pumpkinstrokemarrow

More than twenty years after the event, we are still grinding away at the sad business of the Hillsborough disaster. It is a great shame that the circumstances appear to warrant stirring the whole business up again, a stirring up which I suspect will do little more than feather the nests of those paid to stir. The sort of stirring up of muddy bottoms which we seem to make something of a habit of. Or is it just the media?

No more support for the poor sods on the ground who have to try to maintain public safety in sometimes trying circumstances.

But one might have rather more sympathy for the police at large if they did not seem to be institutionally incapable of admitting error. Snafu even. A reflex reaction to close ranks and deny everything at the least hint of trouble - when a timely and honest admission of error who do much to clear the air and make way for trying to find ways to avoid future error in a cooler, less adversarial climate.

But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Back peddling, the coverage of the publication of the latest report in yesterday's Guardian did not advance much beyond the how awfuls, so I thought that it might be an idea to take a peek at the report itself. Ask Mr. Google and all he seems to be able to do is turn up a whole lot of media coverage of the report, which I assumed, without looking, would be about on the level of the Guardian's. If not worse. Poke around with variations on the search terms without getting much further forward. Try Amazon, who can indeed sell me a copy of the last report, now 20 years or so old, and a large selection of more recent books - but not the latest report. Then I think that maybe some organ of what used to be called HMSO (maybe this organ is actually still alive) would have a copy of the report? Bit more digging and I arrive at the organ called TSO and the screen illustrated - which tells me that I could indeed buy a copy of the report for the modest sum of £60 or so - if it were in stock. No offer of a pdf download or anything like that.

Maybe being police flavored it comes under the Home Office. No joy. What about the Office for Media & Fun? No joy there either. Then somehow I got hold of the idea that the panel producing the report might have its own website - which indeed it does. Bingo, I now have my own copy of the report, in electric form at least, and maybe I will come to a more informed opinion. Possibly with the help of the print shop down the road who will print it off for me for a lot less than £60. Who makes the pricing decisions on these things? I do not suppose there is the remotest likelihood of recovering the costs of the panel from sales, so why not more or less give the report away? A nominal charge to deter wasters?

But it is not very clever that it took so long to get to the horse's mouth. What went wrong there?

PS: some time later. Now got a bit deeper into the Guardian, where coverage was redeemed by some sensible remarks from Simon Jenkins. Next stop the report itself!