MAKE WAY FOR PLODDY

PC PLOD WAS, I SEEM TO REMEMBER, the name oft used to refer to the police officer in the Noddy series of television programmes and sundry spin-offs attached to it. Mr Plod ensures Noddy's taxi keeps within the speed limit and tries to keep all the Toys out of mischief. He catches the mischief-makers on his police bicycle, by blowing his whistle and shouting "Halt, in the name of Plod!" before locking the culprits up in his jail.

 

THE TERM ‘PC’, HOWEVER, HAS COME TO TAKE ON a meaning far beyond what might have been envisaged in the days when police constables used to knock on people’s doors to ask if all was well, and were on occasion invited in by housewives for a cup of tea, leading, so I have read, to a little bit of low-key shagging in flat northern accents while the husbands of these ladies in suburban streets were away labouring at the mill on the heath or in the dale. This rather fanciful image may, of course, be fostered by my having seen the wonderful TV series Life on Mars, in which Gene Hunt, the then (fictional) DCI of the Manchester and Salford Police tells us that“Plod” is seen as the normal term for foot policemen.

 

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS NOWADAYS TELLS US that even if we think we are vastly superior in our own minds to people whom we may see as “plebs”, just as all noble Conservative party members have done ever since the beginning of the system of democratic elections that they hate so much, we should keep our mouths shut. Otherwise the Conservative Party would have no chance in these tiresome elections that keep on turning up every few years and interfering with our harvest festivals or sports days.

 

WHETHER OR NOT THE ARROGANT Andrew John Bower Mitchell MP, member for Sutton Coldfield and Chief Whip to the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government actually thinks that people below his station are there because they deserve to be so remains to be seen, but I imagine that it is not a good idea to call policemen “plebs” because of the wider implications such a statement involves. “Morons”, however, is a term that can be applied to aristocrats, the rich, the middle classes, the ‘working’ classes, the poor and the scrounging strugglers.

 

IF ANYONE WISHES TO STUDY MORON MITCHELL’s history in parliament and government they will see that his overriding principle is that there are “classes and classes”, “races and races” and that anyone who, like he did, went to Rugby School, should be allowed to tell foul-smelling, ill-bred, lower-class police officers what to do. Mitchell will never have to feel the pain of having to work hard at something one does not enjoy, nor will he ever know what it is like to ‘go without’. One wonders whether morons like him should be running our country. Hopefully the morons in his constituency will give him the heave-ho if the equally out of touch David Cameron doesn't do so before push comes to shove.

THE BIG END

AS SOMEONE FROM LIVERPOOL, I cannot help but be pleased and relieved over the final publication of what is now perceived by the authorities to be the truth about the disaster at the FA Cup semi final that led to the death of ninety-six young Liverpool FC fans, forty-one of whom, we are now officially told, were still alive and could have been saved if the South Yorkshire Police and Ambulance Service had done their jobs.

 

THE BLAME IS NOW BEING POINTED in the right direction after this final inquiry twenty-three years after the event. The report suggests the police, the ambulance service and even the coroner’s office not only did not carry out their duties correctly but then covered up their incompetent and probably prejudiced actions by falsifying their reports to make it look like the Liverpool football fans themselves were guilty of some misbehaviour that led to their own deaths and to the deaths of others.

 

MANY GULLIBLE CLOWNS LISTENED to the fabricated rantings of the (then) Conservative and Unionist Party MP for Sheffield Hallam, Sir Irvine Patnick, a hideous, neo-Fascist right-winger who was the first to spin the idea that it would be best for everyone concerned if the world believed that all Liverpool fans were drunkards (including ten year olds), were drunk at the time, and attacked the police. Those who listened to his idiotic arguments included Margaret Thatcher, who lapped up his muddled beliefs as being perfect sense, The Sun newspaper and its editor Kelvin Mackenzie, and Boris Johnson, who ought to have known better, as nothing anyone in Liverpool does on a drunken day out can rival what he used to get up to at Oxford.

 

THE SUN AND BORIS JOHNSON have now apologized, and Margaret Thatcher no longer knows who she is, and so, in a sense, is beyond reproach. Those who have not yet apologized, and  are thus in need of a good whipping, will probably die before the families of the ninety-six who died get their day in court.

 

These are: Peter Wright, (now deceased) then Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, who stated that details of fans' alleged misbehaviour were crucial because “if anybody should be blamed, it should be the drunken ticketless individuals”;

 

Paul Middup, (retired) then secretary of the South Yorkshire Police Federation. Source for a front-page article in The Sun newspaper accusing fans of urinating on police officers and stealing from the dead;

 

David Duckenfield, (retired on full pension due to post-traumatic distress). Chief superintendent in charge of policing at Hillsborough on the day. Lied about Liverpool fans forcing open an exit gate, when he in fact ordered that it be opened;

 

Sir Norman Bettison, (pictured above) the current Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police. At the time he was Chief Inspector at South Yorkshire. He today continues to state that – even in the light of the new report – the Liverpool fans were to blame for the tragedy.

 

Despite howlings from all quarters that he should resign, he continues to state that no one did anything wrong on the policing side.

 

Dr Stefan Popper, the coroner for South Yorkshire West. He refused to consider events after 3.15pm when he held the inquests, suggesting that anyone who died after this time was unable to be saved. Eyewitness accounts suggest that basic CPR techniques, oxygen masks or even rubber tubes down the throat would have saved the lives of many.

 

YET THERE IS MORE TO THE CASE THAN THIS. I watched the events live on television in 1989, as the result was important to me. I believe that a small aspect that is not being mentioned here should be looked into. Besides the confusion and carnage, I distinctly remember a young lad from Liverpool coming close to the camera and the microphones and shouting and gesticulating, in great distress, “Why didn’t the FA give us the big end? Why didn’t they give us the big end?” (This is the larger end of the Sheffield Wednesday stadium, as Liverpool have more fans than Nottingham Forest). Shouldn't the FA be blamed as well? Wasn't the first mistake theirs? And why is no one talking about the FA today?

 

WHATEVER. NOW IS THE TIME TO GIVE THE BIG END of their lives to the culprits for this incredibly tragic event. We can at least strip two of them of their dubiously-awarded knighthoods, and perhaps we can at least allow the other three the chance to come forward and admit what scoundrels and villains they are before they are up for manslaughter.