PMQs summary for the 99.9% who don't watch it. Poor old Rishi, taken to the cleaners by an increasingly confident Starmer. The PM is a dead man walking, and I've no idea how he can turn it around.
Starmer's Midas quip was even borderline funny, which is a first from him.
The quip itself was mildly amusing; the follow-up aimed at Cleverly was ROFL good.
It wasn’t, tho, was it?
You weren’t actually “rolling on the floor laughing” at a joke by Sir Kir Royale
I doubt if anyone has ever rolled on the floor laughing at a joke by anyone, let alone Sir Royale
The closest I have come is being doubled over with laughter at an early Eddie Izzard gig (when he was so so good), when I laughed so much it genuinely hurt, even then I didn’t actually collapse to the ground and roll around in agony like I had some fucking kidney stone, you stupid fucking twat
No, I wasn't actually ROFL, you are right. It was an exaggeration for emphasis: not something you would ever consider, even when smashed off your box on Thai gin.
We need some more nuanced British acronyms for stages of laughter. AMALCUMB (allowed myself a little chuckle under my breath) perhaps, or CHAWGAT (couldn’t help a wry grin at that).
CHAWGAT and AMALCUMB are both excellent - especially the latter as it nearly lurches into intense rudeness
Bravo!
I suggest we adopt these as special PB neologisms which mark us out
To my mind they are as good as
Lagershed Rogerdamus (invented by @seant I believe) BAXTERED (also @seant) And OGH (no idea)
From now on I shall use both liberally
Didn't know whether to believe re the Lagershed, so checked: and we have a perpetrator and date: it is now in UD but not (and I checked this too) OED.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
The killings in Zimbabwe weren't widely reported for about 15 or 20 years because Mugabe was such a popular figure at the time.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Gove has done decent work on Leasehold. Far more than the loathsome Jenrick, or any other predecessor. Ending of ground rent, 990 year extensions by default, abolition of marriage value.
Not great, but it's a good start.
Leasehold houses may still be legally allowed to be sold, but after the huge amount of publicity in the last five years around "fleecehold" and unfair service charges, who would be mad enough to buy one?
Or a mug buying a house that is freehold but where there is a bit of shared land that the council has not adopted so they pay a ground rent for that.
One of my Co workers is looking at a house on a new build estate which has a £101 a year ground rent for a shared space. Personally,I’d avoid like the plague.
DM is running stories about some estate where someone has bouight up the shared space etc at a liquidation sale and turned up with a chainsaw and demands for rent for parking etc.
DM really does know how to get at the deepest Cthulhu-abyssal fears of its target market.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
One of the most awkward of modern political facts: South Africa is turning into the failed African state predicted by the white Afrikaaner opponents of reform at the End of Apartheid. Everything they said would come true, is coming true. Chaos, crime, corruption. It will soon break down altogether, on its present trajectory
“Almost half of the population is unemployed and living in poverty. Nationwide, the jobless rate stands at 32.9%. Around 18 million people rely on some form of social aid, which makes the number of beneficiaries twice as many as registered taxpayers.
Meanwhile, crime has proliferated. The once flourishing central business district is an eyesore where derelict buildings are hijacked by criminal syndicates, forcing out major commercial operations from the area. For more petty criminals, in vogue are cables and metals that can be stolen from electricity substations and sold on the black market. Others just try to connect to the grid illegally.”
On the other hand, they have a really good, well-integrated rugby team
More tragic than 'awkward', I'd have thought. Unless it's being advanced (by you?) as proof that blacks need whitey to boss them about and run their affairs. Which would be pretty moronic, obviously, and a teeny bit racist to boot.
Well it's tragic that SA is disintegrating and thousands of people a year are being murdered. But it's certainly awkward that the Afrikaaners perhaps had a point about the ANC.
I am as guilty of ignoring this as anyone. Apartheid was an evil system that had to end, and I have been blithely presuming that -albeit with some grave problems - the country was making decent progress, GDP growth was slowly spreading wealth, crime was bad but not terrible
Then the white South African manager of a posh hotel in Cambodia sat me down - two weeks ago - and told me the truth over drinks. He was nearly in tears. He isn’t some gloating Boer, he is clearly a Saffer patriot - with lots of family there. But he says they are ALL intending to leave, he never wants to go back. He says every single person he knows has either personal or direct second hand (ie close family or friend) experience of truly horrible violent crime
The Sandpit Saffas were saying this a decade ago. Horrific robberies, murders for watches and wallets, people employing their own armed guards around housing estates, and even personal transport security, all seen as normal. Since then, things have only gone downhill fast.
Do you find much racism amongst the Sandpit Saffas?
Would it be racist to speculate on the skin tones of the Sandpit Saffers?
Ah good question. I don't know. It's a veritable minefield these days with tender anti-woke sensitivities. I try to dance above and around but not always successfully.
Yet still doesn’t have anywhere near the salience of Hillsborough, Stephen Lawrence, the Maxwell pensions, Windrush, Catholic child abuse etc.
As discussed here before it’s the anonymity and geographically dispersed nature of the victims that makes it so.
Excellent piece (as usual).
This is up there with the Rotherham abuses and Jimmy Savile, systemic failures over a long period of time rather than a reaction to a single event.
Yes, the varied nature of those involved played a huge part - they were of all races, ages, genders, and locations across the country, with nothing linking them together in the mind of the public.
Yes, and there are two aspects to it which I think lift it into the upper tier of all-time great scandals.
First, the prosecutions continued long after it became apparent that the Horizon computer system was faulty.
Second, there were failures at every single level - from the dumb operatives investigating the Subpostmasters, all the way up through the organisation to the Post Office Board. They were all culpable in greater or smaller measure. So too the IT consultants (Fujitsu and elsewhere) and lawyers.
It wasn't just incompetence on a massive scale, but malicious criminality across the board.
I understand why Leon and some others find it boring, but take note. If it could happen to the poor sodding Subpostmasters, it could happen to me and thee.
PMQs summary for the 99.9% who don't watch it. Poor old Rishi, taken to the cleaners by an increasingly confident Starmer. The PM is a dead man walking, and I've no idea how he can turn it around.
Starmer's Midas quip was even borderline funny, which is a first from him.
The quip itself was mildly amusing; the follow-up aimed at Cleverly was ROFL good.
It wasn’t, tho, was it?
You weren’t actually “rolling on the floor laughing” at a joke by Sir Kir Royale
I doubt if anyone has ever rolled on the floor laughing at a joke by anyone, let alone Sir Royale
The closest I have come is being doubled over with laughter at an early Eddie Izzard gig (when he was so so good), when I laughed so much it genuinely hurt, even then I didn’t actually collapse to the ground and roll around in agony like I had some fucking kidney stone, you stupid fucking twat
No, I wasn't actually ROFL, you are right. It was an exaggeration for emphasis: not something you would ever consider, even when smashed off your box on Thai gin.
We need some more nuanced British acronyms for stages of laughter. AMALCUMB (allowed myself a little chuckle under my breath) perhaps, or CHAWGAT (couldn’t help a wry grin at that).
CHAWGAT and AMALCUMB are both excellent - especially the latter as it nearly lurches into intense rudeness
Bravo!
I suggest we adopt these as special PB neologisms which mark us out
To my mind they are as good as
Lagershed Rogerdamus (invented by @seant I believe) BAXTERED (also @seant) And OGH (no idea)
From now on I shall use both liberally
Didn't know whether to believe re the Lagershed, so checked: and we have a perpetrator and date: it is now in UD but not (and I checked this too) OED.
