Since when has grief meant threats and vituperation?

I would like to begin my article this week with a minute’s silence, please, which I would enjoin you to observe respectfully and without feeling the need to chant obscenities. This particular minute’s silence is in respect of the minute’s silence which was not observed appropriately by some football supporters last weekend. That minute’s silence, held before the Spurs versus Chelsea FA Cup semi-final, was ordained to commemorate the deaths of the 96 Liverpool fans who perished at the Hillsborough football ground 23 years ago, and also an Italian footballer who died during the week.

I am not sure how those observing the silence were expected to divvy up the minute; properly speaking, poor old Piermarino Morosini, who suffered a heart attack while playing, would receive only 0.619 of a second, the most fleeting of half-thoughts. Nobody knew who the chap was, so perhaps that is as well. But perhaps, instead, everyone was supposed to remember all the people who had died simultaneously, all 97 of them —  along with anyone else who had died since 1989, or had become very ill, or was feeling a bit peaky but was in some way associated with the city of Liverpool.