The whole thing seems so utterly wrong that it seems incomprehensible that it's happened in what is supposed to be a democracy with a good legal system. It's abhorrent, in terms of what happened, the effect it has had on victims, the lack of clarity, the cover-ups, and most of all, the length of time it has gone on.
I'm also slightly saddened by the lack of anger amongst the public about it; it just does not seem to have cut-through to the public in the way other matters do. Perhaps it's because it is complex; or perhaps the 'wrong' sort of people were affected. Or perhaps it is because it was a nationalised company when the worst excesses happened.
Computer Weekly, by the way, have been excellent on this, all the way through.
The lack of public anger is disappointing. It is partly for the reasons you recognise. It is complex. Even anoraks like me have difficulty following it. It is also partly because because the true horror is hard to comprehend.
You might have thought that the fact the victims were very much People Like Us would have inflamed passions and in some cases the victims were indeed strongly supported by their local communities. In others, the locals hardly knew anything about it. One of the worst cases occurred at South End Green, at the southern end of Hampstead. I know the place well and have used the PO there many times, but I didn't have a clue what had happened until I read Nick Wallis's book. I think in rural communities, awareness has been better but I think on the whole the public still retains the notion of the fluffy old Post Office that everyone likes.
Racism is clearly an aggravating factor. A proper study will be done in due course, I expect, but there is already plenty of evidence that Asian Subpostmasters got shittier treatment than white folk.
Computer Weekly was brilliant.
Surely the lack of public anger is a reflection of how little coverage it is getting compared to, say, the COVID enquiry.
If the Post Office Enquiry had more prominence then I suspect there would be quite a bit of anger. Aside from the odd news article and Panorama once in a blue moon this story is relegated to the back burner. Stories of women "binge drinking", a farcical claim in itself, get far more prominence on the news.
What the Post Office victims need are good lobbyists/PR to pester news rooms to get their stories on air but who really cares about a grave injustice perpetuated on a group of largely middle class people from the shires. Theyre not deemed worthy enough.
That part of the Post Office is subsidized by the more profitable parts.
The same as the UK in that case. So that doesn't explain the price difference.
Prediction: this time next month there will be a major row about excess postage charges on Christmas cards, owing to confusion over the new size-based pricing for letters, and the Royal Mail imposing a £2.50 excess charge to hand over Granny's card.
Given that it is mostly pensioners who still send Christmas cards in the post, surely this can be dealt with by giving all pensioners a tax free Christmas Card Bonus Payment, say £125 or perhaps lets round it up to £150 to account for birthdays and Easter too.
We stopped sending Xmas cards last year, due to the strikes. Waste of time. We are not planning to resume sending them this year.
These figures are always revised.i don't think you can say no growth yet.. indeed growth may be negative, but you smare being a bit presumptuous to state it as a fact.
Whilst that's true, and the plus sign in +0.2% makes it sound an awful lot better than 0, let alone -0.2%, it doesn't really matter.
The key thing is that the growth in the economy is nowhere near enough for us to collectively afford nice things. And for lots of individuals, there will be a negative sign on their personal financial growth.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
These figures are always revised.i don't think you can say no growth yet.. indeed growth may be negative, but you smare being a bit presumptuous to state it as a fact.
Whilst that's true, and the plus sign in +0.2% makes it sound an awful lot better than 0, let alone -0.2%, it doesn't really matter.
The key thing is that the growth in the economy is nowhere near enough for us to collectively afford nice things. And for lots of individuals, there will be a negative sign on their personal financial growth.
This is the economic stat that should scare us all and usually is a huge red flag for the economy and individuals.
The number of mortgage holders who have fallen behind on their payments climbed in the third quarter in a sign that higher interest rates are increasing financial pressure on homeowners and landlords.
Figures from UK Finance, the trade body for the banking industry, showed that 87,930 homeowner mortgages were in arrears in the three months to the end of September, up 7 per cent compared with the preceding quarter and 18 per cent on a year earlier.
The rise was even bigger on buy-to-let loans, with 11,540 in arrears in the third quarter, a 29 per cent jump from the second and a doubling compared with the same period in 2022.
It does appear that there are junior staff from decades ago caught like rabbits in the headlights in this post office inquiry. It was a similar thing with the Grenfell Inquiry, some of the main witnesses regarding the cladding were graduates in their first job. There is a definite tendency to attack individuals
No. There is a definite tendency to shift blame onto people outside the magic circle.
Above a certain level, failure is
1) A definite fuck up 2) A vaguely worded statement which could be held to mean that the person in question feels slightly less than happy about how things went. 3) voluntary resignation/end of contract 4) due to legal constraints, regretfully, a huge golden goodbye needs to be paid on top of the pension. 5) a glowing reference for the next job
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
On Suella (I’m getting the feeling she might not be a team player) it’s interesting how the story is being presented on the radio this morning. The headline is “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to sack Suella Braverman”.
Now personally I think she’s poisonous and egotistic and has no place in a cabinet government with a personality that puts her future prospects over actively doing her job but I find it a good example of how the media takes a view which can be biased without realising it (I’m being charitable).
So the headline talks about calls to sack her. It could equally have been “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to keep Suella Braverman”. There are MPs in the party who are angry with her and disagree with her and those that support what she has said and agree with her. Why does a media organisation choose which side has more weight?
Equally if they are using calls from political opponents or those with vested interests (such as former police people) then it’s a case of MRDA so should not be pushing their call for her sacking.
If they then balanced it up with a poll of whether voters agreed with her or not then it might swing it another way.
I understand that journalists are much more interested in big stories and so a senior minister being sacked is great for them but their desires shouldn’t be driving reporting, the facts should.
So would a fair and unbiased headline be “Rishi Sunak is considering the mixed reaction to Suella Braverman’s Times article.”
Hopefully her Rwanda plan will be ruled illegal on Wednesday and so she can be sacked having been proven to be useless and not go out as a martyr.
The whole thing seems so utterly wrong that it seems incomprehensible that it's happened in what is supposed to be a democracy with a good legal system. It's abhorrent, in terms of what happened, the effect it has had on victims, the lack of clarity, the cover-ups, and most of all, the length of time it has gone on.
I'm also slightly saddened by the lack of anger amongst the public about it; it just does not seem to have cut-through to the public in the way other matters do. Perhaps it's because it is complex; or perhaps the 'wrong' sort of people were affected. Or perhaps it is because it was a nationalised company when the worst excesses happened.
Computer Weekly, by the way, have been excellent on this, all the way through.
The lack of public anger is disappointing. It is partly for the reasons you recognise. It is complex. Even anoraks like me have difficulty following it. It is also partly because because the true horror is hard to comprehend.
You might have thought that the fact the victims were very much People Like Us would have inflamed passions and in some cases the victims were indeed strongly supported by their local communities. In others, the locals hardly knew anything about it. One of the worst cases occurred at South End Green, at the southern end of Hampstead. I know the place well and have used the PO there many times, but I didn't have a clue what had happened until I read Nick Wallis's book. I think in rural communities, awareness has been better but I think on the whole the public still retains the notion of the fluffy old Post Office that everyone likes.
Racism is clearly an aggravating factor. A proper study will be done in due course, I expect, but there is already plenty of evidence that Asian Subpostmasters got shittier treatment than white folk.
Computer Weekly was brilliant.
Surely the lack of public anger is a reflection of how little coverage it is getting compared to, say, the COVID enquiry.
If the Post Office Enquiry had more prominence then I suspect there would be quite a bit of anger. Aside from the odd news article and Panorama once in a blue moon this story is relegated to the back burner. Stories of women "binge drinking", a farcical claim in itself, get far more prominence on the news.
What the Post Office victims need are good lobbyists/PR to pester news rooms to get their stories on air but who really cares about a grave injustice perpetuated on a group of largely middle class people from the shires. Theyre not deemed worthy enough.
You are partly right, Taz, but in a case as egregious as this the problem goes right to the very top, and by that I mean Government, and not just the PO Board.
So how do you hold the Government to account, except in the usual fashion? Sure, this one is due for the bullet in about a year's time, but will the next one show a greater commitment to justice, especially in respect of a scandal in which it is by no means innocent?
Do have to laugh. Have successfully baited anti-EV freaks to swarm onto my YouTube channel. A lunatic surge in views, watch hours and subscribers yesterday evening, which has continued at an absurd pace for the whole of today.
They come in, watch my videos and post negative comments about Tesla and EVs. Lots of "woke" and "WEF" warnings, even a few anti-vaxxers. Which I happily respond to. But all they are doing is driving the algorithm to push my stuff to even more people.
I'm almost disappointed by yesterday's revenue. Despite being 171% higher than my previous best revenue day I wondered if it might be higher. Expect that today will be bigger again. All hail Daily Mail / GBeebies morons! They are very profitable if you can exploit them.
"anti-EV freaks"
Enough said... About them. And you.
This lot are freaks. They have been fed a diet of nonsense by the right wing media and won't drop it. They all say the same things - which are fact free. And then wander off into WEF paranoia.
It's frustrating to deal with these people, but ultimately it's good news that the vaccine/5G crazies have taken up EVs, 15 minute cities and LTNs as their next topic. No serious politician can oppose them without being grouped in with the conspiracy theorists.
Otoh, the boiler/heat pump debate seems to be a bit more salient in the general population, which is a shame. Even in the US there were heat pumps installations than boilers last year.
I'm disappointed TSE(?) went with 'return to sender' instead of 'time to go postal.'
Because let's face it, the best outcome would be for the judge to go postal on them.
(I fear he won't, by the way. He's had ample opportunities to hold them in contempt and not done so.)
He should certainly have stepped in on Cottam, who was clearly acting dumb to thwart the Inquiry. The barrister questioning her has the patience and persistence of a saint, but his exasperation was self-evident. Yet Sir Wyn Nice-Old-Thing Williams refrained from intervening.
No, she clearly is dumb.
She is also a great many other things. None of them good.
Mrs PtP and I debated this at great length and concluded that whilst evidently dumb, she was also deliberately obfuscating and deceiving to the best of her ability.
She was also rude, prickly, and totally lacking in compassion for the poor sods who suffered at her hands, and many like her.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Do have to laugh. Have successfully baited anti-EV freaks to swarm onto my YouTube channel. A lunatic surge in views, watch hours and subscribers yesterday evening, which has continued at an absurd pace for the whole of today.
They come in, watch my videos and post negative comments about Tesla and EVs. Lots of "woke" and "WEF" warnings, even a few anti-vaxxers. Which I happily respond to. But all they are doing is driving the algorithm to push my stuff to even more people.
I'm almost disappointed by yesterday's revenue. Despite being 171% higher than my previous best revenue day I wondered if it might be higher. Expect that today will be bigger again. All hail Daily Mail / GBeebies morons! They are very profitable if you can exploit them.
"anti-EV freaks"
Enough said... About them. And you.
This lot are freaks. They have been fed a diet of nonsense by the right wing media and won't drop it. They all say the same things - which are fact free. And then wander off into WEF paranoia.
It's frustrating to deal with these people, but ultimately it's good news that the vaccine/5G crazies have taken up EVs, 15 minute cities and LTNs as their next topic. No serious politician can oppose them without being grouped in with the conspiracy theorists.
Otoh, the boiler/heat pump debate seems to be a bit more salient in the general population, which is a shame. Even in the US there were heat pumps installations than boilers last year.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Do have to laugh. Have successfully baited anti-EV freaks to swarm onto my YouTube channel. A lunatic surge in views, watch hours and subscribers yesterday evening, which has continued at an absurd pace for the whole of today.
They come in, watch my videos and post negative comments about Tesla and EVs. Lots of "woke" and "WEF" warnings, even a few anti-vaxxers. Which I happily respond to. But all they are doing is driving the algorithm to push my stuff to even more people.
I'm almost disappointed by yesterday's revenue. Despite being 171% higher than my previous best revenue day I wondered if it might be higher. Expect that today will be bigger again. All hail Daily Mail / GBeebies morons! They are very profitable if you can exploit them.
"anti-EV freaks"
Enough said... About them. And you.
This lot are freaks. They have been fed a diet of nonsense by the right wing media and won't drop it. They all say the same things - which are fact free. And then wander off into WEF paranoia.
It's frustrating to deal with these people, but ultimately it's good news that the vaccine/5G crazies have taken up EVs, 15 minute cities and LTNs as their next topic. No serious politician can oppose them without being grouped in with the conspiracy theorists.
Otoh, the boiler/heat pump debate seems to be a bit more salient in the general population, which is a shame. Even in the US there were heat pumps installations than boilers last year.
I don't mind. I knew what I was getting in for. A massive boost to JustGetATesla (on the back of what had already been a very successful October). They won't post comments forever, but as they like to argue and feel superior they may stick around for a bit.
The YouTube algorithm likes it when videos go viral and people swarm in and comment. And when you interact with their comments. So I'll get a huge boost in how it pushes my videos out, as well as a stack of cash from ad revenue.
I've also learned some video shooting / editing tricks from the channels I went baiting, so will improve my own production too.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
What was the CPS involvement in these cases, and at what time and senority?
Important implications for a former head of the CPS.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
One of the most shocking revelations of the scandal is just how much power the PO had as investigator and (private) prosecutor.
For many years it used this power prudently. Then the Board changed, its mandate changed, and it acquired Horizon. All hell was then let loose.
On Suella (I’m getting the feeling she might not be a team player) it’s interesting how the story is being presented on the radio this morning. The headline is “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to sack Suella Braverman”.
Now personally I think she’s poisonous and egotistic and has no place in a cabinet government with a personality that puts her future prospects over actively doing her job but I find it a good example of how the media takes a view which can be biased without realising it (I’m being charitable).
So the headline talks about calls to sack her. It could equally have been “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to keep Suella Braverman”. There are MPs in the party who are angry with her and disagree with her and those that support what she has said and agree with her. Why does a media organisation choose which side has more weight?
Equally if they are using calls from political opponents or those with vested interests (such as former police people) then it’s a case of MRDA so should not be pushing their call for her sacking.
If they then balanced it up with a poll of whether voters agreed with her or not then it might swing it another way.
I understand that journalists are much more interested in big stories and so a senior minister being sacked is great for them but their desires shouldn’t be driving reporting, the facts should.
So would a fair and unbiased headline be “Rishi Sunak is considering the mixed reaction to Suella Braverman’s Times article.”
Hopefully her Rwanda plan will be ruled illegal on Wednesday and so she can be sacked having been proven to be useless and not go out as a martyr.
Journalists much prefer the sacking story as it’s more headline grabbing. As for the Rwanda appeal I’m in two minds here .
Much as I’d want the government to lose the appeal on the other hand if they lose it would be down to Article 3 of the ECHR and then we’ll have the next year turning into the right wing media and the Tories likely calling for the UK to leave that.
That would cause all manner of problems especially in terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Do have to laugh. Have successfully baited anti-EV freaks to swarm onto my YouTube channel. A lunatic surge in views, watch hours and subscribers yesterday evening, which has continued at an absurd pace for the whole of today.
They come in, watch my videos and post negative comments about Tesla and EVs. Lots of "woke" and "WEF" warnings, even a few anti-vaxxers. Which I happily respond to. But all they are doing is driving the algorithm to push my stuff to even more people.
I'm almost disappointed by yesterday's revenue. Despite being 171% higher than my previous best revenue day I wondered if it might be higher. Expect that today will be bigger again. All hail Daily Mail / GBeebies morons! They are very profitable if you can exploit them.
"anti-EV freaks"
Enough said... About them. And you.
This lot are freaks. They have been fed a diet of nonsense by the right wing media and won't drop it. They all say the same things - which are fact free. And then wander off into WEF paranoia.
It's frustrating to deal with these people, but ultimately it's good news that the vaccine/5G crazies have taken up EVs, 15 minute cities and LTNs as their next topic. No serious politician can oppose them without being grouped in with the conspiracy theorists.
Otoh, the boiler/heat pump debate seems to be a bit more salient in the general population, which is a shame. Even in the US there were heat pumps installations than boilers last year.
I don't mind. I knew what I was getting in for. A massive boost to JustGetATesla (on the back of what had already been a very successful October). They won't post comments forever, but as they like to argue and feel superior they may stick around for a bit.
The YouTube algorithm likes it when videos go viral and people swarm in and comment. And when you interact with their comments. So I'll get a huge boost in how it pushes my videos out, as well as a stack of cash from ad revenue.
I've also learned some video shooting / editing tricks from the channels I went baiting, so will improve my own production too.
On Suella (I’m getting the feeling she might not be a team player) it’s interesting how the story is being presented on the radio this morning. The headline is “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to sack Suella Braverman”.
Now personally I think she’s poisonous and egotistic and has no place in a cabinet government with a personality that puts her future prospects over actively doing her job but I find it a good example of how the media takes a view which can be biased without realising it (I’m being charitable).
So the headline talks about calls to sack her. It could equally have been “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to keep Suella Braverman”. There are MPs in the party who are angry with her and disagree with her and those that support what she has said and agree with her. Why does a media organisation choose which side has more weight?
Equally if they are using calls from political opponents or those with vested interests (such as former police people) then it’s a case of MRDA so should not be pushing their call for her sacking.
If they then balanced it up with a poll of whether voters agreed with her or not then it might swing it another way.
I understand that journalists are much more interested in big stories and so a senior minister being sacked is great for them but their desires shouldn’t be driving reporting, the facts should.
So would a fair and unbiased headline be “Rishi Sunak is considering the mixed reaction to Suella Braverman’s Times article.”
Hopefully her Rwanda plan will be ruled illegal on Wednesday and so she can be sacked having been proven to be useless and not go out as a martyr.
Isn't the problem for the headline writers that "Rishi Sunak decides not to take any action" would hardly be news?
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
What was the CPS involvement in these cases, and at what time and senority?
Important implications for a former head of the CPS.
None so far as I am aware. These were private prosecutions and solicitors at private law firms were involved in drawing up the indictments etc.
Interesting factoid I didn’t know until recently was that in the nineteenth century the Police instructed a private law firm to do the work now done by the CPS. They then took it in house before it was farmed out again to the CPS in the 1980s.
After decades of selfless public service, Joe Manchin has decided to sail off into the sunset in his multiple yachts.