Gove has done decent work on Leasehold. Far more than the loathsome Jenrick, or any other predecessor. Ending of ground rent, 990 year extensions by default, abolition of marriage value.
Not great, but it's a good start.
Leasehold houses may still be legally allowed to be sold, but after the huge amount of publicity in the last five years around "fleecehold" and unfair service charges, who would be mad enough to buy one?
Or a mug buying a house that is freehold but where there is a bit of shared land that the council has not adopted so they pay a ground rent for that.
One of my Co workers is looking at a house on a new build estate which has a £101 a year ground rent for a shared space. Personally,I’d avoid like the plague.
DM is running stories about some estate where someone has bouight up the shared space etc at a liquidation sale and turned up with a chainsaw and demands for rent for parking etc.
DM really does know how to get at the deepest Cthulhu-abyssal fears of its target market.
If you want to see something interesting look at the central business district in Johannesburg on streetview. There are these 1980's skyscrapers that have essentially all been abandoned and overtaken by an inner city third world sprawl. It really haunts me when walking around London, I wonder if this will be its fate.
PMQs summary for the 99.9% who don't watch it. Poor old Rishi, taken to the cleaners by an increasingly confident Starmer. The PM is a dead man walking, and I've no idea how he can turn it around.
Starmer's Midas quip was even borderline funny, which is a first from him.
The quip itself was mildly amusing; the follow-up aimed at Cleverly was ROFL good.
It wasn’t, tho, was it?
You weren’t actually “rolling on the floor laughing” at a joke by Sir Kir Royale
I doubt if anyone has ever rolled on the floor laughing at a joke by anyone, let alone Sir Royale
The closest I have come is being doubled over with laughter at an early Eddie Izzard gig (when he was so so good), when I laughed so much it genuinely hurt, even then I didn’t actually collapse to the ground and roll around in agony like I had some fucking kidney stone, you stupid fucking twat
No, I wasn't actually ROFL, you are right. It was an exaggeration for emphasis: not something you would ever consider, even when smashed off your box on Thai gin.
We need some more nuanced British acronyms for stages of laughter. AMALCUMB (allowed myself a little chuckle under my breath) perhaps, or CHAWGAT (couldn’t help a wry grin at that).
CHAWGAT and AMALCUMB are both excellent - especially the latter as it nearly lurches into intense rudeness
Bravo!
I suggest we adopt these as special PB neologisms which mark us out
To my mind they are as good as
Lagershed Rogerdamus (invented by @seant I believe) BAXTERED (also @seant) And OGH (no idea)
From now on I shall use both liberally
Didn't know whether to believe re the Lagershed, so checked: and we have a perpetrator and date: it is now in UD but not (and I checked this too) OED.
SeanT was almost as much of a self-aggrandising mega-bullshitter as is our Leon. So I wouldn’t believe any of it. Have the two of them ever been seen in a room together? If they haven’t, it would be remarkable given that they seem to be following each other around the world to this day.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
PMQs summary for the 99.9% who don't watch it. Poor old Rishi, taken to the cleaners by an increasingly confident Starmer. The PM is a dead man walking, and I've no idea how he can turn it around.
Starmer's Midas quip was even borderline funny, which is a first from him.
The quip itself was mildly amusing; the follow-up aimed at Cleverly was ROFL good.
It wasn’t, tho, was it?
You weren’t actually “rolling on the floor laughing” at a joke by Sir Kir Royale
I doubt if anyone has ever rolled on the floor laughing at a joke by anyone, let alone Sir Royale
The closest I have come is being doubled over with laughter at an early Eddie Izzard gig (when he was so so good), when I laughed so much it genuinely hurt, even then I didn’t actually collapse to the ground and roll around in agony like I had some fucking kidney stone, you stupid fucking twat
No, I wasn't actually ROFL, you are right. It was an exaggeration for emphasis: not something you would ever consider, even when smashed off your box on Thai gin.
We need some more nuanced British acronyms for stages of laughter. AMALCUMB (allowed myself a little chuckle under my breath) perhaps, or CHAWGAT (couldn’t help a wry grin at that).
CHAWGAT and AMALCUMB are both excellent - especially the latter as it nearly lurches into intense rudeness
Bravo!
I suggest we adopt these as special PB neologisms which mark us out
To my mind they are as good as
Lagershed Rogerdamus (invented by @seant I believe) BAXTERED (also @seant) And OGH (no idea)
From now on I shall use both liberally
Didn't know whether to believe re the Lagershed, so checked: and we have a perpetrator and date: it is now in UD but not (and I checked this too) OED.
I'm sure I've seen it used on here before Sep 2021.
That's when he talked about it, looking back: not when it began.
"Many years ago now I coined a word, "lagershed", on a blog I visit called Politialbetting.com. The word is based on the 9pm watershed and refers to the time after which chat on a blog becomes overly influenced by the intake of intoxicating beverages. It's used quite frequently there by the regulars but has yet to be taken up by Chambers, Collins etc.
So recently I submitted a definition to the Urban dictionary and it has been accepted. Fame at last."
PMQs summary for the 99.9% who don't watch it. Poor old Rishi, taken to the cleaners by an increasingly confident Starmer. The PM is a dead man walking, and I've no idea how he can turn it around.
Starmer's Midas quip was even borderline funny, which is a first from him.
The quip itself was mildly amusing; the follow-up aimed at Cleverly was ROFL good.
It wasn’t, tho, was it?
You weren’t actually “rolling on the floor laughing” at a joke by Sir Kir Royale
I doubt if anyone has ever rolled on the floor laughing at a joke by anyone, let alone Sir Royale
The closest I have come is being doubled over with laughter at an early Eddie Izzard gig (when he was so so good), when I laughed so much it genuinely hurt, even then I didn’t actually collapse to the ground and roll around in agony like I had some fucking kidney stone, you stupid fucking twat
No, I wasn't actually ROFL, you are right. It was an exaggeration for emphasis: not something you would ever consider, even when smashed off your box on Thai gin.
We need some more nuanced British acronyms for stages of laughter. AMALCUMB (allowed myself a little chuckle under my breath) perhaps, or CHAWGAT (couldn’t help a wry grin at that).
CHAWGAT and AMALCUMB are both excellent - especially the latter as it nearly lurches into intense rudeness
Bravo!
I suggest we adopt these as special PB neologisms which mark us out
To my mind they are as good as
Lagershed Rogerdamus (invented by @seant I believe) BAXTERED (also @seant) And OGH (no idea)
From now on I shall use both liberally
Didn't know whether to believe re the Lagershed, so checked: and we have a perpetrator and date: it is now in UD but not (and I checked this too) OED.
I'm sure I've seen it used on here before Sep 2021.
That's when he talked about it, looking back: not when it began.
"Many years ago now I coined a word, "lagershed", on a blog I visit called Politialbetting.com. The word is based on the 9pm watershed and refers to the time after which chat on a blog becomes overly influenced by the intake of intoxicating beverages. It's used quite frequently there by the regulars but has yet to be taken up by Chambers, Collins etc.
So recently I submitted a definition to the Urban dictionary and it has been accepted. Fame at last."
