Are you on medication? Drunk? Suffering a brain injury?

He wasn't there. He doesn't know if the officer was telling the truth or making it up. If he says that it's a fact that police were abused and the dying were robbed, he's a liar and wrong.

But if he says that a police officer told these things to him then he's being completely honest.



Whether you're here in a professional capacity or not, any journalist with a working brain should know that Patnick never said he passed off rumour as fact. The fact that you cannot make that distinction quickly and easily right now suggests that you are a shoddy journalist, and shows just why journalism in the UK is screwed.

If all Patnick did was tell a news agency journalist that a couple of police officers told him they were victims of terrible behaviour from some Liverpool fans, and that was the extent of his involvement, do you think he should be stripped of his knighthood because of it?

Because I don't.

Those two stories don't make any suggestion as to what he did.

If he repeated allegations as fact then I've said his knighthood should be stripped. If he was constantly on the call to numerous journalists and news organisations making these claims and pushing this story then his knighthood should be stripped.

What did the Hillsborough Independent Panel actually say about Patnick's involvement? You see, if I was a journo, or a campaigner like Mintball, and I wanted him to be rightly stripped of his knighthood, I'd offer all the facts I had and let people see the wrongdoing he'd done.

The absence of these facts suggest to me that he's just a sacrificial lamb and the people want their blood.

If I'm wrong, post the evidence and prove me wrong. But don't offer those articles and offer them as proof.

Patnick's submission of notes on 20.04.89 to me seem confusing. He relates comments made by police officers which claim terrible behaviour by allegedly drunken Liverpool supporters but then immediately says he was advised by senior police officers to treat what he'd heard with a pinch of salt. To me that implies the senior officers were sceptical of what their sub-ordinates were saying? Then right at the end Patnick seems to me to say there were rumours of what had been said to him flying around in the press and he corrected them by saying what he'd been told, in part. He said although he didn't know the names / numbers of the officers he bieleved they were telling the truth.

So it seems he was only ever relating what he'd been told. I am unclear which parts he had told the press to clear things up? The junior or officers' comments? Did he express the senior officers' caveat? His notes seem a little confused and unclear though.

Whatever, he seems to have made a submission to the original enquiry based on what he'd been told and not as fact as portrayed bt Mintball.

Just read up a little on John Mann.

If Patnick is guilty of serious wrongdoing then I hope someone more substantial is going to come out against him. In his campaign against Salvia divinorum he managed to rake up 11 and 18 votes to get it banned. WHO'S GOING TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN?????

We're going around in circles here because we are both aware of the full extent of the story that broke last week, I have never demanded that he be stripped of his knighthood, he can keep the bloody thing as far as I'm concerned because its just a title as far as I'm concerned, he'd be called "Mr" if I ever had to address him or any other Knight of the Realm.

What is certain is that he is a former politician, he knows how politics work, its not like the real world and the silence in the intervening days tells me that he, and Tory central office are laying low at the moment and waiting to see if the smoke blows away - the insistence from the Hillsborough families that they haven't yet finished and will, if necessary, seek civil compensation if criminal charges are not brought seem to suggest that there is an awful lot of mileage in this and other matters yet.

The whole smear campaign of the time leaves a very bad taste, Camerons apology last week was said to be heartfelt and probably went some way to distancing himself and his colleagues from all of this - a distance which he'll be keen to maintain by silence and non-action at the moment.

Okay, forget the knighthood part.

If all Patnick did was speak to news agencies in his local area and say that police officers made those allegations to him, does he deserve the condemnation he is now getting?

I don't think he does. I think the fact that MacKenzie used him as one of the main sources of "The Truth" shows more than anything how ridiculous MacKenzie and The Sun were to print it. IMO any attempt by MacKenzie to ask lawyers whether that was fit to be printed would result in them kicking him out of their office. My dog knows that the story is unprintable with the weak sources they have. But throughout the years MacKenzie has always alluded to there being more to the story. He said he was forced to apologise, but never meant it because there was truth to it. And now it emerges that his story was virtually worthless and without merit.

But just as newspapers were wrong to put blame on supporters without any evidence, so is Mintball wrong to call for punishment for Patnick when there's no evidence to say he's done anything wrong.

If you are going to discuss the guy's comments, best to do so in the light of his submission: hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/ ... 460001.pdf

If you are going to discuss the guy's comments, best to do so in the light of his submission: hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/ ... 460001.pdf

Agree, disagree, disagree, agree

It was a police cover up intended to protect the police

Sheet 4 is very confusing.

On the Hillsborough Independent Panel there was the Bishop of Liverpool, Peter Scruton, author of Hillsborough: The Truth and Kate Jones, a producer on McGovern's Hillsborough documentary.

Raju Bhatt had led legal action against South Yorkshire Police over the miners strike.

Peter Sissons was born and raised in Liverpool.

You clearly wouldn't recognise "a working brain" if one got up and smacked across the chops, sunny Jim.

If he reported something to a news agency that he didn't believe was factually correct (ie a fact/facts), then he deserves even more anger.

His submission said he had no reason not to believe the officers.

Ergo he passed it on – as fact.