Search icon

Football

15th Feb 2017

UKIP member belittles Hillsborough disaster with staggering comments

"Sometimes life is unfair"

Nooruddean Choudry

If he is intending to cause maximum offence and upset, he is doing a good job.

First there was UKIP leader Paul Nuttall’s admission that claims on his website that he’d “lost a close personal friend” during the Hillsborough disaster were false.

Then the blame was shifted to press officer Lynda Roughley, who resigned over the falsehood.

Now major UKIP donor and Leave.eu founder Arron Banks has upset and angered many with his comments about the disaster. He stated on Tuesday night that he was ‘sick to death’ of hearing about it, and that it wasn’t a ‘cultural happening’.

When questioned over his insensitive comments about what happened on April 15, 1989 and the 96 lives that were lost, his response was to suggest people had been ‘milking’ it ever since.

Then he went as far as calling it an ‘accident’ – something that Hillborough campaigners have been fighting against for 28 years.

To double-up on his offensive standpoint, he had the temerity to state: ‘…sometimes life is unfair and accidents happen.’

Our own Tony Barrett spoke for many with his summary of Banks’ comments: