Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
I don't see how Mazars has a viable future going forward here regardless of what happens with Trump. No-one is going to touch them with a bargepole for any sort of diligence. An audit suicide bomb
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
The average age of receiving inheritance, for those who do, is around 61. Only someone who spends their time in local Conservative party association meetings considers them the younger generations.
Rubbish. The average age of receiving an inheritance is 47 not 61
Thatcher: "I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top but should get you pretty near."
Boris Fan Club: "Forget hard work. Wait for your parents to die".
What on earth has happened to the Tory party?
@HYUFD attitude is unedyfying and in our case would likely see him disinherited if we knew that is all we meant to him
The essence of Toryism is support for property and inherited wealth.
Support for earned income above all and taxing wealth instead makes you more a Liberal than a Tory.
Neither Liberals nor Tories are Socialists but Tories are distinct from Liberals
And you are a dreadful advert for a compassionate caring conservative party and frankly your views are unacceptable
All compassionate caring conservatives should therefore move over to the Lib Dems. The old Conservative Party has been taken over by people whose views are unacceptable.
I don't see how Mazars has a viable future going forward here regardless of what happens with Trump. No-one is going to touch them with a bargepole for any sort of diligence. An audit suicide bomb
Yes, but you could say the same about other firms' previous accounting scandals. They take a hit, but people still need auditors.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
Trump still relying in Mazars' threadbare arse covering. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60383594 ...A spokesperson for the Trump Organization said the letter from Mazars renders the investigations moot, because it suggests that the financial statements do not contain material discrepancies, according to CBS News....
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
The tendency to conform is common to all societies, and seems to be an irreducible facet of human nature. Your larger conclusion needs a little more work.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
No we are not. Authoritarian societies are bad, but authoritarian societies that lead to Treblinka are both much worse and fortunately, extremely rare.
Silly hyperbole doesn’t do your case any good even when your basic point is correct.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
The same pattern has repeated in many large institutional scandals over the years - many of the NHS scandals, and the Catholic Church stand out in the last couple of decades. Oh, and some guy in a track suit with a cigar in his mouth, running around a number of British institutions.
The tendency has been for the senior management to seek to protect the institution at all costs, even if that means covering up very serious allegations or complaints, and even if more people suffer as a result.
1/ +++ WORLD EXCLUSIVE: I spoke to Novak Djokovic, @DjkokerNole, for @BBCNews +++
>Says he didn't break the rules on COVID or entry to Australia >Distances himself from anti-vax movement >Is prepared to miss French Open + Wimbledon if it comes to it >Defends freedom to choose
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
No we are not. Authoritarian societies are bad, but authoritarian societies that lead to Treblinka are both much worse and fortunately, extremely rare.
Silly hyperbole doesn’t do your case any good even when your basic point is correct.
The next holocaust will not be like the last one. However, it will have the same societal roots: that democrats excuse authoritarians and their gophers.
The most likely tool of mass murder next time round is nuclear holocaust. However, it is not the only candidate.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The State Department has escalated its warning to U.S. citizens in Belarus, where thousands of Russian troops have massed for menacing military exercises -- now urging them to leave the country "immediately."
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
1/ +++ WORLD EXCLUSIVE: I spoke to Novak Djokovic, @DjkokerNole, for @BBCNews +++
>Says he didn't break the rules on COVID or entry to Australia >Distances himself from anti-vax movement >Is prepared to miss French Open + Wimbledon if it comes to it >Defends freedom to choose
I find it difficult to disagree with him. He should have the freedom to choose, as should everyone. But that doesn't mean that his choice should be without consequences and my sympathy for Djokovic remains low.
Interestingly, I was listening to a Podcast (The Wigs) with a bunch of Australian Lawyers. They took a rather dim view of the decision, and the stated reasons for the decision, to remove Djokovic from Australia. It does seem that Ministers in Australia have a lot more power than our own. Perhaps it isn't only Australian-style immigration the UK Government would be interested in replicating?
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
No we are not. Authoritarian societies are bad, but authoritarian societies that lead to Treblinka are both much worse and fortunately, extremely rare.
Silly hyperbole doesn’t do your case any good even when your basic point is correct.
The next holocaust will not be like the last one. However, it will have the same societal roots: that democrats excuse authoritarians and their gophers.
The most likely tool of mass murder next time round is nuclear holocaust. However, it is not the only candidate.
That, in its studious determination to avoid admitting a careless error, could have been written by Hyufd.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
Is English society really that much different to Scottish society?
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
Is English society really that much different to Scottish society?
Well quite - the man is so full of hate for the English - and in a much nastier pernicious way than any other of the nationalist posters on here.
Tom Tugendhadt on Good Morning Britain. He’s talking a very good game, but I wonder if he was PM would he actually go through with banning Russian money from the UK?