Oops, sorry. I thought you were quoting it as the first usage.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
The obvious point is that the internal lawyers within the PO had far too much influence. I know this myself, remembering their surprise when I first got my senior job and started re-drafting and sending back the drafts they were sending for me to send out in my name. In my case, they quickly realised that I was going to be a partner and not a puppet, but I do feel for some of the more junior people out in the field who were sent their drafted statements by some HQ lawyer and didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to push back. Some of whom have recently been ridiculed by top lawyers for signing stuff they they didn’t really read at the time. Of course, “they should have”, but which of us in our time hasn’t signed something provided to us by an expert without really reading or thinking about it? On the internet nowadays, it happens so very often.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
A point about electronic evidence as discussed in the thread header, for which many thanks to Cyclefree - I remember reading a book some years ago by a forensic computer scientist who had a very poor view of some of the cases he had examined for the defence. IIRC, one was that the prosecution hadn't checked if the system clock was set right (it wasn't, so the evidence being tied in with other sources was completely out of kilter, with obvious problems for such things as alibis). Another was that the prosecution had not noticed that the sysadmin had poked around in the files etc. (out of c uriosity maybe rather than malice?) so the evidence was completely corrupted in thje legal sense. My clear sense was even then to go straight to a solicitor and ensure such a person is called in ab initio if I am ever accused of any such thing.
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
PMQs summary for the 99.9% who don't watch it. Poor old Rishi, taken to the cleaners by an increasingly confident Starmer. The PM is a dead man walking, and I've no idea how he can turn it around.
Starmer's Midas quip was even borderline funny, which is a first from him.
The quip itself was mildly amusing; the follow-up aimed at Cleverly was ROFL good.
It wasn’t, tho, was it?
You weren’t actually “rolling on the floor laughing” at a joke by Sir Kir Royale
I doubt if anyone has ever rolled on the floor laughing at a joke by anyone, let alone Sir Royale
The closest I have come is being doubled over with laughter at an early Eddie Izzard gig (when he was so so good), when I laughed so much it genuinely hurt, even then I didn’t actually collapse to the ground and roll around in agony like I had some fucking kidney stone, you stupid fucking twat
No, I wasn't actually ROFL, you are right. It was an exaggeration for emphasis: not something you would ever consider, even when smashed off your box on Thai gin.
We need some more nuanced British acronyms for stages of laughter. AMALCUMB (allowed myself a little chuckle under my breath) perhaps, or CHAWGAT (couldn’t help a wry grin at that).
CHAWGAT and AMALCUMB are both excellent - especially the latter as it nearly lurches into intense rudeness
Bravo!
I suggest we adopt these as special PB neologisms which mark us out
To my mind they are as good as
Lagershed Rogerdamus (invented by @seant I believe) BAXTERED (also @seant) And OGH (no idea)
From now on I shall use both liberally
Didn't know whether to believe re the Lagershed, so checked: and we have a perpetrator and date: it is now in UD but not (and I checked this too) OED.
I'm sure I've seen it used on here before Sep 2021.
That's when he talked about it, looking back: not when it began.
"Many years ago now I coined a word, "lagershed", on a blog I visit called Politialbetting.com. The word is based on the 9pm watershed and refers to the time after which chat on a blog becomes overly influenced by the intake of intoxicating beverages. It's used quite frequently there by the regulars but has yet to be taken up by Chambers, Collins etc.
So recently I submitted a definition to the Urban dictionary and it has been accepted. Fame at last."
Oops, sorry. I thought you were quoting it as the first usage.
No probs! Esp as I have suddenly realised it's time for a glass of wine with the hors d'.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
The killings in Zimbabwe weren't widely reported for about 15 or 20 years because Mugabe was such a popular figure at the time.
Really? I recall lots of horror stories about life under him. But maybe that was after your timeframe. Certainly he had goodwill at the start and for a while. Understandably so.
The stats coming out of South Africa are mind boggling
In 2022-23 the UK endured about 660 homicides
In the 2nd quarter of 2023 - ie in just 3 months - South Africa endured 7,000 murders, and 13,000 sexual assaults - those are the ones recorded by police
“The police also recorded 6 009 hijackings, 6 045 robberies at residential properties and 4 910 robberies at non-residential premises.”
This is a major state on the brink of failure, yet how often is it mentioned?
There's a guy, I think, who writes periodically about this on, I think, Unherd.
But yes, it's interesting how seldom it's mentioned. Is it because we have mentally placed SA in a box marked 'third world' and just expect it to be terrible? Or is it because we all tacitly agreed that apartheid was so bad that whatever replaced it had to work and we just don't want to know that it didn't?
It worked to end apartheid.
Well yes. And I would think that yer average South African is as a result better off today than in 1989. But it's not 100% obvious that if that is the case that it will still be the case next year.
Thing is, was there any other option? Was there any way of ending apartheid without handing power to an organisation which seems both corrupt and criminal? Was failure just baked in to post-apartheid South Africa?
The perils of one party rule is probably one thing it shows. Corruption often thrives in such places. But no, I wouldn't say it was at all inevitable that the country would be in a parlous state 30 years later. As I said it's rather tragic if that's the case.
Lessons? I don't know apart from the obvious one of don't go for apartheid if you want a free and prosperous country. It won't just preclude that while it's in place it could also be a devil to shrug off once it's lifted.
Some countries move towards greater democracy, some move away from such. Over the same time period, the nascent democracy in Russia has faded and democracy has taken some knocks in Hungary and even the US, while countries like Benin, Ghana and Senegal have become more democratic and prosperous. So there’s no obvious correlation with skin colour or coloniser/colonised status, despite the desire of some to cast every story in racial terms.
The stats coming out of South Africa are mind boggling
In 2022-23 the UK endured about 660 homicides
In the 2nd quarter of 2023 - ie in just 3 months - South Africa endured 7,000 murders, and 13,000 sexual assaults - those are the ones recorded by police
“The police also recorded 6 009 hijackings, 6 045 robberies at residential properties and 4 910 robberies at non-residential premises.”
This is a major state on the brink of failure, yet how often is it mentioned?
Remember the UK is in a far worse state than anywhere else.
The only news I’ve seen, from South Africa, in recent months is the Oscar Pitorius case, the celebrations over the rugby, and SA support for Palestine
No major news service, that I can recall, is offering the fairly relevant info that SA is on the brink of total collapse into criminal anarchy, with widespread power cuts, business chaos, crumbling infra, water shortages, and so on. Yet the briefest search of Google news shows this is the case
It is going the same way as Zimbabwe, as the Afrikaaner racists predicted
My wife is from South Africa, and returned there to see her sister about six months ago.
The crime is terrible. Albeit, the crime has been terrible there for the last twenty years. (Indeed, the murder rate is actually better than it was when I first visited in in 2000.)
What has got dramatically worse, though, is the provision of basic services. Power is often unavailable for six to ten hours per day ("load shedding"). Which means electronics break. And at night it means the traffic lights don't work. Which means the - already dangerous - roads have gotten ever more deadly.
My COO is from South Africa. He left the country back in 2000. At that time, it was educated whites that fled to the UK on working holiday and education visas (or based on family ties).
Now it is the educated black middle class who are going. Two of our developers are young black South Africans out of top universities, who want to live somewhere where the lights work. (Interestingly, the education system still works. These guys - well one guy and one girl - are shit hot.)
