We were visited, if that indeed is the appropriate term, with an avalanche of mawkish memorabilia this morning on the twentieth anniversary of the Tragedy of Hillsborough Stadium. This event is labelled thus, to both our overseas readers and those, such as myself, who have a life-long aversion to any form of organised ‘sport’, who do not connect the name of a football ground with the death of around ninety people.

There are two versions of what happened on that afternoon; one is a tale of police incompetence, cover-up, bad management and a general laissez-faire attitude towards crowd control and safety in general; the other is a tale of drunken Liverpool fans urinating over dead bodies and stealing from those same bodies. 

Who is correct or wildly wrong is neither here not there, it is a fact that ninety-odd people, many young and a few very old, died in a crowd-crush which was exacerbated by the funneling of more so-called fans who were either fanatic or drunk (you takes your choice) down into an already overcrowded enclosure with literally no escape! 

But this absurd extension of what was a tragedy into something approaching a national disaster is what bugs me! They lived, they died, get on with your life! That is the attitude of most British people when death takes a loved one, or a relative who has been ill for a long time, or any other combination of events leading up to a death. Death comes for us all, it is the one great leveller, so why all this attention on ninety-odd football fans who were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time! Grief is healed through time, and I, along with all who read these pages, have been hit by the loss of those near and dear. But we do not go on making the lives of those who have died into a living memorial plaque, we don’t pursue their memories ‘ad infinitum’; we place those who have died deep in our private thoughts, and get on with our lives!

The Today programme gave Hillsborough ten minutes on prime time, immediately after the 8 a.m. news, plus news spots on every news bulletin. It also featured prominently on  t.v. news broadcasts and breakfast programmes, and the country is also to be subjected to a memorial service at Anfield Stadium where thousands will gather for a ‘remembrance service’. 

As with the absurd ‘Three Minutes Tsunami Silence’ promulgated by Brussels a few years back, I will not be standing silent; neither will I be watching any commemorative happenings. What happened was not done as an act of war or terror, it was accidental! Perhaps the various ‘support groups’ could remember their dead in a more suitable manner, such as individually and silently, without the gratuitous interviews and protestations of despair and grief which conme over so well on our t.v. screens. 

Anyone read any of the hype about ‘Assisted Suicide’, heard the Death rattles emanating from the Swiss Dignitas clinic, or watch the Sky broadcast with Craig Ewart trying to ring all the right bells as he washed down his apple juice / cyanide as he died on prime time t.v.?

For myself, I believe that life is far too precious to casually discard it. My beloved sister died at the age of sixteen from an illness which in those days was both incurable, and so rare that you read about it in the newspapers.; yet twenty years later, medical science had progressed so that a cure was possible, and these days it is just routine. I just cannot understand where these people get their ideals and ideas from, so that they just ‘give up’ or ‘take the speedy route out’a town. I accept that everyone has to determine their own paths, lives and ultimately fate; but when I hear or read such items as those above I just cringe inside. Maybe I am too hard and realistic in my approach to life, but I believe we do not quit, we do not give up; we persevere and ultimately, we succeed!