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
Is English society really that much different to Scottish society?
Yes.
The denizens of British society are more likely to be sober.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Good morning, Madames et Messieurs.
Just for a change!
I didn't realise that the improvement in PO profits matched the 'missing' money. There are a couple of things which puzzle me. It seems that, either by accident or design, neighbouring sub-postmasters, who might have got together, or known each other, were rarely, if ever, prosecuted. And, while I've read that the Sub-Postmasters Union was in the pocket of Post Office management it seems odd that rarely did those accused appear to seek help from the Union. Surely someone, somewhere would have tried blowing whistles earlier.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
"English" society?!? It happened in Scotland too, at a higher rate. And a quick scan of Google suggests Scotland is behind E&W when it comes to appeals.
And that's to ignore the various scandals up here. The trams are an example that impacts me every day.
At least Stuart and HYUFD are honest - they both expose the nasty underbellies of their political philosophies.
Tom Tugendhadt on Good Morning Britain. He’s talking a very good game, but I wonder if he was PM would he actually go through with banning Russian money from the UK?
What would he do about the many Russians buying property in the UK, as their insurance policy for the day they become unpopular in Russia? That, and the many Russians living in London because they’ve already fallen out with Putin and his friends?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Good morning, Madames et Messieurs.
Just for a change!
I didn't realise that the improvement in PO profits matched the 'missing' money. There are a couple of things which puzzle me. It seems that, either by accident or design, neighbouring sub-postmasters, who might have got together, or known each other, were rarely, if ever, prosecuted. And, while I've read that the Sub-Postmasters Union was in the pocket of Post Office management it seems odd that rarely did those accused appear to seek help from the Union. Surely someone, somewhere would have tried blowing whistles earlier.
Morning, OKC, VM for you after your question yesterday.
Tom Tugendhadt on Good Morning Britain. He’s talking a very good game, but I wonder if he was PM would he actually go through with banning Russian money from the UK?
What would he do about the many Russians buying property in the UK, as their insurance policy for the day they become unpopular in Russia? That, and the many Russians living in London because they’ve already fallen out with Putin and his friends?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
One thing I do expect to see is the de facto bankruptcy of the Post Office.
The question is, what does the government do about that? It could try clawing money back from those responsible, but they're not so rich that's likely to cover the black hole. Or they could pump in more money, which would be politically sensitive. Or slim down the service, but given it's most popular with oldies in rural and suburban areas that would be extremely courageous, minister.
It could cause them a great many issues.
Thoroughly deserved though, given the laxity of oversight. Just as I have no sympathy with shareholders of banks that get into trouble - it's their job to hold the board to account and if they fail to do it why should I pay for their complacency?
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
Is English society really that much different to Scottish society?
Yes.
The denizens of British society are more likely to be sober.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The case of the egregious Professor Meadow suggests that such a scenario is simply impossible. Judges will not convict, and if professional bodies dare to censure them instead, judges will overrule aforesaid bodies.
Canada becoming a little more like China. Trudeau appears to have lost his cool (again), but when his temper leads to prospective loss of important freedoms, it's a concern. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60383385
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Good morning, Madames et Messieurs.
Just for a change!
I didn't realise that the improvement in PO profits matched the 'missing' money. There are a couple of things which puzzle me. It seems that, either by accident or design, neighbouring sub-postmasters, who might have got together, or known each other, were rarely, if ever, prosecuted. And, while I've read that the Sub-Postmasters Union was in the pocket of Post Office management it seems odd that rarely did those accused appear to seek help from the Union. Surely someone, somewhere would have tried blowing whistles earlier.
Morning, OKC, VM for you after your question yesterday.
Yes; Thanks. Very helpful. I've emailed Cymdeithas, but the reply is in Welsh and I haven't translated it all yet. Actually, think it's something about being out of the office.
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
No we are not. Authoritarian societies are bad, but authoritarian societies that lead to Treblinka are both much worse and fortunately, extremely rare.
Silly hyperbole doesn’t do your case any good even when your basic point is correct.
The next holocaust will not be like the last one. However, it will have the same societal roots: that democrats excuse authoritarians and their gophers.
The most likely tool of mass murder next time round is nuclear holocaust. However, it is not the only candidate.
That, in its studious determination to avoid admitting a careless error, could have been written by Hyufd.
*Grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*
And like Hyufd, has shifted the argument. We were talking about conformism, which is not the same thing as "excusing authoritarians". Unlike the latter, the former is a human characteristic that's required for a functioning society. It's not healthy if it isn't balanced by scepticism, but either on their own and to excess are likely to be disfunctional.