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
A point about electronic evidence as discussed in the thread header, for which many thanks to Cyclefree - I remember reading a book some years ago by a forensic computer scientist who had a very poor view of some of the cases he had examined for the defence. IIRC, one was that the prosecution hadn't checked if the system clock was set right (it wasn't, so the evidence being tied in with other sources was completely out of kilter, with obvious problems for such things as alibis). Another was that the prosecution had not noticed that the sysadmin had poked around in the files etc. (out of c uriosity maybe rather than malice?) so the evidence was completely corrupted in thje legal sense. My clear sense was even then to go straight to a solicitor and ensure such a person is called in ab initio if I am ever accused of any such thing.
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
Fairy nuff, but your guys didn't know the technology was faulty, and open to tampering. The Post Office did, and so did Fujitsu, and so too too did many of the lawyers working for the prosecution.
The stats coming out of South Africa are mind boggling
In 2022-23 the UK endured about 660 homicides
In the 2nd quarter of 2023 - ie in just 3 months - South Africa endured 7,000 murders, and 13,000 sexual assaults - those are the ones recorded by police
“The police also recorded 6 009 hijackings, 6 045 robberies at residential properties and 4 910 robberies at non-residential premises.”
This is a major state on the brink of failure, yet how often is it mentioned?
There's a guy, I think, who writes periodically about this on, I think, Unherd.
But yes, it's interesting how seldom it's mentioned. Is it because we have mentally placed SA in a box marked 'third world' and just expect it to be terrible? Or is it because we all tacitly agreed that apartheid was so bad that whatever replaced it had to work and we just don't want to know that it didn't?
It worked to end apartheid.
Well yes. And I would think that yer average South African is as a result better off today than in 1989. But it's not 100% obvious that if that is the case that it will still be the case next year.
Thing is, was there any other option? Was there any way of ending apartheid without handing power to an organisation which seems both corrupt and criminal? Was failure just baked in to post-apartheid South Africa?
The perils of one party rule is probably one thing it shows. Corruption often thrives in such places. But no, I wouldn't say it was at all inevitable that the country would be in a parlous state 30 years later. As I said it's rather tragic if that's the case.
Lessons? I don't know apart from the obvious one of don't go for apartheid if you want a free and prosperous country. It won't just preclude that while it's in place it could also be a devil to shrug off once it's lifted.
Some countries move towards greater democracy, some move away from such. Over the same time period, the nascent democracy in Russia has faded and democracy has taken some knocks in Hungary and even the US, while countries like Benin, Ghana and Senegal have become more democratic and prosperous. So there’s no obvious correlation with skin colour or coloniser/colonised status, despite the desire of some to cast every story in racial terms.
Yes the agenda is pretty clear isn't it. It's unsavoury and tiresome.
I would say that any newbuild house that you buy will be stuck with eye watering service and estate charges in years to come that you cannot escape from. As part of planning permission in many cases the maintenance burden for much infrastructure is just passed on to owners. In London there are now requirements for Surface Water Drainage systems (multiple maintainence required), parking management plans, delivery and servicing plans, landscaping maintainence plans, biodiversity plans, green roofs etc etc. It is all going to rapidly add up to £500 per month.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
A point about electronic evidence as discussed in the thread header, for which many thanks to Cyclefree - I remember reading a book some years ago by a forensic computer scientist who had a very poor view of some of the cases he had examined for the defence. IIRC, one was that the prosecution hadn't checked if the system clock was set right (it wasn't, so the evidence being tied in with other sources was completely out of kilter, with obvious problems for such things as alibis). Another was that the prosecution had not noticed that the sysadmin had poked around in the files etc. (out of c uriosity maybe rather than malice?) so the evidence was completely corrupted in thje legal sense. My clear sense was even then to go straight to a solicitor and ensure such a person is called in ab initio if I am ever accused of any such thing.
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
Fairy nuff, but your guys didn't know the technology was faulty, and open to tampering. The Post Office did, and so did Fujitsu, and so too too did many of the lawyers working for the prosecution.
Jail is too good them.
Sure, the ordinary sub wouldn't know. But the legal system in general must have been aware years earlier, judges and so on. That's what puzzles me.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
A point about electronic evidence as discussed in the thread header, for which many thanks to Cyclefree - I remember reading a book some years ago by a forensic computer scientist who had a very poor view of some of the cases he had examined for the defence. IIRC, one was that the prosecution hadn't checked if the system clock was set right (it wasn't, so the evidence being tied in with other sources was completely out of kilter, with obvious problems for such things as alibis). Another was that the prosecution had not noticed that the sysadmin had poked around in the files etc. (out of c uriosity maybe rather than malice?) so the evidence was completely corrupted in thje legal sense. My clear sense was even then to go straight to a solicitor and ensure such a person is called in ab initio if I am ever accused of any such thing.
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
The deeper difficulty is not the bare problem. This is obvious and always has been ever since someone tried to defend a case against a speed camera - O happy simple days.
Everything beyond face to face conversation and paper with handwriting on it goes through systems, of potentially infinite complexity, which no individual fully understands. If a prosecutor has to prove, every time, and in reliable scientific terms that what came out from a device was what went in at the other end, or that a till receipt for 47p in fact reflects the reality of the transaction the entire criminal law edifice would collapse.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
A point about electronic evidence as discussed in the thread header, for which many thanks to Cyclefree - I remember reading a book some years ago by a forensic computer scientist who had a very poor view of some of the cases he had examined for the defence. IIRC, one was that the prosecution hadn't checked if the system clock was set right (it wasn't, so the evidence being tied in with other sources was completely out of kilter, with obvious problems for such things as alibis). Another was that the prosecution had not noticed that the sysadmin had poked around in the files etc. (out of c uriosity maybe rather than malice?) so the evidence was completely corrupted in thje legal sense. My clear sense was even then to go straight to a solicitor and ensure such a person is called in ab initio if I am ever accused of any such thing.
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
The deeper difficulty is not the bare problem. This is obvious and always has been ever since someone tried to defend a case against a speed camera - O happy simple days.
Everything beyond face to face conversation and paper with handwriting on it goes through systems, of potentially infinite complexity, which no individual fully understands. If a prosecutor has to prove, every time, and in reliable scientific terms that what came out from a device was what went in at the other end, or that a till receipt for 47p in fact reflects the reality of the transaction the entire criminal law edifice would collapse.
Indeed. Just for clarity (mine not yours), the book I was reading wasn't about the PO at all but general criminal cases.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
The obvious point is that the internal lawyers within the PO had far too much influence. I know this myself, remembering their surprise when I first got my senior job and started re-drafting and sending back the drafts they were sending for me to send out in my name. In my case, they quickly realised that I was going to be a partner and not a puppet, but I do feel for some of the more junior people out in the field who were sent their drafted statements by some HQ lawyer and didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to push back. Some of whom have recently been ridiculed by top lawyers for signing stuff they they didn’t really read at the time. Of course, “they should have”, but which of us in our time hasn’t signed something provided to us by an expert without really reading or thinking about it? On the internet nowadays, it happens so very often.
Yes, the internal lawyers were far too powerful, but also manifestly dishonest. We can say this openly now in the light of evidence to the inquiry.
One feature of this which you can witness on a daily basis if you are following the Inquiry is that the PO's own staff were merely rubber-stamping what the lawyers were saying or doing. None of them seem to have had the nous, intelligence, training or backbone to say 'Hold on a minute...this doesn't seem right.' They showed all the initiative and responsibility of Konzentration Kamp guards.