He will be fondly remembered for his heroic opposition to climate change, build back better, voting rights and filibuster reform…and of course, for supporting Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
He was the best of the Republicans in the Democratic Party.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
The GDP deflator in this last quarter was 7.9%, annual. That looks high to me, even taking the ONS point about imports being more expensive. My guess would be that they will eventually decide it was too high and some growth will magically appear.
In fairness to the ONS it is much more difficult to get the deflator right in a time of high and rapidly changing inflation than it was in the years where inflation was low and predictable.
The best indicator as to whether I am right or not will be tax revenues. If they remain above expectations then the economy is growing.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
Sort of on topic: the staff at my local Post Office provide an essential frontline service. They assist Ukrainian refugees with bank accounts and topping up mobile phones, young people with driving licenses, benefit claimants with cash withdrawals, older people with loneliness.
Like pressure on emergency services, the queue at the Post Office reflects the weaknesses of society and government in general. The manager, an immigrant himself, gives me a wave when we cross paths and has seemingly unending patience and cheer.
If this scandal had affected the police, ambulance service or even an organisation like Citizens Advice, I wonder if it would have had a higher profile.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
The GDP deflator in this last quarter was 7.9%, annual. That looks high to me, even taking the ONS point about imports being more expensive. My guess would be that they will eventually decide it was too high and some growth will magically appear.
In fairness to the ONS it is much more difficult to get the deflator right in a time of high and rapidly changing inflation than it was in the years where inflation was low and predictable.
The best indicator as to whether I am right or not will be tax revenues. If they remain above expectations then the economy is growing.
Or the relationship between tax revenues and economic growth has been modelled incorrectly? Income tax self-assessment, for example, is also hard to assess in these conditions.
The whole thing seems so utterly wrong that it seems incomprehensible that it's happened in what is supposed to be a democracy with a good legal system. It's abhorrent, in terms of what happened, the effect it has had on victims, the lack of clarity, the cover-ups, and most of all, the length of time it has gone on.
I'm also slightly saddened by the lack of anger amongst the public about it; it just does not seem to have cut-through to the public in the way other matters do. Perhaps it's because it is complex; or perhaps the 'wrong' sort of people were affected. Or perhaps it is because it was a nationalised company when the worst excesses happened.
Computer Weekly, by the way, have been excellent on this, all the way through.
The lack of public anger is disappointing. It is partly for the reasons you recognise. It is complex. Even anoraks like me have difficulty following it. It is also partly because because the true horror is hard to comprehend.
You might have thought that the fact the victims were very much People Like Us would have inflamed passions and in some cases the victims were indeed strongly supported by their local communities. In others, the locals hardly knew anything about it. One of the worst cases occurred at South End Green, at the southern end of Hampstead. I know the place well and have used the PO there many times, but I didn't have a clue what had happened until I read Nick Wallis's book. I think in rural communities, awareness has been better but I think on the whole the public still retains the notion of the fluffy old Post Office that everyone likes.
Racism is clearly an aggravating factor. A proper study will be done in due course, I expect, but there is already plenty of evidence that Asian Subpostmasters got shittier treatment than white folk.
Computer Weekly was brilliant.
Surely the lack of public anger is a reflection of how little coverage it is getting compared to, say, the COVID enquiry.
If the Post Office Enquiry had more prominence then I suspect there would be quite a bit of anger. Aside from the odd news article and Panorama once in a blue moon this story is relegated to the back burner. Stories of women "binge drinking", a farcical claim in itself, get far more prominence on the news.
What the Post Office victims need are good lobbyists/PR to pester news rooms to get their stories on air but who really cares about a grave injustice perpetuated on a group of largely middle class people from the shires. Theyre not deemed worthy enough.
You are partly right, Taz, but in a case as egregious as this the problem goes right to the very top, and by that I mean Government, and not just the PO Board.
So how do you hold the Government to account, except in the usual fashion? Sure, this one is due for the bullet in about a year's time, but will the next one show a greater commitment to justice, especially in respect of a scandal in which it is by no means innocent?
Doubt it somehow.
So do I, given, as has been pointed out this happened under both Labour and the Tories. The Politicians main priority will be protecting themselves.
Sort of on topic: the staff at my local Post Office provide an essential frontline service. They assist Ukrainian refugees with bank accounts and topping up mobile phones, young people with driving licenses, benefit claimants with cash withdrawals, older people with loneliness.
Like pressure on emergency services, the queue at the Post Office reflects the weaknesses of society and government in general. The manager, an immigrant himself, gives me a wave when we cross paths and has seemingly unending patience and cheer.
If this scandal had affected the police, ambulance service or even an organisation like Citizens Advice, I wonder if it would have had a higher profile.
I am sure you are right.
Your Subpostmaster appears entirely typical. It is obscene that such people should have been so cruelly treated.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
One 79-year-old homeowner, who did not want to be named, told the BBC he had cut back on other costs as much as he could, but was only able to pay part of his mortgage bill each month.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
The perception I have is that the revisions tend to be more up than down, but I wonder if this is my bias showing, and that I only notice when it goes up? Not convinced though. Is there a link somewhere to historic trends in the revisions? Probably not, as it’s a bit niche!
So it looks, at the moment, like no recession in 2023 and end year growth will come in at an initial 0.9% and probably revised up to ~1.2% after taking ONS lowballing into account.
While that's not brilliant, given the inflation and interest rate environment it's also a lot better than it could have been. If I'm right and final numbers end up at 1.2%, it would be a 1.8% swing from the IMF prediction of -0.6% at the beginning of the year.
Next year should actually be an improvement too, inflation will be under 4%, real terms pay increases and a fairly good chance that the BoE cuts interest rates in Q2 or Q3.
The next budget needs ti be bold, increase investment, make full expensing permanent and add intangibles investments into the allowed categories.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
It's a problem of long-standing.
Growth was revised up quite sharply, for 1990-93 and 2010-12. Tim's "Osborne recession" of 2012 never actaully happened.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
Hmm ..... First, her evidence contradicts what the lawyer said so the latter is now in some trouble. Second, I have been an in-house lawyer helping witnesses prepare their statements for criminal trials and what has happened here is so far below any level of professionalism that it is embarrassing and evidence of something much worse. Third, Ms Cottam was not some junior. She had a senior position with a lot of responsibility. Fourth, she claimed not to remember a lot of things but managed - somehow- to remember that the SPM in question had a husband who made calls and was probably dishonest though she was forced to retract that quickly. So I tend to the deliberately amnesiac and malicious end of the scale in her case rather than the forgetful junior unable to remember stuff from 20 years ago.
Where I do agree is that the lawyers involved here - both internal and external - have utterly disgraced themselves and should, at a minimum, be struck off and in some cases be prosecuted.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
The GDP deflator in this last quarter was 7.9%, annual. That looks high to me, even taking the ONS point about imports being more expensive. My guess would be that they will eventually decide it was too high and some growth will magically appear.
In fairness to the ONS it is much more difficult to get the deflator right in a time of high and rapidly changing inflation than it was in the years where inflation was low and predictable.
The best indicator as to whether I am right or not will be tax revenues. If they remain above expectations then the economy is growing.
Or the relationship between tax revenues and economic growth has been modelled incorrectly? Income tax self-assessment, for example, is also hard to assess in these conditions.
True. Volatility makes everything harder for forecasters and we had a tremendous surge in inflation followed by a sharp drop which has not finished yet.
For me, the scariest statistic that came out recently was M4 going negative. Next year is likely to be flat at best, not ideal for a government already struggling.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
So that's three of us that agree - you, me, and Ms Cyclefree. Now we just need to persuade Sir Wyn Niceoldthing.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
The perception I have is that the revisions tend to be more up than down, but I wonder if this is my bias showing, and that I only notice when it goes up? Not convinced though. Is there a link somewhere to historic trends in the revisions? Probably not, as it’s a bit niche!
No, you're not wrong, ONS annual revisions add ~0.45% onto UK GDP. It's quite widely known and taken into account when projections are made.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
So that's threre of us that agree - you, me, and Ms Cyclefree. Now we just need to persuade Sir Wyn Niceoldthing.
And the relevant Minister who has the power to suspend under the Act. The Government remains remarkably uninterested in this disgrace.
On Suella (I’m getting the feeling she might not be a team player) it’s interesting how the story is being presented on the radio this morning. The headline is “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to sack Suella Braverman”.
Now personally I think she’s poisonous and egotistic and has no place in a cabinet government with a personality that puts her future prospects over actively doing her job but I find it a good example of how the media takes a view which can be biased without realising it (I’m being charitable).
So the headline talks about calls to sack her. It could equally have been “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to keep Suella Braverman”. There are MPs in the party who are angry with her and disagree with her and those that support what she has said and agree with her. Why does a media organisation choose which side has more weight?
Equally if they are using calls from political opponents or those with vested interests (such as former police people) then it’s a case of MRDA so should not be pushing their call for her sacking.
If they then balanced it up with a poll of whether voters agreed with her or not then it might swing it another way.
I understand that journalists are much more interested in big stories and so a senior minister being sacked is great for them but their desires shouldn’t be driving reporting, the facts should.
So would a fair and unbiased headline be “Rishi Sunak is considering the mixed reaction to Suella Braverman’s Times article.”
Hopefully her Rwanda plan will be ruled illegal on Wednesday and so she can be sacked having been proven to be useless and not go out as a martyr.