Canada becoming a little more like China. Trudeau appears to have lost his cool (again), but when his temper leads to prospective loss of important freedoms, it's a concern. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60383385
I still don’t understand the craic. From the layman obviously the “freedom” truckers are a bunch of whoppers but increasingly Trudeau also seems like a whopper.
BREAKING: U.K. living standards fell at the fastest pace in almost eight years in December, a squeeze that is set to intensify in April when energy bills and taxes are due to soar
I'm still not convinced Johnson will go before the General Election.
He's such a slippery snake. He's obviously trying to play Churchill, which includes ramping up rhetoric and getting the tabloids on board. It's not just about saving Ukraine. It's about saving Boris Johnson.
This is different but it saved Margaret Thatcher in 1981/2.
Mind you, with the Mauritius raising their flag on the Chagos Islands perhaps he could launch a Task Force to the Indian Ocean?!
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Good morning, Madames et Messieurs.
Just for a change!
I didn't realise that the improvement in PO profits matched the 'missing' money. There are a couple of things which puzzle me. It seems that, either by accident or design, neighbouring sub-postmasters, who might have got together, or known each other, were rarely, if ever, prosecuted. And, while I've read that the Sub-Postmasters Union was in the pocket of Post Office management it seems odd that rarely did those accused appear to seek help from the Union. Surely someone, somewhere would have tried blowing whistles earlier.
Morning, OKC, VM for you after your question yesterday.
Yes; Thanks. Very helpful. I've emailed Cymdeithas, but the reply is in Welsh and I haven't translated it all yet. Actually, think it's something about being out of the office.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
It's to be hoped that the Inquiry asks questions around this.
Tom Tugendhadt on Good Morning Britain. He’s talking a very good game, but I wonder if he was PM would he actually go through with banning Russian money from the UK?
What would he do about the many Russians buying property in the UK, as their insurance policy for the day they become unpopular in Russia? That, and the many Russians living in London because they’ve already fallen out with Putin and his friends?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
The average age of receiving inheritance, for those who do, is around 61. Only someone who spends their time in local Conservative party association meetings considers them the younger generations.
Rubbish. The average age of receiving an inheritance is 47 not 61
And only 22% receive an inheritance, which due to longevity and long term care costs will diminish cash and not forgetting parents who have taken out equity release at punishing interest rates leaving very little to share among their siblings
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
The average age of receiving inheritance, for those who do, is around 61. Only someone who spends their time in local Conservative party association meetings considers them the younger generations.
Rubbish. The average age of receiving an inheritance is 47 not 61
And only 22% receive an inheritance, which due to longevity and long term care costs will diminish cash and not forgetting parents who have taken out equity release at punishing interest rates leaving very little to share among their siblings
The article makes clear 64% expect to receive an inheritance and only a quarter will ever need residential care
Individuals should not 'expect to receive an inheritance' and should instead get on due to their own hard work 👍❤️
Isn't it actually less selfish for someone to work in order to earn money for other people — ie. their family — rather than just for themselves?
That's the same logic that justifies extremely high taxation rates, only by extending the family to society as a whole.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with people being 'selfish' and providing for themselves.
If someone wants to work in order to earn money for other people, there's nothing preventing them giving that money to those other people while they're still alive instead of as an inheritance.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
The average age of receiving inheritance, for those who do, is around 61. Only someone who spends their time in local Conservative party association meetings considers them the younger generations.
Rubbish. The average age of receiving an inheritance is 47 not 61
And only 22% receive an inheritance, which due to longevity and long term care costs will diminish cash and not forgetting parents who have taken out equity release at punishing interest rates leaving very little to share among their siblings
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
The average age of receiving inheritance, for those who do, is around 61. Only someone who spends their time in local Conservative party association meetings considers them the younger generations.
Rubbish. The average age of receiving an inheritance is 47 not 61
And only 22% receive an inheritance, which due to longevity and long term care costs will diminish cash and not forgetting parents who have taken out equity release at punishing interest rates leaving very little to share among their siblings
The article makes clear 64% expect to receive an inheritance and only a quarter will ever need residential care
Individuals should not 'expect to receive an inheritance' and should instead get on due to their own hard work 👍❤️
Isn't it actually less selfish for someone to work in order to earn money for other people — ie. their family — rather than just for themselves?
That's the same logic that justifies extremely high taxation rates, only by extending the family to society as a whole.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with people being 'selfish' and providing for themselves.
If someone wants to work in order to earn money for other people, there's nothing preventing them giving that money to those other people while they're still alive instead of as an inheritance.
“I can't hate him. He is so transparent in his self interest that I kind of respect him.”
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
@Gallowgate above proves you wrong on that. And this will make headlines for the rest of the year. Some of us have posted bits about it all on here from time to time for quite a while. But it's only with the setting aside of convictions, and the start of the statutory enquiry that its got any real traction.