Thank you for this article. The problem here is so obvious that it is easy to overlook the subsequent difficulty: How should the criminal law be framed, and how shall its consequences be funded.
The problem arises with any action, communication etc relying on a system outside of the one communicating and the recipient - which in the modern world is more or less everything apart from personal conversation and paper with writing on it (what are they? a young person might ask).
Let us say that a minor criminal case depends upon: An email, a text message and the absence of any record of a transaction in a branch of Sainsbury's on the Saturday before Christmas (his alibi).
The prosecutor is to prove all this. The defendant remains mostly mute, denies everything, asserts the email and text message never existed and that the absence of record of a particular transaction in Sainsbury's is due to computer unreliability.
The task of proving every stage of these everyday matters would be burdensome in a murder case let alone some minor matter.
So what is to be done, Cyclefree, when reliance of systems no individual understands in universal, and how shall the law be framed?
To answer your and @kinabalu, Alex Chalk, when a junior justice minister, asked back in 2020 for IT and legal experts to come up with suggestions for how to deal with computer evidence. The resulting suggestions can be read here - https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/article/view/5240.
The government said it would consider these. But then - as you will read in my next header - changed its mind. The lazy bastards won't even do the work to try and find a sensible answer to your very valid questions.
For the lawyers among you it explores further the nonsensical way the Law Commission approached its job.
Nick Wallis has written an excellent book on this scandal.
But there is a book to be written - and I rather think I am going to try and do it - on the common factors in all these scandals. Because that is what I keep seeing and it is what keeps being missed. Each scandal comes along with its own story and set of incompetents and villains and crushed by misery victims and inevitable report. It feels like one damn thing after another.
But there is very little joining of the dots, noticing the common patterns and the common ways in which remedies might be applied. There is very little learning and not enough going back to unpick the fundamental structures and attitudes which lead to these problems and their constant repetition. Which is what I think I am trying to do in my articles on this and similar instances.
I started doing this in my job because I kept seeing the same behaviours over and over again. And it is what I do in my work now. But I think there is scope for trying to draw some of this together in a way which illuminates. Let's face it - no-one is going to read the endless inquiry reports and because there are so many of them it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if you could synthesise them in an attractive, compelling and thought-provoking way......
"A Handbook of British Cock-Ups" is my current working title.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
The killings in Zimbabwe weren't widely reported for about 15 or 20 years because Mugabe was such a popular figure at the time.
Really? I recall lots of horror stories about life under him. But maybe that was after your timeframe. Certainly he had goodwill at the start and for a while. Understandably so.
I'm talking about right at the start of his time in power. In early 1983, not long after taking over, he was using North Korean mercenaries to kill his political opponents in the Bulawayo area.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
The obvious point is that the internal lawyers within the PO had far too much influence. I know this myself, remembering their surprise when I first got my senior job and started re-drafting and sending back the drafts they were sending for me to send out in my name. In my case, they quickly realised that I was going to be a partner and not a puppet, but I do feel for some of the more junior people out in the field who were sent their drafted statements by some HQ lawyer and didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to push back. Some of whom have recently been ridiculed by top lawyers for signing stuff they they didn’t really read at the time. Of course, “they should have”, but which of us in our time hasn’t signed something provided to us by an expert without really reading or thinking about it? On the internet nowadays, it happens so very often.
Yes, the internal lawyers were far too powerful, but also manifestly dishonest. We can say this openly now in the light of evidence to the inquiry.
One feature of this which you can witness on a daily basis if you are following the Inquiry is that the PO's own staff were merely rubber-stamping what the lawyers were saying or doing. None of them seem to have had the nous, intelligence, training or backbone to say 'Hold on a minute...this doesn't seem right.' They showed all the initiative and responsibility of Konzentration Kamp guards.
You might choose more empathetic words to describe the interaction between some trained lawyer on £80,000+ and some manager out in the field probably earning £25-30,000 and with a stack of other stuff to think about, at the time just pleased to have some ‘expert’ from HQ telling them what to do.
My accumulated wisdom, now that I’m out of the labour market, it that most problems (but not all - cf. various recent PMs - but certainly commonly at more junior levels) arise from systemic faults, rather than from malign individuals, and before we condemn we should have a good think about what we would have done in the same position.
I would say that any newbuild house that you buy will be stuck with eye watering service and estate charges in years to come that you cannot escape from. As part of planning permission in many cases the maintenance burden for much infrastructure is just passed on to owners. In London there are now requirements for Surface Water Drainage systems (multiple maintainence required), parking management plans, delivery and servicing plans, landscaping maintainence plans, biodiversity plans, green roofs etc etc. It is all going to rapidly add up to £500 per month.
Makes me wonder what would have happened if feu duties hadn't been abolished in Scotland (mercifully they were, by the Scottish Parliament). In the 1990s and early 2000s, many had been bought out once and for all, but quite a few (no pun intended) remained, and some types were already buying up feudal superiorities to see what they could extract from their unwitting lieges.
" I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already." Myself I can't believe that anyone sincerely believes there haven't. This is something no-one honest with an understanding of justice could have believed for a good while.
Thank you for this article. The problem here is so obvious that it is easy to overlook the subsequent difficulty: How should the criminal law be framed, and how shall its consequences be funded.
The problem arises with any action, communication etc relying on a system outside of the one communicating and the recipient - which in the modern world is more or less everything apart from personal conversation and paper with writing on it (what are they? a young person might ask).
Let us say that a minor criminal case depends upon: An email, a text message and the absence of any record of a transaction in a branch of Sainsbury's on the Saturday before Christmas (his alibi).
The prosecutor is to prove all this. The defendant remains mostly mute, denies everything, asserts the email and text message never existed and that the absence of record of a particular transaction in Sainsbury's is due to computer unreliability.
The task of proving every stage of these everyday matters would be burdensome in a murder case let alone some minor matter.
So what is to be done, Cyclefree, when reliance of systems no individual understands in universal, and how shall the law be framed?
To answer your and @kinabalu, Alex Chalk, when a junior justice minister, asked back in 2020 for IT and legal experts to come up with suggestions for how to deal with computer evidence. The resulting suggestions can be read here - https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/article/view/5240.
The government said it would consider these. But then - as you will read in my next header - changed its mind. The lazy bastards won't even do the work to try and find a sensible answer to your very valid questions.
For the lawyers among you it explores further the nonsensical way the Law Commission approached its job.
Nick Wallis has written an excellent book on this scandal.
But there is a book to be written - and I rather think I am going to try and do it - on the common factors in all these scandals. Because that is what I keep seeing and it is what keeps being missed. Each scandal comes along with its own story and set of incompetents and villains and crushed by misery victims and inevitable report. It feels like one damn thing after another.
But there is very little joining of the dots, noticing the common patterns and the common ways in which remedies might be applied. There is very little learning and not enough going back to unpick the fundamental structures and attitudes which lead to these problems and their constant repetition. Which is what I think I am trying to do in my articles on this and similar instances.
I started doing this in my job because I kept seeing the same behaviours over and over again. And it is what I do in my work now. But I think there is scope for trying to draw some of this together in a way which illuminates. Let's face it - no-one is going to read the endless inquiry reports and because there are so many of them it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if you could synthesise them in an attractive, compelling and thought-provoking way......
"A Handbook of British Cock-Ups" is my current working title.
