15/04/2014 North West Tonight

President Putin calls for the West to condemn it. Now it is

Welcome to a special addition of the programme. I live in Liverpool on

the day that the city came to a standstill to honour those who died

at Hillsborough, 25 years ago today. We are live outside Anfield where

tens of thousands gather this afternoon to remember. We will

always strive to honour you, the families and the memory of the 96

people we lost. We will talk to those at the centre of today's

commemorations. Nigel Evans returns to his

constituency office saying he will fight is to keep his seat. And now

the life and times of Mitchell and Kenyon are played out on a

Manchester stage. The tributes at the Hillsborough more Morrill

outside Anfield are pretty much ever present but today of all days they

are more plentiful than the green for quite some time. `` than they

have been. At six minutes past three this afternoon, exactly 25 years to

the minute since the game and Hillsborough was stopped, the city

of Liverpool came to a standstill. In the city centre people stood in

sombre reflection, their heads bowed reflecting on people from their city

who lost their lives a quarter of a century ago. The bells from both

liver pool 's Cathedral appealed in unison. `` Liverpool's cathedrals

both peeled in unison. Today was all about commemorating the lives that

were lost. We will be talking to It is hard, it really has. We were

lucky. I was there in a makeshift mortuary with about 35 deceased

people. This is one of the first times I have ever spoken about it.

Tony Bland, Paul David Brady the list of names was read out and was a

sense of satisfaction at what has been done. We refused to lie down

and we refused to go away. We made it happen. 25 years on, a day to

remember what happened at six minutes past three.

One of the key people involved this afternoon was this minister. Did it

feel different 25 years on? You have been involved in ten of these. Was

it different from years before? It is difficult to say. It is a very

emotional day every year but that I came away from the servers I wonder

if there was a sense of something is being more positive. I think there

was more of an energy to the event and because of some of the guests

that were there, the theme that is coming out is the city coming

together and I think that is what family needs to keep them going from

this day through to the next year. The inquests are underway and that

limits what we are able to say that all the scarves behind this come

from clubs the length and breadth of the country. It was powerful to see

the 96 in the middle of this video made up of all the different scarves

from all the different clubs around. It is bound to reverberate across

the nation and even farther afield because it has been such an emotive

issue for so many years and 425 years later for its still to be

around is amazing. Thank you, we are very grateful to you. It has been a

long journey to 25 years and families, as we know, have been

through some dark times. I must not number paying that their

determination to find out what happened that afternoon at

Hillsborough has been undiminished. The fight has been going on for a

quarter of a century but a lot has changed in the last few years. Let

us look at the long and emotional journey to this emotional day.

Everyone is devastated, they all have somebody. The Director of

Public Prosecutions had decided not to bring any criminal charges

against the police or or officials in connection to the Hillsborough

football disaster. We are just broken and we do not know what to

do. Without Paul, our lives are nothing. 20 years ago, . Our job has

simply been to oversee the maximum possible disclosure of all the

documents and to write a report that adds to public understanding. The

long road to the 25th anniversary in those words you can see in the shot

no have given great solace to the Hillsborough families on the journey

to this point. You also saw Andy Burnham who spoke here are the 20th

anniversary commemorations five years ago. The reception he got that

day was a key point in the way that things have developed in the

Hillsborough story in the last few years and he got a very different

reception today. I put this point to him on a spokesman earlier along

with the chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, Margaret

Aspinall. I agreed and said that Andy could do it. Something had to

give an Iona said that if I was not the minister I would have been one

of those shouting at the minister. `` I always said. How did it feel to

have tens of thousands of people screaming at you? I am never torn in

so I'm well used to those feelings but I understood what they were

feeling and I knew they were not necessarily shouting at me

personally but more that the government, the system, the way they

had been let down. That night I went to speak to the families at the town

Hall and in private I resolved that was it, we were going to change

things. They, in the end, made me find the political courage to do

something that the spy wanted to be here to say thank you everybody

today. Margaret, how different was today to the 24 anniversaries that

have preceded it? Because we are two weeks into the new inquests, it has

been very emotional to the families listening to the portraits of their

individual love ones. I'm only finding out about that a lot on snow

`` about their loved ones now and I did not know about that individual

loss. It is absolutely heartbreaking and I was crying in court every day.

I thought I had no more tears left but when you listen to that you do

and they think the fans and the survivors, who we have to remember,

they knew what the families were going through and they know what

we're going through and I think that made it more emotional today. It was

a wise decision to have those portraits at the start of the new

inquests cos we are all guilty of having used the phrase the 96 as if

they were all the same but now we see they are different people with

different hopes and dreams and that never came out at the brutal inquest

at the beginning and has just pushed away and no one can see who the 96

where and what they meant to their mums and dads and to the families

and that is an incredible thing but long, long overdue. Margaret has

only just left. She has been signing autographs and talking to many of

the people here to support her and the other families. The Hillsborough

Family Support Group have given 96 red roses by the Hillsborough

memorial. Our people, not in the city, who feel the Hillsborough

story has gone on and there is a bit of reading with that. You cannot

forget the 96 people went to support their team on a sunny day in

Sheffield and lost their lives 25 years ago today and when you hear

the talk and the reflections on it it brings shivers to your spine and

makes the hair on the back of your neck than the name. Anyone with a

family cannot imagine the last 25 years have been like the families.

The journey is ongoing and we are starting to move through what will

be a 12 month process for the jury to find out what will happen `` what

happened that day. Andy Gill as this report. Through the steel and glass

canyons of a 21st`century business Park come people affected by a

20th`century tragedy. Those who were young in 1989 are now middle`aged.

