of Hillsborough on that day, can we just not engage on it? Previous threads have almost shut the Non-GAA section down as wind up merchants as well as strongly held genuine opinions collided with the opinions of people who felt equally or more strongly on the other side. They descended into horrible, horrible threads.

So Tony, I apologise for reacting so strongly, but I do find your opinions on this subject pretty hard to stomach. However, for the purposes of shutting the book on this, I accept that you genuinely believe this way. I would just ask that we don't open this can of worms again. I include anyone who feels they need to challenge Tony on that,  I think we should just steer clear of this completely.

Tony has a right to his own opinions, not his own facts.

[T Fearon]

My final word on this subject. I have attended many events, in different countries, as part of a massive crowd.

When the crowd has been well behaved and obeyed instructions laid down by the statutory authorities, there has never been a problem.

It all boils down to moral culpability. Do you blame police incompetence, errors or the people who actually caused the trouble/committed the crime? The same scenario threatened to arise here over the Omagh bomb, when fingers were pointed at so called incompetence on the part of the Garda/RUC to detect the bombers on their journey to Omagh, rather than the bombers themselves.

To blame everything on the police force, and fatal errors made under extreme duress is merely to seek out a scapegoat in my opinion. Those who argue about inadequare crowd control, well FA Cup semi finals had been held at Hillsborough, on an annual basis, for years prior to 1989, without any significant problems.

At that point I will rest my case and once again express my sympathy for those who lost their lives. On my rare visits to Anfield, I never fail to be moved by the memorial to the victims at the stadium.

[dec]

well FA Cup semi finals had been held at Hillsborough, on an annual basis, for years prior to 1989, without any significant problems.

Exactly.

Every year a large boisterous crowd, some of whom had been drinking. No deaths.

1989. A large boisterous crowd, some of whom had been drinking. 96 deaths.

What was different in 1989 compared with other years? Not the crowd, which was similar to football crowds for many other games. But the utter incompetence of the South Yorkshire Police.

[muppet]

My final word on this subject. I have attended many events, in different countries, as part of a massive crowd.

When the crowd has been well behaved and obeyed instructions laid down by the statutory authorities, there has never been a problem.

It all boils down to moral culpability. Do you blame police incompetence, errors or the people who actually caused the trouble/committed the crime? The same scenario threatened to arise here over the Omagh bomb, when fingers were pointed at so called incompetence on the part of the Garda/RUC to detect the bombers on their journey to Omagh, rather than the bombers themselves.

To blame everything on the police force, and fatal errors made under extreme duress is merely to seek out a scapegoat in my opinion. Those who argue about inadequare crowd control, well FA Cup semi finals had been held at Hillsborough, on an annual basis, for years prior to 1989, without any significant problems.

At that point I will rest my case and once again express my sympathy for those who lost their lives. On my rare visits to Anfield, I never fail to be moved by the memorial to the victims at the stadium.

Tony, your argument is idiotic.

You absolve the police of wrongdoing, while saying they made 'fatal errors'.

With friends like you............

[T Fearon]

I'm not absolving the Police from anything.They should not have tried to cover up mistakes.

But who is ultimately responsible? The Police or unruly fans causing extreme duress?

There were European Cup Finals for almost 30 years before Heysel and no one died, but when unruly fans caused problems look what happened.

Little point in continuing this debate.The reams of stuff in the press/media haven't changed my viewpoint,neither has this thread.

[J70]

I'm not absolving the Police from anything.They should not have tried to cover up mistakes.

But who is ultimately responsible? The Police or unruly fans causing extreme duress?

There were European Cup Finals for almost 30 years before Heysel and no one died, but when unruly fans caused problems look what happened.

Little point in continuing this debate.The reams of stuff in the press/media haven't changed my viewpoint,neither has this thread.

So you're equating the behaviour of the fans at Heysel with those at Hillsborough?

It gets better!

[T Fearon]

I'm not.Just pointing out how ridiculous it is of Muppet to argue there were trouble free FA Cup semis at Hillsborough for years until the Police (as he infers) caused 1989.You could apply the same silly argument to European Cup Finals up until Hysel.

But you're right in ways,Hysel was an insight into what some Liverpool fans were really like and capable of,which undoubtedly fed into the Yorkshire Police's mindset and poor decision making at Hillsborough as a rapidly deteriorating situation developed.

[mylestheslasher]

I don't know anything about Hysel but Tony your opinion on the Magdelene laundry is disgusting. You should hang your head in shame.