We could write it together! I do understand most of what happened in this particular case, from (almost) the inside, and I’m a dedicated believer in environmental determinism, sceptical that other than in exceptional circumstances, individuals make anything like as much difference than they, or we, might think.
Thank you for this article. The problem here is so obvious that it is easy to overlook the subsequent difficulty: How should the criminal law be framed, and how shall its consequences be funded.
The problem arises with any action, communication etc relying on a system outside of the one communicating and the recipient - which in the modern world is more or less everything apart from personal conversation and paper with writing on it (what are they? a young person might ask).
Let us say that a minor criminal case depends upon: An email, a text message and the absence of any record of a transaction in a branch of Sainsbury's on the Saturday before Christmas (his alibi).
The prosecutor is to prove all this. The defendant remains mostly mute, denies everything, asserts the email and text message never existed and that the absence of record of a particular transaction in Sainsbury's is due to computer unreliability.
The task of proving every stage of these everyday matters would be burdensome in a murder case let alone some minor matter.
So what is to be done, Cyclefree, when reliance of systems no individual understands in universal, and how shall the law be framed?
To answer your and @kinabalu, Alex Chalk, when a junior justice minister, asked back in 2020 for IT and legal experts to come up with suggestions for how to deal with computer evidence. The resulting suggestions can be read here - https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/article/view/5240.
The government said it would consider these. But then - as you will read in my next header - changed its mind. The lazy bastards won't even do the work to try and find a sensible answer to your very valid questions.
For the lawyers among you it explores further the nonsensical way the Law Commission approached its job.
Nick Wallis has written an excellent book on this scandal.
But there is a book to be written - and I rather think I am going to try and do it - on the common factors in all these scandals. Because that is what I keep seeing and it is what keeps being missed. Each scandal comes along with its own story and set of incompetents and villains and crushed by misery victims and inevitable report. It feels like one damn thing after another.
But there is very little joining of the dots, noticing the common patterns and the common ways in which remedies might be applied. There is very little learning and not enough going back to unpick the fundamental structures and attitudes which lead to these problems and their constant repetition. Which is what I think I am trying to do in my articles on this and similar instances.
I started doing this in my job because I kept seeing the same behaviours over and over again. And it is what I do in my work now. But I think there is scope for trying to draw some of this together in a way which illuminates. Let's face it - no-one is going to read the endless inquiry reports and because there are so many of them it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if you could synthesise them in an attractive, compelling and thought-provoking way......
"A Handbook of British Cock-Ups" is my current working title.
Hmm! I'm actually reminded about books I have read about aircraft crashes and the maintenance of safety. Mind, the plane folk do tend to be better at learning lessons, like the copilot not being frightened to query something the pilot is doing if it seems wrong. Their crashes are rather more visible, I suppose.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
The global politics of the disintegration of the South African state would be interesting.
Who would play the role that Germany did in Yugoslavia when they unilaterally recognised the independence of Slovenia and Croatia?
Maybe we always made a mistake with Union and it'd have been better staying as Cape Colony, Natal and the Boer Republics.
My guess is the former two would be doing far better now.
The Union of South Africa was a wrong turn. Cape Colony had a pretty low property qualification, which meant plenty of Black, Indian, and Coloured voters had the vote (something the Nationalists spent decades erasing). Almost certainly, the Cape would now be a successful democracy, had it become a Dominion.
One 19th century politician, defending the franchise in the Cape, explained “I’d rather face the Hottentot on the hustings than on the battlefield.”
The Nationalists acted like shits, after 1948, and ruined the country they professed to love.
Just arrived at my parents house for dinner to find they have dialled into a zoom webinar on Jewish solidarity with Palestine.
It made me think, every Jew I know (bar one) is left wing and is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. This is not representative - but at the same time, they seem utterly unrepresented in wider media.
Sinn Fein are probably heading for government in Ireland, simply because they're not part of the current administration.
Michael Martin is pretty good, but the Irish political establishment is mostly awful. Sinn Fein would be worse. I could see a lot of Irish people getting out of Dodge, if they take power.
Sunak has become the greatest 'centrist Dad' disappointment of all time.
He was chosen because he wasn’t going to break the crockery, unlike his two predecessors.
Sadly, like Hague before him, electoral panic within the Tory Party has pushed him onto ground where he has to be inauthentic. Which won’t work, as Hague found out the hard way.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
Don't think of yourself as an idiot - the only idiots are people who think it could never happen to them. And it sounds like there's no significant harm done.
And thanks for putting the anecdote on here: it's useful to remember (or learn...) how good these things can be.
The stats coming out of South Africa are mind boggling
In 2022-23 the UK endured about 660 homicides
In the 2nd quarter of 2023 - ie in just 3 months - South Africa endured 7,000 murders, and 13,000 sexual assaults - those are the ones recorded by police
“The police also recorded 6 009 hijackings, 6 045 robberies at residential properties and 4 910 robberies at non-residential premises.”
This is a major state on the brink of failure, yet how often is it mentioned?
There's a guy, I think, who writes periodically about this on, I think, Unherd.
But yes, it's interesting how seldom it's mentioned. Is it because we have mentally placed SA in a box marked 'third world' and just expect it to be terrible? Or is it because we all tacitly agreed that apartheid was so bad that whatever replaced it had to work and we just don't want to know that it didn't?
It worked to end apartheid.
Well yes. And I would think that yer average South African is as a result better off today than in 1989. But it's not 100% obvious that if that is the case that it will still be the case next year.
Thing is, was there any other option? Was there any way of ending apartheid without handing power to an organisation which seems both corrupt and criminal? Was failure just baked in to post-apartheid South Africa?
The perils of one party rule is probably one thing it shows. Corruption often thrives in such places. But no, I wouldn't say it was at all inevitable that the country would be in a parlous state 30 years later. As I said it's rather tragic if that's the case.
Lessons? I don't know apart from the obvious one of don't go for apartheid if you want a free and prosperous country. It won't just preclude that while it's in place it could also be a devil to shrug off once it's lifted.
Some countries move towards greater democracy, some move away from such. Over the same time period, the nascent democracy in Russia has faded and democracy has taken some knocks in Hungary and even the US, while countries like Benin, Ghana and Senegal have become more democratic and prosperous. So there’s no obvious correlation with skin colour or coloniser/colonised status, despite the desire of some to cast every story in racial terms.
A chart of the relative GDP per capita / life expectancy / murder rates of Botswana and South Africa would show the former thriving and the latter struggling.
In 1990, Botswana had a GDP per capita a third of South Africa's. It's now almost 20% higher.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
It’s so easy to end up in these scams.
Never click on a Facebook post either advertising something that sounds to good to be true, or that merely sounds interesting and invites you to click a link to some external website. There are Russian basements full of people creating such stuff just waiting for you to click to say that you want to know more….
Sinn Fein are probably heading for government in Ireland, simply because they're not part of the current administration.
Michael Martin is pretty good, but the Irish political establishment is mostly awful. Sinn Fein would be worse. I could see a lot of Irish people getting out of Dodge, if they take power.
We might see a kind of Northern Irelandification of the politics of the republic if the two traditional parties of power collapse and the opposition to Sinn Fein comes from right-wing nationalists.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
Thanks for that. Could happen to anyone and very easy to get sucked into it.
