OT - ITV last night: "Little Boy Blue"

I'll give it a look.  He was the Everton fan right?

Didn't see it but did see clips of it on Gogglebox.

It was one of those horrible events that saw the opposing fans united. Z cars was played at Anfield, at any other time something that wouldn't be tolerated.

As a Liverpool supporter and who holds Bill Shankly in high esteem, I still shudder when I hear the quote  'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.'
It certainly isn't.

I know what you mean and I am sure Bill himself would agree. 

No, I agree with a lot of what you say Runie, except if I'm nitpicking I don't think I'd use the word 'accident' to describe what they did... and also I don't think Hillsborough was a significant enough factor to warrant bringing it up, but  I get what you are saying.

I used to be a lot more right wing when I was a teenager and maybe very early 20s. But I think as you get older you get a bit more perspective, well as I've got older I've gained a lot more perspective I should say.

I mean, I grew up in an area with a pretty bad reputation, I went to probably a below average school, and it did used to cross my mind: "well I still did pretty well, why can't everyone else?". But then I look back, my parents were really strict, they were both in the army (before I was born), and I think they probably just wanted me, my sister and my two brothers to do better than they did. If the police knocked on a lot of my friend's doors, their parents would probably told them to "fuck off", if a teacher knocked on their door, they definitely would have told them to "fuck off". Either that, or their mum or guardian was just unable to keep up with what they were up to. Not my parents, not by a long shot, my dad would have given me the biggest arse kicking ever if the police showed up (actually the police did knock on my door once when I was 11 after I got into a pretty big fight, and that was pretty much what happened!). In fact if I would have bunked off just one day of school he probably would have killed me.  That would have been even worse than fighting.

But, yes, society has to do more to stop kids becoming criminals, joining gangs etc before they actually become criminals. Prevention is better than cure as they say. There needs to be a lot more done.

Life is kind of a lottery of circumstances, if you are born into the right circumstances, you'll probably do well, if you aren't, then you probably wont. Not in all cases but that is the general rule of thumb. (Circumstances include your family, your upbringing, where you grew up, your school, your peers etc etc)

But when a person pulls a trigger, no matter how much life has failed them, they have to be kept away from society for a very long time. Is it fair, especially when life has failed them? Nope, probably not, but this is the current world we live in.

Okay in this case, you can say it is probably manslaughter rather than murder and there has to be a distinction between the two, so maybe I retract saying they should be banged up for more or less life (I never read about the case in any depth though).

But they did set out to presumably kill someone so we're gonna need a bloody good rehabilitation system to release them after just 10 years or 12 years, which we simply do not have, in fact prison may even make them worse, so being pragmatic, what do you do? What options are you left with on the table, with the current resources we have in today's world? You can't let them off, that's not an option. You can't give them a lenient sentence and have them potentially kill someone else's kid when they get out? So what are you left with Runie? You may not think it is right, you may not think it is fair, I don't think it is fair, but nevertheless there is only one option left, and that is a heavy sentence. In the longer term, the government has to do better, but today these aren't problems that can be magically fixed.  So we are only left with one option until the wider problems can be fixed.

As a side note, that dick from Essex, I actually watched the series of "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" that his girlfriend was on. Only because Chris Eubank was on it (only series I've ever watched other than the odd time I've tuned in for 15 minutes or so). She actually seemed alright, there was never an edge to her or anything that I saw. Just a pleasant, normal, bubbly girl, and there was a lot of friction in that series, just not from her. Not the smartest, but not stupid either, not stupid enough to be dating a complete and utter fucking muppet! But there you go.

Yeah, I'm all always really sceptical about the right wingers who say "I used to be really left wing but then I grew up", especially the really prejudiced sounding ones.  I just don't quite see how that flip could happen that way round.  Unless something really horrific happened to them as they got older that made them all bitter and selfish about the world, it just doesn't quite square up for me.  I can see how someone can become a bit less ideological about the world, and a bit more pragmatic as they get older, but I think that is a bit different!