The soccer international between England and Wales last Saturday managed to display in an instant two of the most unsavoury aspects of life in modern Britain. A request by the authorities for a minute’s silence in memory of Mr Ken Bigley, the news of whose murder by terrorists in Iraq had broken the previous day, was largely and ostentatiously ignored. Yet the fact that such a tribute was demanded in the first place emphasised the mawkish sentimentality of a society that has become hooked on grief and likes to wallow in a sense of vicarious victimhood. There had been a two-minute silence for Mr Bigley that same morning in Liverpool, according him the same respect offered annually to the million-and-a-half British servicemen who have died for their country since 1914.
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steve hunt
November 9th, 2010 12:32pm Report this commentDidn't Liverpudlians also vote in a Channel 4 poll that Liverpool winning the Champions League a few years ago was of more importance than the fall of the Berlin Wall? They are like children; when they're up they're up and when they're down.
The manner of Ken Bigley's death was horrifying, may he rest in peace.
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