Surely the appropriate headline is "It would take a braver man than Rishi to sack Braverman?"
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
It's a problem of long-standing.
Growth was revised up quite sharply, for 1990-93 and 2010-12. Tim's "Osborne recession" of 2012 never actaully happened.
Just dropping in to say that I agree 100% with Cyclefree here. Where are the prosecutions? Where are the executives booted out & their pensions revoked for bringing the Post Office into disrepute by perjuring themselves? Where is the shirt rending, the wailing & gnashing of teeth?
Above all, where are the /consequences/ ?
As Malmesbury keeps reminding us, the modern executive layer, in both the public & private sphere, has built walls around itself so that there are never any consequences, ever. If we can, we should break these walls.
These figures are always revised.i don't think you can say no growth yet.. indeed growth may be negative, but you smare being a bit presumptuous to state it as a fact.
Whilst that's true, and the plus sign in +0.2% makes it sound an awful lot better than 0, let alone -0.2%, it doesn't really matter.
The key thing is that the growth in the economy is nowhere near enough for us to collectively afford nice things. And for lots of individuals, there will be a negative sign on their personal financial growth.
This is the economic stat that should scare us all and usually is a huge red flag for the economy and individuals.
The number of mortgage holders who have fallen behind on their payments climbed in the third quarter in a sign that higher interest rates are increasing financial pressure on homeowners and landlords.
Figures from UK Finance, the trade body for the banking industry, showed that 87,930 homeowner mortgages were in arrears in the three months to the end of September, up 7 per cent compared with the preceding quarter and 18 per cent on a year earlier.
The rise was even bigger on buy-to-let loans, with 11,540 in arrears in the third quarter, a 29 per cent jump from the second and a doubling compared with the same period in 2022.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
It's a problem of long-standing.
Growth was revised up quite sharply, for 1990-93 and 2010-12. Tim's "Osborne recession" of 2012 never actaully happened.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
Re your last paragraph, I doubt it. 2 people have been referred by one of the previous judges to the Met for possible perversion of justice. That was 3 years ago. One of them - Gareth Jenkins of Fujitsu - has yet to be interviewed by the inquiry because of the Post Office's disclosure failures.
One 79-year-old homeowner, who did not want to be named, told the BBC he had cut back on other costs as much as he could, but was only able to pay part of his mortgage bill each month.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
It's a problem of long-standing.
Growth was revised up quite sharply, for 1990-93 and 2010-12. Tim's "Osborne recession" of 2012 never actaully happened.
One can also add the 1985-89 period, where growth turned out to be twice as high as initial estimates.
It may just seem like numbers, but it has real life consequences.
Strange the ONS were more accurate during the 1997-2010 period, wonder why that was
One possibility is that a lot of lower level economic activity is now funnelled through individualised 0-hour contracts constructed to evade IR35 via staffing firms. I’ve read of security guards being employed on this kind of basis for instance.
If using individual ltd companies, this might not show up in the accounts until end of year corporation tax returns are made? It would depend on how income they are funnelling through PAYE I guess.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
That would involve action from either the Judge - too feeble, naive and/or wedded to the legal process - or Badenoch: too bloody useless.
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
Apart from the exception of the covid years (which showed lockdown did less damage to the economy than thought) the final revisions are pretty tiny, typically 0.1 or 0.2%, and equally likely to be up or down.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
It's a problem of long-standing.
Growth was revised up quite sharply, for 1990-93 and 2010-12. Tim's "Osborne recession" of 2012 never actaully happened.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
So that's threre of us that agree - you, me, and Ms Cyclefree. Now we just need to persuade Sir Wyn Niceoldthing.
And the relevant Minister who has the power to suspend under the Act. The Government remains remarkably uninterested in this disgrace.
Just dropping in to say that I agree 100% with Cyclefree here. Where are the prosecutions? Where are the executives booted out & their pensions revoked for bringing the Post Office into disrepute by perjuring themselves? Where is the shirt rending, the wailing & gnashing of teeth?
Above all, where are the /consequences/ ?
As Malmesbury keeps reminding us, the modern executive layer, in both the public & private sphere, has built walls around itself so that there are never any consequences, ever. If we can, we should break these walls.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
So that's threre of us that agree - you, me, and Ms Cyclefree. Now we just need to persuade Sir Wyn Niceoldthing.
And the relevant Minister who has the power to suspend under the Act. The Government remains remarkably uninterested in this disgrace.
Badenoch: neither use nor ornament.
(PS @JosiasJessop: don't go after me. It's a saying.)
I am still not at all convinced Sunak is going to sack Braverman. Certainly not today. It creates two hostages to fortune - the events of this weekend and the Rwanda ruling next week. Either could strengthen or discredit her. You don’t want to strengthen someone you’ve just sacked who has a propensity for shooting from the hip.
(Just watch, he’ll sack her before lunchtime now!)
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
Hmm ..... First, her evidence contradicts what the lawyer said so the latter is now in some trouble. Second, I have been an in-house lawyer helping witnesses prepare their statements for criminal trials and what has happened here is so far below any level of professionalism that it is embarrassing and evidence of something much worse. Third, Ms Cottam was not some junior. She had a senior position with a lot of responsibility. Fourth, she claimed not to remember a lot of things but managed - somehow- to remember that the SPM in question had a husband who made calls and was probably dishonest though she was forced to retract that quickly. So I tend to the deliberately amnesiac and malicious end of the scale in her case rather than the forgetful junior unable to remember stuff from 20 years ago.
Where I do agree is that the lawyers involved here - both internal and external - have utterly disgraced themselves and should, at a minimum, be struck off and in some cases be prosecuted.
I was struck by the fact that IIRC she could not say when she began and ended in that job *when a court of inquiry* wants to know - and in any case that is what she claimed she thought it wanted to know. Rather than answer anything about her professional qualifications, which I presume is what the question was about?
'Beer took her to the question which asked her to set out her professional background. In response to this, Cottam had written: “I was employed as a Retail Line Manager by Post Office Counters Limited – I do not remember the exact date I took up this post or the date that I left this post.”
Beer pointed out this contained no information about Cottam’s professional background. Cottam replied that this was a “misunderstanding”. Beer asked “between whom?”
Cottam replied: “Between myself and what I was asked for.”'
It would take me about ten seconds to look up my CV, or fish out the papers from my filing cabinet ...
These figures are always revised.i don't think you can say no growth yet.. indeed growth may be negative, but you smare being a bit presumptuous to state it as a fact.
Whilst that's true, and the plus sign in +0.2% makes it sound an awful lot better than 0, let alone -0.2%, it doesn't really matter.
The key thing is that the growth in the economy is nowhere near enough for us to collectively afford nice things. And for lots of individuals, there will be a negative sign on their personal financial growth.
This is the economic stat that should scare us all and usually is a huge red flag for the economy and individuals.
The number of mortgage holders who have fallen behind on their payments climbed in the third quarter in a sign that higher interest rates are increasing financial pressure on homeowners and landlords.
Figures from UK Finance, the trade body for the banking industry, showed that 87,930 homeowner mortgages were in arrears in the three months to the end of September, up 7 per cent compared with the preceding quarter and 18 per cent on a year earlier.
The rise was even bigger on buy-to-let loans, with 11,540 in arrears in the third quarter, a 29 per cent jump from the second and a doubling compared with the same period in 2022.
So savers are being rewarded while buy-to-let landlords are losing out.
That doesn't scare me at all.
Mortgage holders are also being hit more generally, so it will in turn make getting a mortgage to buy more difficult and reduce rental properties available too
I am still not at all convinced Sunak is going to sack Braverman. Certainly not today. It creates two hostages to fortune - the events of this weekend and the Rwanda ruling next week. Either could strengthen or discredit her. You don’t want to strengthen someone you’ve just sacked who has a propensity for shooting from the hip.
(Just watch, he’ll sack her before lunchtime now!)
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
That would involve action from either the Judge - too feeble, naive and/or wedded to the legal process - or Badenoch: too bloody useless.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
So that's three of us that agree - you, me, and Ms Cyclefree. Now we just need to persuade Sir Wyn Niceoldthing.
I suggest no prosecutions.
This is because it will become another pile of bullshit.
Instead, the entire senior management of the PO should be redeployed (via a merger) to frontline roles with the agricultural consultancy operations of the Libyan Coastguard.
Do have to laugh. Have successfully baited anti-EV freaks to swarm onto my YouTube channel. A lunatic surge in views, watch hours and subscribers yesterday evening, which has continued at an absurd pace for the whole of today.
They come in, watch my videos and post negative comments about Tesla and EVs. Lots of "woke" and "WEF" warnings, even a few anti-vaxxers. Which I happily respond to. But all they are doing is driving the algorithm to push my stuff to even more people.
I'm almost disappointed by yesterday's revenue. Despite being 171% higher than my previous best revenue day I wondered if it might be higher. Expect that today will be bigger again. All hail Daily Mail / GBeebies morons! They are very profitable if you can exploit them.
"anti-EV freaks"
Enough said... About them. And you.
This lot are freaks. They have been fed a diet of nonsense by the right wing media and won't drop it. They all say the same things - which are fact free. And then wander off into WEF paranoia.