The stats coming out of South Africa are mind boggling
In 2022-23 the UK endured about 660 homicides
In the 2nd quarter of 2023 - ie in just 3 months - South Africa endured 7,000 murders, and 13,000 sexual assaults - those are the ones recorded by police
“The police also recorded 6 009 hijackings, 6 045 robberies at residential properties and 4 910 robberies at non-residential premises.”
This is a major state on the brink of failure, yet how often is it mentioned?
There's a guy, I think, who writes periodically about this on, I think, Unherd.
But yes, it's interesting how seldom it's mentioned. Is it because we have mentally placed SA in a box marked 'third world' and just expect it to be terrible? Or is it because we all tacitly agreed that apartheid was so bad that whatever replaced it had to work and we just don't want to know that it didn't?
It worked to end apartheid.
Well yes. And I would think that yer average South African is as a result better off today than in 1989. But it's not 100% obvious that if that is the case that it will still be the case next year.
Thing is, was there any other option? Was there any way of ending apartheid without handing power to an organisation which seems both corrupt and criminal? Was failure just baked in to post-apartheid South Africa?
The perils of one party rule is probably one thing it shows. Corruption often thrives in such places. But no, I wouldn't say it was at all inevitable that the country would be in a parlous state 30 years later. As I said it's rather tragic if that's the case.
Lessons? I don't know apart from the obvious one of don't go for apartheid if you want a free and prosperous country. It won't just preclude that while it's in place it could also be a devil to shrug off once it's lifted.
Some countries move towards greater democracy, some move away from such. Over the same time period, the nascent democracy in Russia has faded and democracy has taken some knocks in Hungary and even the US, while countries like Benin, Ghana and Senegal have become more democratic and prosperous. So there’s no obvious correlation with skin colour or coloniser/colonised status, despite the desire of some to cast every story in racial terms.
A chart of the relative GDP per capita / life expectancy / murder rates of Botswana and South Africa would show the former thriving and the latter struggling.
In 1990, Botswana had a GDP per capita a third of South Africa's. It's now almost 20% higher.
Botswana is a great success story.
Like Lee Kwan Yiew, Sir Seretse Khama was a statesman. There are so few of them.
Thank you for this article. The problem here is so obvious that it is easy to overlook the subsequent difficulty: How should the criminal law be framed, and how shall its consequences be funded.
The problem arises with any action, communication etc relying on a system outside of the one communicating and the recipient - which in the modern world is more or less everything apart from personal conversation and paper with writing on it (what are they? a young person might ask).
Let us say that a minor criminal case depends upon: An email, a text message and the absence of any record of a transaction in a branch of Sainsbury's on the Saturday before Christmas (his alibi).
The prosecutor is to prove all this. The defendant remains mostly mute, denies everything, asserts the email and text message never existed and that the absence of record of a particular transaction in Sainsbury's is due to computer unreliability.
The task of proving every stage of these everyday matters would be burdensome in a murder case let alone some minor matter.
So what is to be done, Cyclefree, when reliance of systems no individual understands in universal, and how shall the law be framed?
To answer your and @kinabalu, Alex Chalk, when a junior justice minister, asked back in 2020 for IT and legal experts to come up with suggestions for how to deal with computer evidence. The resulting suggestions can be read here - https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/article/view/5240.
The government said it would consider these. But then - as you will read in my next header - changed its mind. The lazy bastards won't even do the work to try and find a sensible answer to your very valid questions.
For the lawyers among you it explores further the nonsensical way the Law Commission approached its job.
Nick Wallis has written an excellent book on this scandal.
But there is a book to be written - and I rather think I am going to try and do it - on the common factors in all these scandals. Because that is what I keep seeing and it is what keeps being missed. Each scandal comes along with its own story and set of incompetents and villains and crushed by misery victims and inevitable report. It feels like one damn thing after another.
But there is very little joining of the dots, noticing the common patterns and the common ways in which remedies might be applied. There is very little learning and not enough going back to unpick the fundamental structures and attitudes which lead to these problems and their constant repetition. Which is what I think I am trying to do in my articles on this and similar instances.
I started doing this in my job because I kept seeing the same behaviours over and over again. And it is what I do in my work now. But I think there is scope for trying to draw some of this together in a way which illuminates. Let's face it - no-one is going to read the endless inquiry reports and because there are so many of them it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if you could synthesise them in an attractive, compelling and thought-provoking way......
"A Handbook of British Cock-Ups" is my current working title.
The logical issue you have to overcome is asking how many potentially similar scandals have been successfully avoided by the sort of combative approach adopted by the PO and its lawyers.
Devotees of Hollywood movies might like to believe that most incidences of injustice get uncovered, sooner or later, and thus resistance is generally futile.
Sinn Fein are probably heading for government in Ireland, simply because they're not part of the current administration.
Michael Martin is pretty good, but the Irish political establishment is mostly awful. Sinn Fein would be worse. I could see a lot of Irish people getting out of Dodge, if they take power.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
People were right to celebrate the end of apartheid as it was awful, and I’m guessing that you, like me, spent lots of time in SA under apartheid and saw it in reality, but maybe people need to learn that getting interventionist and angsty about how things will turn out once their simplistic hopes come true is actually quite important.
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
The global politics of the disintegration of the South African state would be interesting.
Who would play the role that Germany did in Yugoslavia when they unilaterally recognised the independence of Slovenia and Croatia?
Maybe we always made a mistake with Union and it'd have been better staying as Cape Colony, Natal and the Boer Republics.
My guess is the former two would be doing far better now.
The Union of South Africa was a wrong turn. Cape Colony had a pretty low property qualification, which meant plenty of Black, Indian, and Coloured voters had the vote (something the Nationalists spent decades erasing). Almost certainly, the Cape would now be a successful democracy, had it become a Dominion.
One 19th century politician, defending the franchise in the Cape, explained “I’d rather face the Hottentot on the hustings than on the battlefield.”
The Nationalists acted like shits, after 1948, and ruined the country they professed to love.
Completely agree.
It was intended to follow the path of Canadian confederation and the Commonwealth of Australia, but the Union of South Africa just smashed a lot of culturally very different places together, and then suffered a reverse takeover by the Boers.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
It's call 'spoofing' and it is bloody nightmare for this kind of thing.
You need (we all need) to watch for "delayed disconnect" on landlines.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
People were right to celebrate the end of apartheid as it was awful, and I’m guessing that you, like me, spent lots of time in SA under apartheid and saw it in reality, but maybe people need to learn that getting interventionist and angsty about how things will turn out once their simplistic hopes come true is actually quite important.
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
There is a single state from the river to the sea, no?
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
Thanks for that. Could happen to anyone and very easy to get sucked into it.
Well done for checking it out.
Sounds nasty - very easy to get dragged into that! If the bank rings me, I now always ask for a reference number or similar, and then insist on hanging up and ringing them back on their published number.
Interestingly, Santander did this to me (rang off, rang me back) to check I was actually calling from my registered mobile last time I rang them (I was changing who had access to my business account, which I'd imagine is a process they take fairly seriously).
On a lighter note, I am nursing my bruised ego in my favourite station pub in Manchester's best station, Victoria. 20-odd beers, peanuts served by the glass, and St. Ettiene on the stereo. The photo below, from the way in, is for @Sunil_Prasannan if he's around.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
The killings in Zimbabwe weren't widely reported for about 15 or 20 years because Mugabe was such a popular figure at the time.
Really? I recall lots of horror stories about life under him. But maybe that was after your timeframe. Certainly he had goodwill at the start and for a while. Understandably so.
