Talk:Bloody Sunday Inquiry

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Untitled[edit]

Removed the spectator references as the majority of the articles are for subscribers.68.71.35.93 22:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Balance of article[edit]

I think the article is out of balance due to the following section in the timeline:

Yet again, the role of republicans and the IRA came to the fore when the inquiry heard that there may be a "wall of silence" in Derry over what exactly members of the IRA were doing on the day. The allegations persisted when a witness in February 2001 refused to name a man he said had fired at soldiers. After months of speculation, Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness announced that he would give evidence to the inquiry.

It is worth noting that there is no mention of the paratroopers in the article except for a brief mention on the effect of the morale on the report being released. It is unbalanced to mention the role of one of the protagonists and not the role of the other.

I do not doubt the factual accuracy of the above statement (but I do notice that it is unreferenced). Quasihuman (talk) 14:19, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think due to the repeated delays this article has been somewhat neglected other than to update it about the most recent delay. Now the report has been published I am sure this article will be improved. O Fenian (talk) 15:06, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is the phrase "Yet again" justified? I'd be inclined to start the sentence without it.Patrick lovell (talk) 08:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed that, and some inaccuracies. The timeline does need plenty of work however. O Fenian (talk) 08:14, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Membership of inquiry council[edit]

Could someone add a list of members for the council or report group or panel or whatever it is called? Perhaps in an Infobox? Sadads (talk) 18:13, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Structure of costs?[edit]

Is there any information on how the costs are structured? £200 million (minimum) divided by 900 witnesses gives costs of more than £200,000 per witness. That's the price of a small house. At one point in the article it says that the monthly costs were £500,000 with "more than half of the overall cost" believed to be "legal bills". Why would an inquiry spend so much money on legal advice, especially if its chairman is a judge who should know his trade? --Tim Landscheidt (talk) 00:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See The Daily Mail 16 June 2010. Kittybrewster 07:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have access to the paper Daily Mail, but they have an online article which lists only some of the recipients of the money, but not for what purpose it was spent. --Tim Landscheidt (talk) 22:14, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To cut out the middle-men and press spin, the official final financial statements are here. It should be remembered that the bulk of the costs are legal fees to very senior and experienced lawyers, engaged over a very long period of time. Such fees will almost certainly be little different to what they would have earned had they been working on other/multiple cases over the same time period. Nick Cooper (talk) 10:03, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't doubt that, but to me the question remains why you would hire "very senior and experienced lawyers" "over a very long period of time" at their asking prices when the issue at hand isn't legal but factual. Why would a witness (or an "interested party") need a lawyer paid for by the government at all?
Or, another topic I found when following your link to the official statements: What would such a rather small inquiry spend annually about £5 million for several years on IT "systems and maintenance" for?
To an outsider, this looks very Greek :-). --Tim Landscheidt (talk) 23:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions of Inquiry[edit]

What were they? Kittybrewster 07:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think we can accept Mr. Cameron's speech as a fair summary of the conclusions: the order to Support Company to go in was wrong; the shootings were unjustified; none of the people shot were armed; none of the soldiers had reason to believe that they were under threat of death or serious injury; some people were shot as they were fleeing or coming to the aid of other victims; there was no conspiracy at senior military or government level. Scolaire (talk) 08:32, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And also, as stressed by Mr. Cameron, whether or not Martin McGuinness was armed, he did nothing that would justify the actions of the soldiers. Scolaire (talk) 08:49, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So why did they shoot? The article doesn't say. Does the report? Peter jackson (talk) 11:02, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, it doesn't. That is still the big unanswered question. Scolaire (talk) 20:40, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is obvious why the soldiers shot: Irish nationalists, whether armed and dangerous or not, still deserve to be pwned. Hence despite the findings of the report, opening fire was the right thing to do. 79.75.141.101 (talk) 09:41, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Except that is the precise opposite of what the report says. Nick Cooper (talk) 10:15, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CIVIL prohibits personal attacks, including racial, ethnic, sexual and religious slurs, and derogatory references to groups such as social classes or nationalities.Autarch (talk) 12:25, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So we've spent vast amounts of time & money but still don't know why it happened? Typical. Peter jackson (talk) 09:46, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, "we've spent vast amounts of time & money" to know on the balance of probabilities what happened, definitely proving certain things in the process. Nick Cooper (talk) 10:15, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ultimately it comes down to certain individuals making decisions which they have not yet explained, despite being given every opportunity to do so, because Saville has effectively discounted all other possible reasons. "Fear and Panic" is acknowledged in the case of the firing of three soldiers (not all of which caused injury or death), but not in the rest, although the degree of certainty varies. Nick Cooper (talk) 10:15, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Some paras do fear and panic? And the others did what and why? Kittybrewster 10:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the specific situation in question, Saville thought some of them probably did. One junior officer, for example, fired "warning shots" over a crowd he claimed was hostile, but which Saville concluded was not, but he (the officer) only thought might become so, so was not justified under the contemporary rules of engagement. One army witness suggested that at least two of his comrades seemed to be working to a personal "game plan," once the shooting started. The majority of soldiers whose shots were thought to have actually hit people were only linked to one or two casualties each, but just three soldiers (including the two with the "game plane")were definitely responsible for six deaths, and with a fourth soldier killed or wounded another eleven people. Nick Cooper (talk) 11:19, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AHEM:

  1. The paras are reckoned by others and themselves to be a military elite.
  2. As an elite, they get to pick and choose their own members through a grueling selection phase.
  3. resulting in the selection of physically tough and aggressive men in its ranks.
  4. The paras of any nation are generally included in the special operations category
  5. They are an assault force who have no business being involved in peacekeeping operations.
  6. The decision to deploy them was made at much higher levels by people who knew what kind of unit was being deployed and what could be a possible outcome.

Note that during the Rodney king Riots in los Angeles, the US natioanal command authority, deployed mostly active military police and national guard units. Active military units were deployed for cordon and search operations. Eventhough there were paratroops deployed, for the most part they were military police units. --Degen Earthfast (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying that this could have been a matter of national policy? Like setting yourself up for failure?--71.162.248.240 (talk) 17:47, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AHEM:
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. Scolaire (talk) 21:16, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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