It's frustrating to deal with these people, but ultimately it's good news that the vaccine/5G crazies have taken up EVs, 15 minute cities and LTNs as their next topic. No serious politician can oppose them without being grouped in with the conspiracy theorists.
Otoh, the boiler/heat pump debate seems to be a bit more salient in the general population, which is a shame. Even in the US there were heat pumps installations than boilers last year.
I don't mind. I knew what I was getting in for. A massive boost to JustGetATesla (on the back of what had already been a very successful October). They won't post comments forever, but as they like to argue and feel superior they may stick around for a bit.
The YouTube algorithm likes it when videos go viral and people swarm in and comment. And when you interact with their comments. So I'll get a huge boost in how it pushes my videos out, as well as a stack of cash from ad revenue.
I've also learned some video shooting / editing tricks from the channels I went baiting, so will improve my own production too.
Mostly shows what a great earner click bait is.
Social media algos are designed to drive confrontation.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
So that's threre of us that agree - you, me, and Ms Cyclefree. Now we just need to persuade Sir Wyn Niceoldthing.
And the relevant Minister who has the power to suspend under the Act. The Government remains remarkably uninterested in this disgrace.
Badenoch: neither use nor ornament.
I would say that 99.5% of the time, you can get away with any form of white collar crime, or else, be punished so lightly, that you might just as well have got away with it.
I know two elderly ex-solicitors, who stole £700,000, and £500,000 from clients, and were struck off, but faced no prosecution, and had IVA's with their creditors. The rest of the profession had to make good losses to clients.
Just dropping in to say that I agree 100% with Cyclefree here. Where are the prosecutions? Where are the executives booted out & their pensions revoked for bringing the Post Office into disrepute by perjuring themselves? Where is the shirt rending, the wailing & gnashing of teeth?
Above all, where are the /consequences/ ?
As Malmesbury keeps reminding us, the modern executive layer, in both the public & private sphere, has built walls around itself so that there are never any consequences, ever. If we can, we should break these walls.
The inquiry hasn't even concluded yet
There is a strong body of opinion forming, Hyufd, that there is not much point in it continuing if the witnesses are not prepared to give their full support.
The evidence of failure to give that support - individually by the likes of Cottam,and institutionally by the PO - is becoming overwhelming. The Government,as owner of the PO, should be asked what it is going to do about this, and if there is no satisfactory response, Sir Wyn should refuse to continue.
That would put the blame fairly and squarely where it belongs. It would also free up the CPS to begin prosecutions.
That part of the Post Office is subsidized by the more profitable parts.
The same as the UK in that case. So that doesn't explain the price difference.
Prediction: this time next month there will be a major row about excess postage charges on Christmas cards, owing to confusion over the new size-based pricing for letters, and the Royal Mail imposing a £2.50 excess charge to hand over Granny's card.
Given that it is mostly pensioners who still send Christmas cards in the post, surely this can be dealt with by giving all pensioners a tax free Christmas Card Bonus Payment, say £125 or perhaps lets round it up to £150 to account for birthdays and Easter too.
No, for the simple reason it is the recipient who pays the fee, and not the sender. One day postie drops a card through the door telling you to go online and pay £1.50 or whatever. You have to gamble whether this is granny sending a card, or ACME plc making a job offer at double your current salary. And if it is granny's card, has she tucked a £50 note inside? https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee
My prediction is enough people will get caught out to make this the scandal that hits the papers this time next month.
Just dropping in to say that I agree 100% with Cyclefree here. Where are the prosecutions? Where are the executives booted out & their pensions revoked for bringing the Post Office into disrepute by perjuring themselves? Where is the shirt rending, the wailing & gnashing of teeth?
Above all, where are the /consequences/ ?
As Malmesbury keeps reminding us, the modern executive layer, in both the public & private sphere, has built walls around itself so that there are never any consequences, ever. If we can, we should break these walls.
The inquiry hasn't even concluded yet
But it's pretty clear how it's going.
And "let's wait for the outcome of the enquiry" is a delaying tactic so hackneyed that it's almost become part of our sclerotic constitution.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
That would involve action from either the Judge - too feeble, naive and/or wedded to the legal process - or Badenoch: too bloody useless.
These figures are always revised.i don't think you can say no growth yet.. indeed growth may be negative, but you smare being a bit presumptuous to state it as a fact.
Whilst that's true, and the plus sign in +0.2% makes it sound an awful lot better than 0, let alone -0.2%, it doesn't really matter.
The key thing is that the growth in the economy is nowhere near enough for us to collectively afford nice things. And for lots of individuals, there will be a negative sign on their personal financial growth.
This is the economic stat that should scare us all and usually is a huge red flag for the economy and individuals.
The number of mortgage holders who have fallen behind on their payments climbed in the third quarter in a sign that higher interest rates are increasing financial pressure on homeowners and landlords.
Figures from UK Finance, the trade body for the banking industry, showed that 87,930 homeowner mortgages were in arrears in the three months to the end of September, up 7 per cent compared with the preceding quarter and 18 per cent on a year earlier.
The rise was even bigger on buy-to-let loans, with 11,540 in arrears in the third quarter, a 29 per cent jump from the second and a doubling compared with the same period in 2022.
So savers are being rewarded while buy-to-let landlords are losing out.
That doesn't scare me at all.
Mortgage holders are also being hit more generally, so it will in turn make getting a mortgage to buy more difficult and reduce rental properties available too
But hopefully house prices will begin to come down to more realistic levels
These figures are always revised.i don't think you can say no growth yet.. indeed growth may be negative, but you smare being a bit presumptuous to state it as a fact.
Whilst that's true, and the plus sign in +0.2% makes it sound an awful lot better than 0, let alone -0.2%, it doesn't really matter.
The key thing is that the growth in the economy is nowhere near enough for us to collectively afford nice things. And for lots of individuals, there will be a negative sign on their personal financial growth.
This is the economic stat that should scare us all and usually is a huge red flag for the economy and individuals.
The number of mortgage holders who have fallen behind on their payments climbed in the third quarter in a sign that higher interest rates are increasing financial pressure on homeowners and landlords.
Figures from UK Finance, the trade body for the banking industry, showed that 87,930 homeowner mortgages were in arrears in the three months to the end of September, up 7 per cent compared with the preceding quarter and 18 per cent on a year earlier.
The rise was even bigger on buy-to-let loans, with 11,540 in arrears in the third quarter, a 29 per cent jump from the second and a doubling compared with the same period in 2022.
So savers are being rewarded while buy-to-let landlords are losing out.
That doesn't scare me at all.
If your landlord going into arrears in Scotland it could be very bad news. Some of my friends have been protected by various mechanisms (and relaxed landlords) from significant rent increases since 2020. The current rent increase cap is 3%.
But there is no protection for new tenancies, which is why they increased by 15.5% in Edinburgh last year. Economics 1A: the rental market is a complex and vindictive beast.
Increasingly strange that Biden gets so little credit for the performance if the US economy
The U.S. economy has drastically outperformed Europe's since the pandemic. The most plausible explanation is that America implemented a larger -- and in some respects, more progressive -- fiscal stimulus https://twitter.com/EricLevitz/status/1722419205629202589
Though of course Ukraine affected, and affects Europe far more than it dies the US.
Or maybe people realise that it's an unsustainable and irresponsible debt-fuelled binge that is lifting interest rates, fuelling inflation and isn't even delivering that much growth for all the money they're splashing around?
US inflation has also been lower than European. The irresponsible debt fuelled binge was Trump's tax cut fur the rich. I don't recall your railing about it at the time.
US inflation should have been lower than European as it was much less exposed to the high energy prices caused by the Ukraine war.
I didn't approve of Trump's tax cuts either, though at least that was morally better because it was allowing other people to keep their own money rather than pissing it away on corporate boondoggles (though there was a fair amount of that too). Also it was in a time when markets were much more tolerant of debt-fuelled spending so the interest rate and inflation implications were much less. But overall, they should have been matched by spending cuts and weren't.
Just because one President is an irresponsible idiot doesn't mean that the current one gets a free pass.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
Hmm ..... First, her evidence contradicts what the lawyer said so the latter is now in some trouble. Second, I have been an in-house lawyer helping witnesses prepare their statements for criminal trials and what has happened here is so far below any level of professionalism that it is embarrassing and evidence of something much worse. Third, Ms Cottam was not some junior. She had a senior position with a lot of responsibility. Fourth, she claimed not to remember a lot of things but managed - somehow- to remember that the SPM in question had a husband who made calls and was probably dishonest though she was forced to retract that quickly. So I tend to the deliberately amnesiac and malicious end of the scale in her case rather than the forgetful junior unable to remember stuff from 20 years ago.
Where I do agree is that the lawyers involved here - both internal and external - have utterly disgraced themselves and should, at a minimum, be struck off and in some cases be prosecuted.
I was struck by the fact that IIRC she could not say when she began and ended in that job *when a court of inquiry* wants to know - and in any case that is what she claimed she thought it wanted to know. Rather than answer anything about her professional qualifications, which I presume is what the question was about?
'Beer took her to the question which asked her to set out her professional background. In response to this, Cottam had written: “I was employed as a Retail Line Manager by Post Office Counters Limited – I do not remember the exact date I took up this post or the date that I left this post.”
