Something smells Westminster way

A deep and entrenched sickness

When people died at Hillsborough, the reaction from the government and the police, from the very top down, was to cover up, to paint a picture of drunken, badly-behaved football fans. The architects of their own downfall. Good riddance, the powers that are supposed to look after us seemed to say.

Thatcher didn't get sport, not at all, and didn't get football in particular.

Anyone who thinks her son Tone was any different need only look at him recalling the minister for sport from the Rugby World Cup because there was a tight vote in the commons. Anyone who falls for the trumpeting and triumphalism surrounding the olympics is living in cloud cuckoo land. The unholy alliance doesn't do sport either. Will the prime minister be where he should be on Cup Final Day? Not a chance.

Thatcher, and this is my theory, mine alone, but I have a marrow-deep conviction I'm at least on the right lines, craved absolute power, and therefore did everything she could to do down big, strong, genuinely powerful (as in physically powerful) men:

• She assembled a cabinet of ultra-wet, limp specialists in arse-kissing.
• She went after the miners with everything she had.
• She started the rot of prime ministers not attending the cup final, a given until the years of her misrule.

She ordered the Hillsborough cover up, and the police, her very own private army, complied. They changed statements. The courts decided to impose an arbitrary cut-off time on their initial investigation and reports.

For the avoidance of doubt, just in case anyone's under the misconception that things have changed for the better:

• The Wikipedia page on Hillsborough has been changed. The words “Blame Liverpool Fans” have been added. “You'll never walk alone” has been changed to “You'll never walk again”. The changes have been made from a government computer. A computer in the department for culture, media and sport, the treasury, or the office of the solicitor general.

• “This is Anfield” has been changed to “this is a shithole”. (Actually, changed to “This is a shit hole”, so not only are these government bods evil and twisted, they can't spell and lack the balls to override the spellchecker.

• The Bill Shankley entry has also been changed.

Like my Thatcher / power theory, this is just me speculating, and making a prediction on that basis:

A “thorough investigation” will be undertaken.

Some junior personnel will be scapegoated and disciplined.

Or they'll be disciplined for leaving their computers unprotected and open to abuse by others.

Or they'll wait and hope the whole thing blows over.

We'll still be governed by buck toothed inbred public school educated out of touch self-servers who don't get the national game, and therefore don't get the national psyche, and therefore may as well try to relate to an alien from the planet Zog as the peasants they love bossing around.