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WE'LL FIND THE SICK H'BORO TROLLS ; MP Burnham will oversee inquiry into ECHO expose [Liverpool Echo (England)]
[April 26, 2014]

WE'LL FIND THE SICK H'BORO TROLLS ; MP Burnham will oversee inquiry into ECHO expose [Liverpool Echo (England)]


(Liverpool Echo (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) "ROGUE" civil servants behind a series of sick edits to the Hillsborough Wikipedia pages will be tracked down and exposed, Andy Burnham pledged today.

The Shadow health secretary, a key leader in the Hillsborough justice campaign, is to oversee an "urgent" government inquiry, the Cabinet Office confir med.

An investigation was launched after the ECHO revealed government computers were used to post the phrases "Blame Liverpool fans" and "You'll never walk again" on Hillsborough Wikipedia pages.

A Whitehall spokeswoman said: "The amendments made to Wikipedia are sickening. The behaviour is in complete contravention of the Civil Service Code. It is entirely unacceptable.

"When the issue was brought to our attention by the Liverpool ECHO we launched immediate inquiries.

"This investigation is being led by the Cabinet Office permanent secretary, Richard Heaton, who is responsible for the government computer network.

"He will be working closely with the director general for propriety and ethics and her team, as well as other senior officials." The revisions to the site were made over a three-year period and saw government computers used to amend numerous entries related to the 1989 disaster.



On the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, a computer displaying the same IP address as the Government's Secure Intranet (GSI) was used to add the phrase "Blame Liverpool Fans" to the encyclopedia.

Whitehall computers were used again in 2012 to to change the phrase "You'll never walk alone" to "You'll never walk again" and later "You'll never **** alone." Andy Burnham today said his involvement in the Government's inquiry showed the tragedy was beyond politics and said the "rogue civil servant" should be named and shamed. The Labour MP said: "There's no party politics in this, there never has been, it's way beyond that. As I've said before, the families have been let down by all sides over the years and now nothing must be allowed to set things back.


"We need these individuals named and they need to be held to account. It's unacceptable for a civil servant, a rogue civil servant probably, to have behaved in this way, if that's what the inquiry finds.

"The Government offered for me to be involved and I'm willing to take part. As ever, my main concern will be the families, their welfare and having right done by them.

"I'm not going to let anything stand in the way of that. I won't accept second best and I won't accept fudges, my objective is to find out who did this and for them to be held to account." (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved.

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