Beer pointed out this contained no information about Cottam’s professional background. Cottam replied that this was a “misunderstanding”. Beer asked “between whom?”
Cottam replied: “Between myself and what I was asked for.”'
It would take me about ten seconds to look up my CV, or fish out the papers from my filing cabinet ...
The Head of Security recently gave evidence. He used to be a policeman though was kicked out which shows how bad he must have been. Anyway he forgot to mention this in his statement. When asked by Mr Beer he said that when he wrote his statement he had not received all the relevant papers from the Post Office. He had only received these more recently.
At which point Mr Beer asked: "Did those recent papers help you remember that you had once been a policeman?"
Honestly, how that man keeps a straight face I do not know.
This is the level of "fuck you" attitude the Post Office witnesses are showing to the inquiry. That comes from the top: the Board, the GC - Graham Foat - and, ultimately, the government.
That part of the Post Office is subsidized by the more profitable parts.
The same as the UK in that case. So that doesn't explain the price difference.
Prediction: this time next month there will be a major row about excess postage charges on Christmas cards, owing to confusion over the new size-based pricing for letters, and the Royal Mail imposing a £2.50 excess charge to hand over Granny's card.
Given that it is mostly pensioners who still send Christmas cards in the post, surely this can be dealt with by giving all pensioners a tax free Christmas Card Bonus Payment, say £125 or perhaps lets round it up to £150 to account for birthdays and Easter too.
No, for the simple reason it is the recipient who pays the fee, and not the sender. One day postie drops a card through the door telling you to go online and pay £1.50 or whatever. You have to gamble whether this is granny sending a card, or ACME plc making a job offer at double your current salary. And if it is granny's card, has she tucked a £50 note inside? https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee
My prediction is enough people will get caught out to make this the scandal that hits the papers this time next month.
One only has to recall the sort of problems that ordinary folk had before the introduction of prior paid penny post.
This state is going back to the early C19 at a depressing rate of knots.
Actually for that youtube clip of Cottam it is the lawyer (who he btw?) who deserves an award. Perhaps an Oscar because by the slightest move of an eyebrow he conveys more than words ever could.
One 79-year-old homeowner, who did not want to be named, told the BBC he had cut back on other costs as much as he could, but was only able to pay part of his mortgage bill each month.
So why does someone who is 79 have a mortgage and not only that but a mortgage he is unable to properly pay ?
People have to take some responsibility for their own financial decisions instead of blaming the banks or the government or world events.
He probably used equity release to fund his spending at some point.
ER can be a useful tool, but in many cases it's dangerous and bad.
In principle though, I agree with your viewpoint.
Yes, he'll very likely have been sold an equity release scheme when interest rates were much lower. With little or no clear warning of what might happen when rates went up from 0.5 to 5%.
(*Thrifty folks can beat the price increase by buying "forever" stamps, which are good indefinitely.)
When I left the business it was obvious the way prices would go, and I bought several hundred 'forever' stamps (which is what the standard first and second class ones with just the class and the monarch's head on them are), and am still working through them, not having had to buy a stamp for years.
Then it is you and not granny causing havoc for your acquaintances who must pay £2.50 to receive your letters because non-barcoded stamps are no longer valid. (Of course, unless you already have swapped your stamps for barcoded ones.)
Do have to laugh. Have successfully baited anti-EV freaks to swarm onto my YouTube channel. A lunatic surge in views, watch hours and subscribers yesterday evening, which has continued at an absurd pace for the whole of today.
They come in, watch my videos and post negative comments about Tesla and EVs. Lots of "woke" and "WEF" warnings, even a few anti-vaxxers. Which I happily respond to. But all they are doing is driving the algorithm to push my stuff to even more people.
I'm almost disappointed by yesterday's revenue. Despite being 171% higher than my previous best revenue day I wondered if it might be higher. Expect that today will be bigger again. All hail Daily Mail / GBeebies morons! They are very profitable if you can exploit them.
"anti-EV freaks"
Enough said... About them. And you.
This lot are freaks. They have been fed a diet of nonsense by the right wing media and won't drop it. They all say the same things - which are fact free. And then wander off into WEF paranoia.
It's frustrating to deal with these people, but ultimately it's good news that the vaccine/5G crazies have taken up EVs, 15 minute cities and LTNs as their next topic. No serious politician can oppose them without being grouped in with the conspiracy theorists.
Otoh, the boiler/heat pump debate seems to be a bit more salient in the general population, which is a shame. Even in the US there were heat pumps installations than boilers last year.
I don't mind. I knew what I was getting in for. A massive boost to JustGetATesla (on the back of what had already been a very successful October). They won't post comments forever, but as they like to argue and feel superior they may stick around for a bit.
The YouTube algorithm likes it when videos go viral and people swarm in and comment. And when you interact with their comments. So I'll get a huge boost in how it pushes my videos out, as well as a stack of cash from ad revenue.
I've also learned some video shooting / editing tricks from the channels I went baiting, so will improve my own production too.
OK, Rochdale, if you know so much about electric cars: I would really like my next car to be an electric. But I have a family of five. At the moment, our main family car is a VW Sharan, the glory of which is that there are three large seats in the back, so no arguments about who gets the crappy seat in the middle. Also, it has sliding rear doors, which are also great for extracting kids. But I haven't found any electric cars which have this feature: like most cars, they inexplicably appear to prioritise giving an arm rest and a cup holder to passengers 3 and 5 over giving passenger 4 a decent seat. Any ideas?
The ONS are as good at this as I am at picking horse race winners.
You mean "pretty close at the first attempt and then hone in closer with later revisions, in a transparent manner to the level of a National Statistic". It's a country of 68 million people making things in sheds and factories, buying stuff in shops and the internet, with hundreds of ports and airports. You are frankly lucky their first answer wasn't to stand on the desk and scream "I'm an orange".
That part of the Post Office is subsidized by the more profitable parts.
The same as the UK in that case. So that doesn't explain the price difference.
Prediction: this time next month there will be a major row about excess postage charges on Christmas cards, owing to confusion over the new size-based pricing for letters, and the Royal Mail imposing a £2.50 excess charge to hand over Granny's card.
Given that it is mostly pensioners who still send Christmas cards in the post, surely this can be dealt with by giving all pensioners a tax free Christmas Card Bonus Payment, say £125 or perhaps lets round it up to £150 to account for birthdays and Easter too.
No, for the simple reason it is the recipient who pays the fee, and not the sender. One day postie drops a card through the door telling you to go online and pay £1.50 or whatever. You have to gamble whether this is granny sending a card, or ACME plc making a job offer at double your current salary. And if it is granny's card, has she tucked a £50 note inside? https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee
My prediction is enough people will get caught out to make this the scandal that hits the papers this time next month.
I'm currently (well my wife is) in dispute with Royal Mail over a £2.50 unpaid postage fee in relation to a card sent from the Netherlands. PostNL permit paying postage online and then writing a (provided) matrix of characters (postzegelcode - linked page in Dutch, but includes a picture so you get the idea) in the area of the envelope where you would normally put a stamp (neat idea for those without printers - could be introduced here). This was done, with the correct postage, on the item received, but Royal Mail marked it as unpaid.
I'm not sure who cocked up here - Royal Mail for failing to recognise it or PostNL if they should have franked it on the way out as valid or similar, but I do know that the volume of emails this has generated so far must have cost the Royal Mail well over £2.50 in staff time. Also not a good use of my wife's time, really, but she's stubborn tenacious.
ETA: Received many letters paid for in this way in the past, so not sure why this one was a problem. Maybe the others were marked somehow by PostNL, I forget.
Do have to laugh. Have successfully baited anti-EV freaks to swarm onto my YouTube channel. A lunatic surge in views, watch hours and subscribers yesterday evening, which has continued at an absurd pace for the whole of today.
They come in, watch my videos and post negative comments about Tesla and EVs. Lots of "woke" and "WEF" warnings, even a few anti-vaxxers. Which I happily respond to. But all they are doing is driving the algorithm to push my stuff to even more people.
I'm almost disappointed by yesterday's revenue. Despite being 171% higher than my previous best revenue day I wondered if it might be higher. Expect that today will be bigger again. All hail Daily Mail / GBeebies morons! They are very profitable if you can exploit them.
"anti-EV freaks"
Enough said... About them. And you.
This lot are freaks. They have been fed a diet of nonsense by the right wing media and won't drop it. They all say the same things - which are fact free. And then wander off into WEF paranoia.
The problem is that there is a lot of valid concern about EVs at the moment, from range anxiety through charging ability to affordability - as gets discussed a lot on here. Hopefully these concerns will get addressed with time as technology improves. But they are valid concerns.
I don't think I'm anit-EV; just cautious. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that anyone who dares mention issues is anti-EV. Especially as EVs are currently generally high-value cars, and relatively inaccessible to the majority.
I'd also point out that a pro-EV poster on here has had (ahem) rather interesting views about ICE owners. Which shows the issues go the other way as well. Some of the pro-EV people are absolutely nutters, who hide behind the greenwash of owning an EV.
Actually for that youtube clip of Cottam it is the lawyer (who he btw?) who deserves an award. Perhaps an Oscar because by the slightest move of an eyebrow he conveys more than words ever could.
Jason Beer KC.
Look at his profile and the many other inquiries he has done.