That most if this happened when the criminal justice system was less parlously resourced than it is now is perhaps concerning.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Paula Vennels is, or at least was, a priest.
Well she’d better start praying, she was in charge when many of the prosecutions occurred, and after there had already been concerns raised as to what was going on.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
It provides counter banking services in numerous places where there's no real alternative present, but it is, as you say, an odd mix.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office ... a less than averagely good delivery company
Are you sure you're not confusing the Post Office with Royal Mail?
Royal Mail is a pretty poor (but very expensive) delivery company, certainly compared to say DPD which is absolutely brilliant. They were left behind by private companies who do it better, faster and cheaper.
Post Office as counter service might have a viable function still? Not sure.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Paula Vennels is, or at least was, a priest.
Here is the Archbish, deftly refusing to take action:
Lambeth Palace, 10th January 2020
“Thank you for your recent email. Much as he would like to, the Archbishop is unable to respond personally and in detail to all the emails and letters that he receives, so I have been asked to reply to you on his behalf.
The Reverend Paula Vennells is a priest in the Diocese of St Albans. The Archbishop cannot and does not intervene in the running of individual dioceses and parishes outside his own diocese of Canterbury, therefore you may wish to direct your concerns to the Bishop of St Albans, in whose diocese Ms Vennells is licensed.
Thank you again for taking the time to write."
I have found time and again that those who profess to be publicly progressive tend to have a very different attitude when called upon to investigate their own organization.
Vennells was also appointed to the C of E’s ethical investment advisory group.
This group’s job is to advise the Church on how to invest its fortune with Christian values in mind, including through the selection of businesses with enlightened employment practices.
Few people are interested in the scandal .... because so many are implicated.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office ... a less than averagely good delivery company
Are you sure you're not confusing the Post Office with Royal Mail?
Royal Mail is a pretty poor (but very expensive) delivery company, certainly compared to say DPD which is absolutely brilliant. They were left behind by private companies who do it better, faster and cheaper.
Post Office as counter service might have a viable function still? Not sure.
Post Office Counters does indeed provide a useful range of services. We have no bank; the nearest is about 5 miles away, and we do, sometimes have to pay in cheques. We also have to send small parcels and the PO acts as a depot for Ro]yal Mail, which we find the most efficient service. Never loses things, as other carriers do.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Paula Vennels is, or at least was, a priest.
Here is the Archbish, deftly refusing to take action:
Lambeth Palace, 10th January 2020
“Thank you for your recent email. Much as he would like to, the Archbishop is unable to respond personally and in detail to all the emails and letters that he receives, so I have been asked to reply to you on his behalf.
The Reverend Paula Vennells is a priest in the Diocese of St Albans. The Archbishop cannot and does not intervene in the running of individual dioceses and parishes outside his own diocese of Canterbury, therefore you may wish to direct your concerns to the Bishop of St Albans, in whose diocese Ms Vennells is licensed.
Thank you again for taking the time to write."
I have found time and again that those who profess to be publicly progressive tend to have a very different attitude when called upon to investigate their own organization.
Vennells was also appointed to the C of E’s ethical investment advisory group.
This group’s job is to advise the Church on how to invest its fortune with Christian values in mind, including through the selection of businesses with enlightened employment practices.
Few people are interested in the scandal .... because so many are implicated.
I bet she'll have a damn good lawyer beside her when her turn comes to be questioned. I hope at least that she pays the lawyers fees, and that cost doesn't fall on the public purse.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
The average age of receiving inheritance, for those who do, is around 61. Only someone who spends their time in local Conservative party association meetings considers them the younger generations.
Rubbish. The average age of receiving an inheritance is 47 not 61
And only 22% receive an inheritance, which due to longevity and long term care costs will diminish cash and not forgetting parents who have taken out equity release at punishing interest rates leaving very little to share among their siblings
How is "an inheritance" being defined? Most people must receive some sort of inheritance, but it wouldn't surprise me if only about 22% receive what you might call a significant one.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Paula Vennels is, or at least was, a priest.
Well she’d better start praying, she was in charge when many of the prosecutions occurred, and after there had already been concerns raised as to what was going on.
I think we can guarantee Paula will be absolutely fine.
The public inquiry will conclude, "Mistakes were made but Paula did her best in difficult circumstances. She cannot be blamed for what has happened."
The Archbish will be wheeled out with his platitudes, "Paula has taken biblical inspiration from the young King Solomon, who showed humility in asking God for understanding & forgiveness ..."
And finally, we will be reminded of how she has suffered. "Paula is one of the great victims of this scandal. No one feels worse than Paula about what has happened".
