I'm sorry but safety concerns are never red herrings. You can probably never create a totally safe environment when you are dealing with human beings. I understand a lot of people want to stand but I would rather 30 million fans were disappointed than have anyones child died.
Have you looked into safe standing yourself? It's completely different from the old school terraces. For a starters there's barriers at every level (not 'crush barriers' the same barriers you see now that seats make) which prevent people from rushing forward. But most importantly there's a capacity, designed to be safe, of people you let in which is 2 for every seat. One of the key flaws of old school terracing was letting in an unlimited amount of people. How that was never seen I have no idea...
I would have to find the link and add it in later after work but the FSF once spoke to someone in charge of the Bundesliga and asked him for death records for safe standing since they were forced to implement it (seats were needed for European competition) in 1998.
He said they didn't keep a record of them as there had been none at all. When asked for a record for injuries he said again, none had been reported and so they never kept them. He said there may have been unreported minor injuries from hitting your legs etc. against the rails whilst celebrating but that can happen even in seated areas (I have suffered a decent amount of bruises)
You're right, but historically football crowds don't have a good record, 3 major tragedies have occurred in my lifetime for whatever reason. I just don't want to see anymore.
In a book called 'A Choice to Watch Football' they looked at figures posted by the home office, with arrest and banning order figures, and found that arrests and banning orders were higher at the league one and league two clubs with seating compared to the grounds that had standing.
The only argument you're making is that something might happen because there's a lot of people. So should we ban people attending football as something might happen? Ban people waiting at train stations because something might happen? Come to think of it I've felt more crushed on some London busses than I ever have at football so should we ban buses because something might happen?
Should we ban boats and cruise ships? After all look at what happened on the Titanic. Happened once so could definantly happen again. Ban all boats to prevent another tradgedy such as the titanic? Of course not. Bad management caused that. The Titanic was greedy and looking to set a speed record. Football clubs were greedy in letting as many people pay at the gates as they wish. Since the Titanic relevant procedures have been taken and as far as I know nothing like the Titanic has happened since.
The children you speak off are much more likely to die going to/ from football using the method of transport that brought them there than they ever are at the game itself so will you now start advocating banning children from using any form of transport?
The arguments in favour of safe standing are almost never ending. The only argument against is 'Something might happen because we used to have something that was different and it happened with that'.