After decades of selfless public service, Joe Manchin has decided to sail off into the sunset in his multiple yachts.
He will be fondly remembered for his heroic opposition to climate change, build back better, voting rights and filibuster reform…and of course, for supporting Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
He was the best of the Republicans in the Democratic Party.
I don't suppose I can ask you not to post the stupid tweets here? If I wanted to read the stupid tweets I'd use Twitter.
You can ask. But I don't think it had been noted that Manchin had announced he's not running, and a bit of snark is entirely deserved comment on his political history.
By the way, do click on the link @Cyclefree has provided by the “thick as mince” comment. It’s a doozy.
It's quite obvious what has happened here; Post Office Legal Services drafted both her original witness statement, which she signed without paying much attention to it and never had to present in court since the case was settled prior, and may well have done the same with this latest one. It appears that the foolish manager hasn't made much effort to brief herself, or be briefed, beforehand, and the only mitigation is that she is up against a top lawyer who spends his or her life honing their skills of cross-examination and is skilled in demolishing even credible evidence. If there's an organisational failing, it is that once a matter becomes legal, the in-house lawyers tend to take over and it is very easy for the ordinary line manager, who has the day job to worry about, simply to end up following instructions, particularly as the lawyers are based at 'HQ' and the manager is out in the field, used to receiving directions from 'the centre'.
I think that’s a fair summary of the position. However, if that’s the best, the post office can do, it doesn’t say much for their general competence! Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events. I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
I’m no fan of the CPS but the Post Office, in England & Wales anyway, was acting as a private prosecutor. The CPS wasn’t involved. Various solicitors at private law firms, who acted in their stead, acted very badly in this.
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
With respect, Mr S, you are slightly missing the point. My hope was, and still is, that someone in the CPS is even now preparing cases against the senior management of the post office.
Apologies. It’s early and I misread “hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged” as meaning you wanted a criminal charge brought against the same. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit - I’m a solicitor after all. Apologies once more.
Accepted; perhaps I should have written “tasked” instead of “charged”. I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
It's hard to see how the Board cannot be charged, but the Inquiry may take so long that some will have passed on, and the rest will have decamped to safer shores. Meanwhile they watch on in comfort from their homes in Bedfordshire and elsewhere.
This is why I was suggesting last night that it is time for the Inquiry be suspended so that prosecutions could begin. The Inquiry has become the long grass that the PO is playing for.
So that's threre of us that agree - you, me, and Ms Cyclefree. Now we just need to persuade Sir Wyn Niceoldthing.
And the relevant Minister who has the power to suspend under the Act. The Government remains remarkably uninterested in this disgrace.
Badenoch: neither use nor ornament.
(PS @JosiasJessop: don't go after me. It's a saying.)
On the Post Office, I'm no expert, but some of this starts to look very much like perjury or perversion of the course of justice. I do agree that some people need to be held to account - as they were only too keen to do to the sub postmasters.
That part of the Post Office is subsidized by the more profitable parts.
The same as the UK in that case. So that doesn't explain the price difference.
Prediction: this time next month there will be a major row about excess postage charges on Christmas cards, owing to confusion over the new size-based pricing for letters, and the Royal Mail imposing a £2.50 excess charge to hand over Granny's card.
Given that it is mostly pensioners who still send Christmas cards in the post, surely this can be dealt with by giving all pensioners a tax free Christmas Card Bonus Payment, say £125 or perhaps lets round it up to £150 to account for birthdays and Easter too.
No, for the simple reason it is the recipient who pays the fee, and not the sender. One day postie drops a card through the door telling you to go online and pay £1.50 or whatever. You have to gamble whether this is granny sending a card, or ACME plc making a job offer at double your current salary. And if it is granny's card, has she tucked a £50 note inside? https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee
My prediction is enough people will get caught out to make this the scandal that hits the papers this time next month.
I'm currently (well my wife is) in dispute with Royal Mail over a £2.50 unpaid postage fee in relation to a card sent from the Netherlands. PostNL permit paying postage online and then writing a (provided) matrix of characters (postzegelcode - linked page in Dutch, but includes a picture so you get the idea) in the area of the envelope where you would normally put a stamp (neat idea for those without printers - could be introduced here). This was done, with the correct postage, on the item received, but Royal Mail marked it as unpaid.
I'm not sure who cocked up here - Royal Mail for failing to recognise it or PostNL if they should have franked it on the way out as valid or similar, but I do know that the volume of emails this has generated so far must have cost the Royal Mail well over £2.50 in staff time. Also not a good use of my wife's time, really, but she's stubborn tenacious.
Careful. The PO may bring a private prosecution against you.
That part of the Post Office is subsidized by the more profitable parts.
The same as the UK in that case. So that doesn't explain the price difference.
Prediction: this time next month there will be a major row about excess postage charges on Christmas cards, owing to confusion over the new size-based pricing for letters, and the Royal Mail imposing a £2.50 excess charge to hand over Granny's card.
Given that it is mostly pensioners who still send Christmas cards in the post, surely this can be dealt with by giving all pensioners a tax free Christmas Card Bonus Payment, say £125 or perhaps lets round it up to £150 to account for birthdays and Easter too.
No, for the simple reason it is the recipient who pays the fee, and not the sender. One day postie drops a card through the door telling you to go online and pay £1.50 or whatever. You have to gamble whether this is granny sending a card, or ACME plc making a job offer at double your current salary. And if it is granny's card, has she tucked a £50 note inside? https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee
My prediction is enough people will get caught out to make this the scandal that hits the papers this time next month.
I'm currently (well my wife is) in dispute with Royal Mail over a £2.50 unpaid postage fee in relation to a card sent from the Netherlands. PostNL permit paying postage online and then writing a (provided) matrix of characters (postzegelcode - linked page in Dutch, but includes a picture so you get the idea) in the area of the envelope where you would normally put a stamp (neat idea for those without printers - could be introduced here). This was done, with the correct postage, on the item received, but Royal Mail marked it as unpaid.
I'm not sure who cocked up here - Royal Mail for failing to recognise it or PostNL if they should have franked it on the way out as valid or similar, but I do know that the volume of emails this has generated so far must have cost the Royal Mail well over £2.50 in staff time. Also not a good use of my wife's time, really, but she's stubborn tenacious.
It brings to mind the old legal maxim: there is nothing more expensive than a point of principle.
On the Post Office, I'm no expert, but some of this starts to look very much like perjury or perversion of the course of justice. I do agree that some people need to be held to account - as they were only too keen to do to the sub postmasters.
You don't have to be an expert. When a witness submits two different and contradictory accounts of the same matter to the Courts, that is perjury.
Actually for that youtube clip of Cottam it is the lawyer (who he btw?) who deserves an award. Perhaps an Oscar because by the slightest move of an eyebrow he conveys more than words ever could.
Jason Beer KC.
Look at his profile and the many other inquiries he has done.
Comments
If the Post Office Enquiry had more prominence then I suspect there would be quite a bit of anger. Aside from the odd news article and Panorama once in a blue moon this story is relegated to the back burner. Stories of women "binge drinking", a farcical claim in itself, get far more prominence on the news.
What the Post Office victims need are good lobbyists/PR to pester news rooms to get their stories on air but who really cares about a grave injustice perpetuated on a group of largely middle class people from the shires. Theyre not deemed worthy enough.
The key thing is that the growth in the economy is nowhere near enough for us to collectively afford nice things. And for lots of individuals, there will be a negative sign on their personal financial growth.
Every time I read about the post office enquiry, I think back over my long career and ask myself questions about things that went wrong, and I’m sure I could make a much better fist of answering questions about those events.
I think it is by now, beyond evident that the management of the post office, for some time has been totally incompetent, or indeed malevolent, and I sincerely hope that someone in the Crown Prosecution Service has been charged with preparing cases against many of those at the top of the organisation; both the board and management.
The number of mortgage holders who have fallen behind on their payments climbed in the third quarter in a sign that higher interest rates are increasing financial pressure on homeowners and landlords.
Figures from UK Finance, the trade body for the banking industry, showed that 87,930 homeowner mortgages were in arrears in the three months to the end of September, up 7 per cent compared with the preceding quarter and 18 per cent on a year earlier.
The rise was even bigger on buy-to-let loans, with 11,540 in arrears in the third quarter, a 29 per cent jump from the second and a doubling compared with the same period in 2022.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/homeowner-mortgages-in-arrears-up-7-amid-higher-interest-rates-lcnhsz2p6
Above a certain level, failure is
1) A definite fuck up
2) A vaguely worded statement which could be held to mean that the person in question feels slightly less than happy about how things went.
3) voluntary resignation/end of contract
4) due to legal constraints, regretfully, a huge golden goodbye needs to be paid on top of the pension.
5) a glowing reference for the next job
There is an argument that the CPS, who are more used to criminal prosecutions for obvious reasons, would not have proceeded with many of them. Not a strong argument mind.
Now personally I think she’s poisonous and egotistic and has no place in a cabinet government with a personality that puts her future prospects over actively doing her job but I find it a good example of how the media takes a view which can be biased without realising it (I’m being charitable).
So the headline talks about calls to sack her. It could equally have been “Rishi Sunak is being pressured to keep Suella Braverman”. There are MPs in the party who are angry with her and disagree with her and those that support what she has said and agree with her. Why does a media organisation choose which side has more weight?