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
Yes but unfortunately it is the law - because of the idiotic universal service policy imposed by a European directive (and gold-plated by New Labour here at the behest of their paymasters, the CWU) that the government hasn't scrapped because any threat to it fills MPs' mailbags like nothing else.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
Yes but unfortunately it is the law - because of the idiotic universal service policy imposed by a European directive (and gold-plated here) that the government hasn't scrapped because any threat to it fills MPs' mailbags like nothing else.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Paula Vennels is, or at least was, a priest.
Well she’d better start praying, she was in charge when many of the prosecutions occurred, and after there had already been concerns raised as to what was going on.
I think we can guarantee Paula will be absolutely fine.
The public inquiry will conclude, "Mistakes were made but Paula did her best in difficult circumstances. She cannot be blamed for what has happened."
The Archbish will be wheeled out with his platitudes, "Paula has taken biblical inspiration from the young King Solomon, who showed humility in asking God for understanding & forgiveness ..."
And finally, we will be reminded of how she has suffered. "Paula is one of the great victims of this scandal. No one feels worse than Paula about what has happened".
To be fair, and perhaps in partial contradiction of my previous post, she has, I understand, stepped down from any priestly duties.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
Yes but unfortunately it is the law - because of the idiotic universal service policy imposed by a European directive (and gold-plated here) that the government hasn't scrapped because any threat to it fills MPs' mailbags like nothing else.
Wouldn't scrapping it solve that problem ?
Not really - the Post Office as well as collecting post it's also used as the banking solution for any / all places that have lost banks over the years.
That of course ignores the other issue that because of this scandal very few people now want to run post offices.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
"Annoying" protesters will be treated much more harshly here under the new police bill.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
It's very widely rumoured in C of E circles that Welby pushed hard for Paula Vennells to become Bishop of London in 2017 (he has a thing about people who have held senior positions before their church careers).
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Paula Vennels is, or at least was, a priest.
Well she’d better start praying, she was in charge when many of the prosecutions occurred, and after there had already been concerns raised as to what was going on.
I think we can guarantee Paula will be absolutely fine.
The public inquiry will conclude, "Mistakes were made but Paula did her best in difficult circumstances. She cannot be blamed for what has happened."
The Archbish will be wheeled out with his platitudes, "Paula has taken biblical inspiration from the young King Solomon, who showed humility in asking God for understanding & forgiveness ..."
And finally, we will be reminded of how she has suffered. "Paula is one of the great victims of this scandal. No one feels worse than Paula about what has happened".
To be fair, and perhaps in partial contradiction of my previous post, she has, I understand, stepped down from any priestly duties.
She should take on the vacant position of Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. She’d fit right in there.
Ms Forbes yesterday said green freeports were “very distinctive” from the kind previously rejected by her government, saying host sites would have to commit to Net Zero by 2045 and embed fair work, though these are not be legal duties.
However Scottish Office minister Iain Stewart later appeared to undermine her, by saying the pursuit of Net Zero had also been “central” to freeports in England, where bidders must help deliver Net Zero by 2050 rather than 2045.
“Johnson cut short his UK tour to return to London in order to convene the meeting to discuss the UK’s consular response.
“He is believed to have received an intelligence briefing upon his return after maintaining there is still time for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis.”
From the Guardian live-blog about 20 minutes ago
Ominousness piled on onimosity. Omino-max
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
Yes but unfortunately it is the law - because of the idiotic universal service policy imposed by a European directive (and gold-plated by New Labour here at the behest of their paymasters, the CWU) that the government hasn't scrapped because any threat to it fills MPs' mailbags like nothing else.
Wasn't the Post Office required to deliver to everyone long before the EU existed? Of all the things I've heard the EU blamed for, I've got to say that the Post Office is a new one. What's the alternative? No postal delivery in rural areas? A different priced stamp for every part of the country?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Paula Vennels is, or at least was, a priest.
Well she’d better start praying, she was in charge when many of the prosecutions occurred, and after there had already been concerns raised as to what was going on.
I think we can guarantee Paula will be absolutely fine.
The public inquiry will conclude, "Mistakes were made but Paula did her best in difficult circumstances. She cannot be blamed for what has happened."
The Archbish will be wheeled out with his platitudes, "Paula has taken biblical inspiration from the young King Solomon, who showed humility in asking God for understanding & forgiveness ..."
And finally, we will be reminded of how she has suffered. "Paula is one of the great victims of this scandal. No one feels worse than Paula about what has happened".
To be fair, and perhaps in partial contradiction of my previous post, she has, I understand, stepped down from any priestly duties.
She finally stepped down in April 2021, after 39 of the convicted former postmasters had their convictions quashed.
She stepped down because she was becoming a public embarrassment.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
Yes but unfortunately it is the law - because of the idiotic universal service policy imposed by a European directive (and gold-plated here) that the government hasn't scrapped because any threat to it fills MPs' mailbags like nothing else.
