Makes You Think

Tim Collard's blog seems to have gone quiet, but he has posted this on his Facebook page:

The report on what really happened at Hillsborough on 15th April 1989 coming out in the same week as the fulminating Tory outrage at the sale of t-shirts celebrating Margaret Thatcher's death at the TUC conference is one of those horrible but significant coincidences. 

The revelation of the horrible conspiracy of lies between the police, the Sun and the government shows that the story is not about how much we still hate Thatcher, but how much she hated us. And this never changed. She hated us with a passion until the last of her brain cells parted company with the outside world. She never repented. To the last glimmer of consciousness we were feckless Northern scum, against whom her band of highly-paid enforcers would be defended to the death, as they had been in that same South Yorkshire in 1984/5. Yes, one should forgive and have pity on her current state. But I can't place a scintilla of blame on anyone who can't manage that. The fact is, like it or not, the people are going to be out in force the weekend after her death; she never forgave or forgot, and why should we? 

Celebrating the death of a frail old woman is not nice behaviour. It isn't dignified. It's brutal. But brutally is how brutalised people behave. That's what the word means. 

Another significant coincidence is the fact that, on the same day on which 96 people died at Hillsborough, the Chinese leader Hu Yaobang also died, and his death led directly to the Tiananmen Square occupation, the only-just-failure to overthrow the government, and a ghastly massacre. Makes you think, doesn't it?