Equally if they are using calls from political opponents or those with vested interests (such as former police people) then it’s a case of MRDA so should not be pushing their call for her sacking.
If they then balanced it up with a poll of whether voters agreed with her or not then it might swing it another way.
I understand that journalists are much more interested in big stories and so a senior minister being sacked is great for them but their desires shouldn’t be driving reporting, the facts should.
So would a fair and unbiased headline be “Rishi Sunak is considering the mixed reaction to Suella Braverman’s Times article.”
Hopefully her Rwanda plan will be ruled illegal on Wednesday and so she can be sacked having been proven to be useless and not go out as a martyr.
So how do you hold the Government to account, except in the usual fashion? Sure, this one is due for the bullet in about a year's time, but will the next one show a greater commitment to justice, especially in respect of a scandal in which it is by no means innocent?
Doubt it somehow.
Otoh, the boiler/heat pump debate seems to be a bit more salient in the general population, which is a shame. Even in the US there were heat pumps installations than boilers last year.
She was also rude, prickly, and totally lacking in compassion for the poor sods who suffered at her hands, and many like her.
Oh, you said serious politicians.
That seems pretty accurate to me.
The YouTube algorithm likes it when videos go viral and people swarm in and comment. And when you interact with their comments. So I'll get a huge boost in how it pushes my videos out, as well as a stack of cash from ad revenue.
I've also learned some video shooting / editing tricks from the channels I went baiting, so will improve my own production too.
Important implications for a former head of the CPS.
For many years it used this power prudently. Then the Board changed, its mandate changed, and it acquired Horizon. All hell was then let loose.
Much as I’d want the government to lose the appeal on the other hand if they lose it would be down to Article 3 of the ECHR and then we’ll have the next year turning into the right wing media and the Tories likely calling for the UK to leave that.
That would cause all manner of problems especially in terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
I hope several people at the top of the Post Office ARE charged, in the legal use of the word.
Interesting factoid I didn’t know until recently was that in the nineteenth century the Police instructed a private law firm to do the work now done by the CPS. They then took it in house before it was farmed out again to the CPS in the 1980s.
In fairness to the ONS it is much more difficult to get the deflator right in a time of high and rapidly changing inflation than it was in the years where inflation was low and predictable.
The best indicator as to whether I am right or not will be tax revenues. If they remain above expectations then the economy is growing.
I listened to the post office podcast which was scathing and unbelievably infuriating in equal measure.
Like pressure on emergency services, the queue at the Post Office reflects the weaknesses of society and government in general. The manager, an immigrant himself, gives me a wave when we cross paths and has seemingly unending patience and cheer.
If this scandal had affected the police, ambulance service or even an organisation like Citizens Advice, I wonder if it would have had a higher profile.
Sadly, she is by no means untypical of the PO witnesses.
Your Subpostmaster appears entirely typical. It is obscene that such people should have been so cruelly treated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67338237
So why does someone who is 79 have a mortgage and not only that but a mortgage he is unable to properly pay ?
People have to take some responsibility for their own financial decisions instead of blaming the banks or the government or world events.
While that's not brilliant, given the inflation and interest rate environment it's also a lot better than it could have been. If I'm right and final numbers end up at 1.2%, it would be a 1.8% swing from the IMF prediction of -0.6% at the beginning of the year.
Next year should actually be an improvement too, inflation will be under 4%, real terms pay increases and a fairly good chance that the BoE cuts interest rates in Q2 or Q3.
The next budget needs ti be bold, increase investment, make full expensing permanent and add intangibles investments into the allowed categories.
Growth was revised up quite sharply, for 1990-93 and 2010-12. Tim's "Osborne recession" of 2012 never actaully happened.
https://obr.uk/box/rewriting-recent-history-real-gdp-revisions/
One can also add the 1985-89 period, where growth turned out to be twice as high as initial estimates.
It may just seem like numbers, but it has real life consequences.
Where I do agree is that the lawyers involved here - both internal and external - have utterly disgraced themselves and should, at a minimum, be struck off and in some cases be prosecuted.
For me, the scariest statistic that came out recently was M4 going negative. Next year is likely to be flat at best, not ideal for a government already struggling.
Cottam blatantly committed perjury, and should be facing prosecution in due course, but don't hold your breath.
Above all, where are the /consequences/ ?
As Malmesbury keeps reminding us, the modern executive layer, in both the public & private sphere, has built walls around itself so that there are never any consequences, ever. If we can, we should break these walls.
That doesn't scare me at all.
ER can be a useful tool, but in many cases it's dangerous and bad.
In principle though, I agree with your viewpoint.
If using individual ltd companies, this might not show up in the accounts until end of year corporation tax returns are made? It would depend on how income they are funnelling through PAYE I guess.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/66859257
(PS @JosiasJessop: don't go after me. It's a saying.)
(Just watch, he’ll sack her before lunchtime now!)
'Beer took her to the question which asked her to set out her professional background. In response to this, Cottam had written: “I was employed as a Retail Line Manager by Post Office Counters Limited – I do not remember the exact date I took up this post or the date that I left this post.”
Beer pointed out this contained no information about Cottam’s professional background. Cottam replied that this was a “misunderstanding”. Beer asked “between whom?”
Cottam replied: “Between myself and what I was asked for.”'
It would take me about ten seconds to look up my CV, or fish out the papers from my filing cabinet ...
This is because it will become another pile of bullshit.
Instead, the entire senior management of the PO should be redeployed (via a merger) to frontline roles with the agricultural consultancy operations of the Libyan Coastguard.
I know two elderly ex-solicitors, who stole £700,000, and £500,000 from clients, and were struck off, but faced no prosecution, and had IVA's with their creditors. The rest of the profession had to make good losses to clients.
The evidence of failure to give that support - individually by the likes of Cottam,and institutionally by the PO - is becoming overwhelming. The Government,as owner of the PO, should be asked what it is going to do about this, and if there is no satisfactory response, Sir Wyn should refuse to continue.
That would put the blame fairly and squarely where it belongs. It would also free up the CPS to begin prosecutions.
https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee
My prediction is enough people will get caught out to make this the scandal that hits the papers this time next month.
And "let's wait for the outcome of the enquiry" is a delaying tactic so hackneyed that it's almost become part of our sclerotic constitution.
But there is no protection for new tenancies, which is why they increased by 15.5% in Edinburgh last year. Economics 1A: the rental market is a complex and vindictive beast.
I didn't approve of Trump's tax cuts either, though at least that was morally better because it was allowing other people to keep their own money rather than pissing it away on corporate boondoggles (though there was a fair amount of that too). Also it was in a time when markets were much more tolerant of debt-fuelled spending so the interest rate and inflation implications were much less. But overall, they should have been matched by spending cuts and weren't.
Just because one President is an irresponsible idiot doesn't mean that the current one gets a free pass.
At which point Mr Beer asked: "Did those recent papers help you remember that you had once been a policeman?"
Honestly, how that man keeps a straight face I do not know.
This is the level of "fuck you" attitude the Post Office witnesses are showing to the inquiry. That comes from the top: the Board, the GC - Graham Foat - and, ultimately, the government.
Suella Braverman - very bright, sharp, successful, on manoeuvres, for what reasons and with what aim we don't know.
Elaine Cottam - thick as mince.
This state is going back to the early C19 at a depressing rate of knots.
It could then call a GE, and run on the slogan 'Sorry For All The Inconvenience'.
But I'm honestly a bit unsure who has committed a crime here?
Maybe 1000 prosecutions are wrong... surely at some point you have to blame the legal system.
Quite likely a lot of folk in his position ?
I would really like my next car to be an electric. But I have a family of five. At the moment, our main family car is a VW Sharan, the glory of which is that there are three large seats in the back, so no arguments about who gets the crappy seat in the middle. Also, it has sliding rear doors, which are also great for extracting kids. But I haven't found any electric cars which have this feature: like most cars, they inexplicably appear to prioritise giving an arm rest and a cup holder to passengers 3 and 5 over giving passenger 4 a decent seat. Any ideas?
(And yes, it includes a lot of legal people.)
I'm not sure who cocked up here - Royal Mail for failing to recognise it or PostNL if they should have franked it on the way out as valid or similar, but I do know that the volume of emails this has generated so far must have cost the Royal Mail well over £2.50 in staff time. Also not a good use of my wife's time, really, but she's stubborn tenacious.
ETA: Received many letters paid for in this way in the past, so not sure why this one was a problem. Maybe the others were marked somehow by PostNL, I forget.
I don't think I'm anit-EV; just cautious. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that anyone who dares mention issues is anti-EV. Especially as EVs are currently generally high-value cars, and relatively inaccessible to the majority.
I'd also point out that a pro-EV poster on here has had (ahem) rather interesting views about ICE owners. Which shows the issues go the other way as well. Some of the pro-EV people are absolutely nutters, who hide behind the greenwash of owning an EV.
Look at his profile and the many other inquiries he has done.
https://www.5essex.co.uk/profile/jason-beer-kc/
But I don't think it had been noted that Manchin had announced he's not running, and a bit of snark is entirely deserved comment on his political history.
I'm sorry, what's that in relation to?
Analogously, and it is too serious to joke about, but it did remind me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8UHBRu70qA