Wouldn't scrapping it solve that problem ?
Not really - the Post Office as well as collecting post it's also used as the banking solution for any / all places that have lost banks over the years.
That of course ignores the other issue that because of this scandal very few people now want to run post offices.
I can’t accurately express how angry stuff like this makes me. Absolutely disgraceful.
I have no idea why the Post Office even exists at this point. It seems like a relict from another age that serves no function beyond those of a less than averagely good delivery company and a Pound Shop.
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
Yes but unfortunately it is the law - because of the idiotic universal service policy imposed by a European directive (and gold-plated here) that the government hasn't scrapped because any threat to it fills MPs' mailbags like nothing else.
Wouldn't scrapping it solve that problem ?
Not really - the Post Office as well as collecting post it's also used as the banking solution for any / all places that have lost banks over the years.
That of course ignores the other issue that because of this scandal very few people now want to run post offices.
There are quite a few companies running sub-post offices. Are/were any such affected?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Blackmail over plea bargains and asset forfeitures?
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
I think that's wrong. What bothers Putin's Russia is that it might become a successful and prosperous democracy.
"How do you know it is nonsense? Great brains have no idea so how do you?"
+++++
That's my point. It is nonsense to presume we "know", or can "know", that we are all alone, via some fucking daft "equation" with so many imponderables and variables it is almost without utility.
What we know is that life formed, and exploded, on the one planet in our solar system able to host it. And possibly on others in this solar system, maybe several times, we dunno
There are BILLIONS of planets like ours out there, in our galaxy, and there are 200 BILLION galaxies, and we may be just one universe amongst an infinite number which may interact.....
Wild wild guess: we are not alone, we are just like the Easter Islanders, staring at the vastness of a lonely Pacific ocean, and thinking, "Oh well, just us then"
And then they saw the first Dutch Indiaman, sailing over the horizon....
Hi @Leon you have repeated the same flawed argument. Before I explain why again just let me say I have not a clue whether life exists elsewhere and although my background is as a mathematician these theories are way above anything I can understand but I accept they give credence to the likelihood of life hence my doubt one way or another.
However your assumption doesn't hold. It is flawed and I can explain why that is the case because that isn't such advanced maths. You have assumed that because life exists here and there are a huge number of stars and planets that it probably exists elsewhere. This is flawed probability because you are only able to have that thought because it is after the event. You don't exist on Mercury to have the opposite thought. So we could equally be unique. Even if the probability of life is so small that it probably won't happen you are at the after event where it did (probability of 1).Try this analogy: If you win the lottery jackpot one week you could easily be the only winner, but you don't think if I have won there has to be other winners do you? But that is exactly what you are doing.
Does that make sense?
I'm not sure the lottery analogy holds up, if I'm honest. Sure, you might be the sole lucky guy who beat the odds this week in this discrete event. But you know other folk have beaten the same odds before at different times. Doesn't mean you know you will win, but it means you know it can be done.
The point is if you do the thing that leads to the incredibly unlikely thing enough times, you start to build up a cohort of instances where someone somewhere's beaten the odds.
I'm not really sure that that's much different with the emergence of life, with the only real limiting factor being that space is big. Really big. So even when it happens, noone else is nearby enough to see it.
Your last point is the kicker: space is big beyond imagination. Which means that the chance of life (of some kind) being out there is probably quite high...
...but it also means that the chances of us being able to detect or interact with any of that life out there is... very small.
There may now be untold gazillion intelligent civilizations trying to make sense of I Love Lucy, sent out to the Universe decades ago. Signals which weren't meant for us to hear, or perhaps signals simply saying "Hello!" like the Wow! signal.
Of course, "seeing" messages by light requires the observer to have developed the retina first...
There's an xkcd cartoon that's relevant (isn't there always?). The problem is the inverse-square law, which means that our TV and radio signals become very faint, very quickly - as does also the light from stars, which is why the stars we can see with the naked eye are a lot closer than people think.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Another thing they did was to adopt the US tactic of aggressive plea bargaining - threatening imprisonment and dangling the offer of no prison time in exchange for guilty pleas. Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
And then they used the guilty pleas to go after their assets.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
Government's of all parties (including, shamefully, the LD's) seem to have accepted the Post Office's Board's word without question. And when they did move, moved very slowly.
What staggers me is the length of time that the scandal's gone on. I remembered reading about this in a paper (Computer Weekly?) a couple of decades ago, and a colleague's wife was a postmistress, so he talked about the fear - and it was fear - they felt. Yet the PO continued malicious prosecutions and ruining lives for years afterwards.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
Blackmail over plea bargains and asset forfeitures?