Those who were middle`aged are now elderly. Some who would have been

here are now dead. At the back of their minds at the inquest is

today's anniversary. It is a memory and not a number. It is as fresh as

it ever was. The fact that it is the 25th anniversary doesn't make much

of a difference. Most of the inquest so far has been taken up by tributes

to the dead from their relatives. Raw days for many. The court here in

Warrington still has to hear tributes to people killed in the

disaster. It is emotional and training but absolutely necessary, a

chance to show that those who were remembered today at Anfield were

real men, women and children and not just names on the memorial or faces

in the media. It finally puts names and faces to the family. The coroner

has outlined to the jury topics they might like to think about. Among

them, stadium layout, crowd control, the emergency response and behaviour

of fans, though not of the 96. The inquests are due to resume next

week. We will report the ongoing developments at the inquest. Among

the floral tributes outside the Hillsborough Memorial is one from

Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. Hillsborough is their home ground.

Now for the rest of the news. A ?30,000 reward is being offered by

police trying to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of

Blackpool teenager Paige Chivers. Paige went missing in 2007 and

detectives are convinced she's been murdered. Cumbria police say that a

body found in Windermere this morning is the body of 20`year`old

student Matthew Jordan. His death is not being treated as suspicious.

Only around 20% of beaches in the North West reached the recommended

levels for water`quality according to a new report. Samples were taken

by the Marine Conservation Society every week last summer checking for

bacteria like E`coli. Scientists say the results are down to wet weather

in our region affecting pollution compared to elsewhere in England.

There was disruption to flights in and out of Manchester Airport this

morning after an incoming Thomson air ways flight spotted smoke coming

from it. Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans returned to work in his

constituency today for the first time since being cleared of sex

charges. He said he was keen to get back to serving the Ribble Valley

and bore no ill will towards the fellow MP who initially reported

allegations made against him. Our chief reporter Dave Guest has spent

the morning with him. Back at work and tackling a backlog of mail and

for all the trauma of the past few months, Nigel Evans says he bears no

ill feeling towards Sarah Wollaston, the MP who first passed on

complaints that had been made against him. She was right to take

it to the Speaker. If you are given information, you have to take it

somewhere. So there is no ill feeling between you and her? No and

I hope when I get back to Westminster I hope we can have a cup

of tea. In 22 years of Parliament have you ever done anything that

could be considered to be abusing your position authority over any

junior member of staff? Absolutely not and I have had many of them

offering the messages of support. Nigel Evans spent the day being

interviewed by the local press and passing the time of day with local

people. There was time to reflect on some of the events. You have been

cleared by the jury back do you accept that looking back with

hindsight, some of the decisions you made and situations that you put

yourself in, were ill advised giving your position as a MP and Deputy

Speaker of the Commons? That is a judgement that other people make. If

I could press the rewind button, yes, I would. Maybe it wasn't wise

to have a relationship with a 21`year`old man. He wasn't working

in Westminster when I had the relationship with him. These

relationships, people meet people in all sorts of circumstances. Much was

made at the trial of your drinking. You were described as our

functioning alcoholic. I took great offence to that. My dad was an

alcoholic. I am a social drinker. Are you concerned that the

revelations may have harmed your credibility with this voters of the

Ribble Valley? Not from what I am hearing on the streets. Some have

congratulated me and said I shouldn't have gone through this.

The Lancashire film`making Pioneers Mitchell and Kenyon change cinematic

history by filming everyday life in the North West. Now they and their

famous films which are rediscovered in the 1990s are being turned in to

a stage play in Lancaster. The audience are stars of the show.

Their black`and`white films of everyday turn`of`the`century folk

captivated the world and now the life and times of Blackburn

film`makers Mitchell and Kenyon are being brought to the stage. Here is

the church and here is this people, local films for local people. The

play takes on the discovery of the film is sealed in metal churns in

the black pool `` Blackpool shop in 1994. The cast are great but the

films, projected onto the set are the true stars. We hope they have

the excitement and while actor that they might have hired a firm

Mitchell and Kenyon's audience 100 years ago. How on earth is that

happening? We do not know that much about them so the play has a

theatrical version of these characters. Mitchell and Kenyon were

not sure men, they were entrepreneurs, technicians who left

the vivid legacy. `` would not showed ordinary life then that know

they are extraordinary. It is tricky because you can put on a film of

bears and get completely mesmerised and the whole room stops and

everybody is agog. The production starts this weekend and then runs

till the 10th of May before moving to the Oldham Coliseum.

As we forecast, a beautiful day today with wall`to`wall

will see more cloud than anywhere else. Just over my head you can see

rain move into Northern Ireland and that tries to get towards us as the

day goes on but for most of us it will be dry in fine for nearly all

the day. The further south you are the more you will hang on the

sunshine. For most of us it will not be a bad day and a dry day with

temperatures 15 degrees of 16 degrees all over again. Tomorrow

there will be rain for your time on Thursday but the change in wind

direction makes a difference and you'll start to see this picture

through Thursday and Friday. For the long`range forecast, there will be

spells of sunshine on Saturday but I would not like to tell you exactly

what will happen through the bank holiday weekend will stop your love

to listen to us and watchers as that forecast gradually gets firmed up.

It has been an emotional day in Liverpool today as the city stopped

to remember the 96 members of the Hillsborough disaster 25 years on.

For many people, football fans are members of the public, Hillsborough

was one of those days like your parents grandparents said where they

were when John F. Kennedy was killed, lots of people remember

where they wear and what they were doing when Hillsborough happened. In

the city many people knew people who were there and you were related to

those who died. It has been a long road to them and that road is still

far from a conclusion. The inquest are now underway but for this 25th

anniversary commemoration today, there was a sense of positivity as

we heard earlier from the Reverend who was in charge of the service.

There is a life of a lovable anthem you'll never walk alone which says

at the end of the storm there is a golden sky there is a golden sky

above Anfield tonight. From all this watching, goodbye.