It is very easy, especially as football fans, to forget what football matches used to be like.
If, say, you had a few thousand people come to your village market every Saturday generally behaving in a drunken manner, fighting often, breaking things, abusing the locals then police would become involved. If this went on week after week, in every village market and got worse and, in fact, so bad that it brought shame on the whole country, then politicians would get involved. They'd put people behind fences in the market square, the police would be weary of these idiots and would behave in a way that they should not behave, they'd probably stop markets taking place, or treat good people like bad people. Everyone who went to village markets, good people and bad people, would be tarred by the same brush. Despised by the public, by police and politicians, who would give a shit whether markets were safe or not? Would you???? If you want to be safe at the market, don't go there. And then, some innocent people would get killed. The police who didn't give a shit about the markets and the people who attended them, would become worried, as would politicians, and start covering things up, because now their jobs are on the line. The public generally would believe the police because everyone knows what market goers are really like, so a cover up isn't that difficult. My opinion is that I can completely understand and even forgive the events that took place right up until the tragedy. It's easy to see how it all came to be like it was. Why police, local authorities didn't really give a shit about safety.....But when it's apparent that 96 very innocent people were killed, somehow that needed to be uncovered. However, who knows what kind of political/cultural forces that were at large that prevented the truth from coming out. No truth ever seems to come out. Everyone covers their tracks. It's why most people plead not guilty in court, why wives take the speeding points for their husband, why politicians hang on in office denying everything until the game is finally up, it's why my old boss let me get sacked and never owned up, why children claim they didn't leave muddy footprints in the hall. The only way you'll ever change anything is to provide a culture where people can own up, where people are trained from an early age that if they own up to the muddy footprints they won't get a good hiding. But what's the chances of that? _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email [email protected] PETE CASS (1962 - 2011) Rest In Peace Mate