False accounting, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice ? The latter carries a maximum sentence of life.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
Don't say anything about the fact that Putin has a tiny pee-pee....
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
The government is currently legislating to make peaceful protest in the UK a potentially criminal act.
It's very widely rumoured in C of E circles that Welby pushed hard for Paula Vennells to become Bishop of London in 2017 (he has a thing about people who have held senior positions before their church careers).
Vennells should be made Archbish of Canterbury and told to apply her no-nonsense business model to the Church.
She could implement the largest branch modernisation programme in ecclesiastical history.
Failing rural parishes could be shut, vicars sent to prison on trumped-up charges.
It will really transform the C of E into a tough & lean organisation, ready to face the challenges of the twenty-first century.
“Johnson cut short his UK tour to return to London in order to convene the meeting to discuss the UK’s consular response.
“He is believed to have received an intelligence briefing upon his return after maintaining there is still time for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis.”
From the Guardian live-blog about 20 minutes ago
Ominousness piled on onimosity. Omino-max
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
20th February, next Sunday, is one of the invasion start dates mooted (I believe because of the end of the Olympics, and the end of the exercises in Belarus).
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
Don't say anything about the fact that Putin has a tiny pee-pee....
Comments
https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/postmistress-who-stole-75000-pay-4811217
No-one is going to touch them with a bargepole for any sort of diligence.
An audit suicide bomb
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ2FLuFVGMg
They take a hit, but people still need auditors.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/feb/15/rocket-on-collision-course-with-the-moon-built-by-china-not-spacex
Keeping track of stuff is hard.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60383594
...A spokesperson for the Trump Organization said the letter from Mazars renders the investigations moot, because it suggests that the financial statements do not contain material discrepancies, according to CBS News....
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
My guess would be a diplomatic evacuation and relocation, with perhaps a few ‘diplomats’ from Hereford going the other way.
Your larger conclusion needs a little more work.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/14/oliver-dowden-says-painful-woke-psychodrama-weakening-the-west
Silly hyperbole doesn’t do your case any good even when your basic point is correct.
The tendency has been for the senior management to seek to protect the institution at all costs, even if that means covering up very serious allegations or complaints, and even if more people suffer as a result.
https://twitter.com/rburgessbbc/status/1493459882716106752?s=21
Novak Djokovic will never get COVID jab - even if it means missing tournaments
>Says he didn't break the rules on COVID or entry to Australia
>Distances himself from anti-vax movement
>Is prepared to miss French Open + Wimbledon if it comes to it
>Defends freedom to choose
https://twitter.com/amolrajan/status/1493465816368652292
The most likely tool of mass murder next time round is nuclear holocaust. However, it is not the only candidate.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-urges-americans-belarus-part-moldova-leave-now/story
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
Interestingly, I was listening to a Podcast (The Wigs) with a bunch of Australian Lawyers. They took a rather dim view of the decision, and the stated reasons for the decision, to remove Djokovic from Australia. It does seem that Ministers in Australia have a lot more power than our own. Perhaps it isn't only Australian-style immigration the UK Government would be interested in replicating?
*Grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*
The denizens of British society are more likely to be sober.
Just for a change!
I didn't realise that the improvement in PO profits matched the 'missing' money.
There are a couple of things which puzzle me. It seems that, either by accident or design, neighbouring sub-postmasters, who might have got together, or known each other, were rarely, if ever, prosecuted.
And, while I've read that the Sub-Postmasters Union was in the pocket of Post Office management it seems odd that rarely did those accused appear to seek help from the Union. Surely someone, somewhere would have tried blowing whistles earlier.
And that's to ignore the various scandals up here. The trams are an example that impacts me every day.
At least Stuart and HYUFD are honest - they both expose the nasty underbellies of their political philosophies.
The question is, what does the government do about that? It could try clawing money back from those responsible, but they're not so rich that's likely to cover the black hole. Or they could pump in more money, which would be politically sensitive. Or slim down the service, but given it's most popular with oldies in rural and suburban areas that would be extremely courageous, minister.
It could cause them a great many issues.
Thoroughly deserved though, given the laxity of oversight. Just as I have no sympathy with shareholders of banks that get into trouble - it's their job to hold the board to account and if they fail to do it why should I pay for their complacency?
We were talking about conformism, which is not the same thing as "excusing authoritarians".
Unlike the latter, the former is a human characteristic that's required for a functioning society. It's not healthy if it isn't balanced by scepticism, but either on their own and to excess are likely to be disfunctional.
It’s whoppers all the way down.
https://trib.al/q2MggPf https://twitter.com/BloombergUK/status/1493483657205592066/photo/1
He's such a slippery snake. He's obviously trying to play Churchill, which includes ramping up rhetoric and getting the tabloids on board. It's not just about saving Ukraine. It's about saving Boris Johnson.
This is different but it saved Margaret Thatcher in 1981/2.
Mind you, with the Mauritius raising their flag on the Chagos Islands perhaps he could launch a Task Force to the Indian Ocean?!
Faced with what had happened to so many others, it's understandable that numerous innocent people pleaded guilty.
Mr. Doethur, I'm confused. Why ae* you grabbing ducks?
Edited extra bit: *are, even.
It is one of the worst scandals in British history, and yet no one seems to care.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with people being 'selfish' and providing for themselves.
If someone wants to work in order to earn money for other people, there's nothing preventing them giving that money to those other people while they're still alive instead of as an inheritance.
Have a good morning.
Morally, people from Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail over this. But what could they be charged with?
See also: the House of Lords, the Red Arrows, the Royal Family, Morgan cars, the BBC, the CoE and Tony Robinson.
Some of us have posted bits about it all on here from time to time for quite a while. But it's only with the setting aside of convictions, and the start of the statutory enquiry that its got any real traction.
That most if this happened when the criminal justice system was less parlously resourced than it is now is perhaps concerning.
https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1493481619360989185?t=0aO0U0_KmaUjRxD7ikRmLQ&s=19
Lower fertility rate (half women born 1990 are childless) shorter life expectancy and increased immigration than previous predictions.
In the short to medium term good for public finances, and a UK population projection of less than 72 million by 2080 rather than 82 million.
A lot of the trends are international, perhaps even more dramatic elsewhere.
Royal Mail is a pretty poor (but very expensive) delivery company, certainly compared to say DPD which is absolutely brilliant. They were left behind by private companies who do it better, faster and cheaper.
Post Office as counter service might have a viable function still? Not sure.
Lambeth Palace, 10th January 2020
“Thank you for your recent email. Much as he would like to, the Archbishop is unable to respond personally and in detail to all the emails and letters that he receives, so I have been asked to reply to you on his behalf.
The Reverend Paula Vennells is a priest in the Diocese of St Albans. The Archbishop cannot and does not intervene in the running of individual dioceses and parishes outside his own diocese of Canterbury, therefore you may wish to direct your concerns to the Bishop of St Albans, in whose diocese Ms Vennells is licensed.
Thank you again for taking the time to write."
I have found time and again that those who profess to be publicly progressive tend to have a very different attitude when called upon to investigate their own organization.
Vennells was also appointed to the C of E’s ethical investment advisory group.
This group’s job is to advise the Church on how to invest its fortune with Christian values in mind, including through the selection of businesses with enlightened employment practices.
Few people are interested in the scandal .... because so many are implicated.
Scotland Yard will reveal how many people are fined at each ‘partygate’ event they are investigating.
From a leaked Q&A sent to civil servants. It means we will know how many (if any) are fined for the alleged Downing St ‘Abba party’. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/14/police-reveal-number-fines-issued-partygate-gatherings/
... but she insists it was sent by mistake
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10511503/Boris-Johnsons-new-aide-accused-undermining-UK-world-stage.html
The public inquiry will conclude, "Mistakes were made but Paula did her best in difficult circumstances. She cannot be blamed for what has happened."
The Archbish will be wheeled out with his platitudes, "Paula has taken biblical inspiration from the young King Solomon, who showed humility in asking God for understanding & forgiveness ..."
And finally, we will be reminded of how she has suffered. "Paula is one of the great victims of this scandal. No one feels worse than Paula about what has happened".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60354068
That of course ignores the other issue that because of this scandal very few people now want to run post offices.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/penny-mordaunt-tory-leadership-candidates-replace-boris-johnson-1459863
However Scottish Office minister Iain Stewart later appeared to undermine her, by saying the pursuit of Net Zero had also been “central” to freeports in England, where bidders must help deliver Net Zero by 2050 rather than 2045.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19924092.snp-leadership-face-backlash-party-grassroots-freeports/?ref=twtrec
“Johnson cut short his UK tour to return to London in order to convene the meeting to discuss the UK’s consular response.
“He is believed to have received an intelligence briefing upon his return after maintaining there is still time for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis.”
From the Guardian live-blog about 20 minutes ago
Ominousness piled on onimosity. Omino-max
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
She stepped down because she was becoming a public embarrassment.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/14/oliver-dowden-says-painful-woke-psychodrama-weakening-the-west
Some of you on here will love it but it's vile.
What bothers Putin's Russia is that it might become a successful and prosperous democracy.
The latter carries a maximum sentence of life.
She could implement the largest branch modernisation programme in ecclesiastical history.
Failing rural parishes could be shut, vicars sent to prison on trumped-up charges.
It will really transform the C of E into a tough & lean organisation, ready to face the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Sorry, People of Kiev.