The Matabeleland killings by the North Korean trained 5th Brigade were quite well reported in Africa.
It was only when white people were targeted by the "war veterans" that it really made the news here.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
It’s so easy to end up in these scams.
Never click on a Facebook post either advertising something that sounds to good to be true, or that merely sounds interesting and invites you to click a link to some external website. There are Russian basements full of people creating such stuff just waiting for you to click to say that you want to know more….
Better still, don't use Facebook. I rarely do, and it is astonishing how few cold calls or scamming attempts I receive.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
It's call 'spoofing' and it is bloody nightmare for this kind of thing.
You need (we all need) to watch for "delayed disconnect" on landlines.
Hannah Barnes @hannahsbee My thoughts are with my former @BBCNewsnight colleagues today, as they’re told that the programme as we know and love it is to be no more. It’s a terrible day for UK investigative and original journalism. (1/2)
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
People were right to celebrate the end of apartheid as it was awful, and I’m guessing that you, like me, spent lots of time in SA under apartheid and saw it in reality, but maybe people need to learn that getting interventionist and angsty about how things will turn out once their simplistic hopes come true is actually quite important.
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
The Boers saw themselves (and in the early 1900’s, much bien pensant opinion saw them) as “The Powerless.”
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
People were right to celebrate the end of apartheid as it was awful, and I’m guessing that you, like me, spent lots of time in SA under apartheid and saw it in reality, but maybe people need to learn that getting interventionist and angsty about how things will turn out once their simplistic hopes come true is actually quite important.
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
There is a single state from the river to the sea, no?
There is, just not the correct one from some perspectives.
Here’s one for the PB brains, is there any other country that is defined by a border between a river and the sea? I’m guessing a South American country is most likely but maybe a small west African country could have had its border set that way.
Yet still doesn’t have anywhere near the salience of Hillsborough, Stephen Lawrence, the Maxwell pensions, Windrush, Catholic child abuse etc.
As discussed here before it’s the anonymity and geographically dispersed nature of the victims that makes it so.
I don't think that is all that makes it so. Many of the victims have been quite happy to talk about their cases. Regrettably, I think the reason it is not better known may be Alan Bates. He did a great job in getting the Justice for Subpostmasters Association going. Without him, the group litigation that established that Horizon was not remotely robust wouldn't have happened. However, according to Nick Wallis (for those who don't know, a journalist who has been covering the case for years and wrote a book on it), not only did Bates never get anyone to do PR for the subpostmasters, he actively resisted the idea of doing any PR. That makes it harder for journalists to find out what they need, which makes coverage less likely. A decent PR person regularly feeding stories to the press could have made a huge difference.
Thank you for this article. The problem here is so obvious that it is easy to overlook the subsequent difficulty: How should the criminal law be framed, and how shall its consequences be funded.
The problem arises with any action, communication etc relying on a system outside of the one communicating and the recipient - which in the modern world is more or less everything apart from personal conversation and paper with writing on it (what are they? a young person might ask).
Let us say that a minor criminal case depends upon: An email, a text message and the absence of any record of a transaction in a branch of Sainsbury's on the Saturday before Christmas (his alibi).
The prosecutor is to prove all this. The defendant remains mostly mute, denies everything, asserts the email and text message never existed and that the absence of record of a particular transaction in Sainsbury's is due to computer unreliability.
The task of proving every stage of these everyday matters would be burdensome in a murder case let alone some minor matter.
So what is to be done, Cyclefree, when reliance of systems no individual understands in universal, and how shall the law be framed?
To answer your and @kinabalu, Alex Chalk, when a junior justice minister, asked back in 2020 for IT and legal experts to come up with suggestions for how to deal with computer evidence. The resulting suggestions can be read here - https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/article/view/5240.
The government said it would consider these. But then - as you will read in my next header - changed its mind. The lazy bastards won't even do the work to try and find a sensible answer to your very valid questions.
For the lawyers among you it explores further the nonsensical way the Law Commission approached its job.
Nick Wallis has written an excellent book on this scandal.
But there is a book to be written - and I rather think I am going to try and do it - on the common factors in all these scandals. Because that is what I keep seeing and it is what keeps being missed. Each scandal comes along with its own story and set of incompetents and villains and crushed by misery victims and inevitable report. It feels like one damn thing after another.
But there is very little joining of the dots, noticing the common patterns and the common ways in which remedies might be applied. There is very little learning and not enough going back to unpick the fundamental structures and attitudes which lead to these problems and their constant repetition. Which is what I think I am trying to do in my articles on this and similar instances.
I started doing this in my job because I kept seeing the same behaviours over and over again. And it is what I do in my work now. But I think there is scope for trying to draw some of this together in a way which illuminates. Let's face it - no-one is going to read the endless inquiry reports and because there are so many of them it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if you could synthesise them in an attractive, compelling and thought-provoking way......
"A Handbook of British Cock-Ups" is my current working title.
Hmm! I'm actually reminded about books I have read about aircraft crashes and the maintenance of safety. Mind, the plane folk do tend to be better at learning lessons, like the copilot not being frightened to query something the pilot is doing if it seems wrong. Their crashes are rather more visible, I suppose.
The Railways set a good example in this respect. Study the cause of the crash, and learn from it.
The PO is still in denial. The Government too, I suspect.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
The killings in Zimbabwe weren't widely reported for about 15 or 20 years because Mugabe was such a popular figure at the time.
Really? I recall lots of horror stories about life under him. But maybe that was after your timeframe. Certainly he had goodwill at the start and for a while. Understandably so.
The Matabeleland killings by the North Korean trained 5th Brigade were quite well reported in Africa.
It was only when white people were targeted by the "war veterans" that it really made the news here.
Yes, ISTR well after it became appparent that Mugabe was an undemocratic thug, Peter Hain wrote a book in which a revolution by white peope was heroically crushed by Robert Mugabe.
Tony Roe @tonyroe · 1h Devolution on the way for 'Greater Lincolnshire' which will see Stamford and Scunthorpe, 80 miles apart, with the same elected Mayor from 2025 to take big infrastructure decisions. Democracy will be reduced argue Independent polticians. We've been out to Stamford to get reaction
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
It's call 'spoofing' and it is bloody nightmare for this kind of thing.
You need (we all need) to watch for "delayed disconnect" on landlines.
What is delayed disconnect?
Some landline systems do not disconnect calls immediately. So you think you've hung up and the bad actor plays a dialling tone down the phone; you dial the bank's number, and they say "Hello, this is your bank."
Except it's not a new call; it's the old one.
AIUI you can get around it by using a different phone or mobile, or making another call to someone (make sure it connects).
I wonder why landline systems are set up in this way. Some artefact of old systems?
Hannah Barnes @hannahsbee My thoughts are with my former @BBCNewsnight colleagues today, as they’re told that the programme as we know and love it is to be no more. It’s a terrible day for UK investigative and original journalism. (1/2)
BBC Two's Newsnight is to be cut back and have its format overhauled as part of a plan to save money in the corporation's news department.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
It's call 'spoofing' and it is bloody nightmare for this kind of thing.
You need (we all need) to watch for "delayed disconnect" on landlines.
What is delayed disconnect?
The spam party asks you to hang up and dial another number.
Unless you put your phone down and then wait a certain time*, when you pick up to dial the other number it will still actually be connected to the original guy who will just hear some beeps and then say 'hi, my name is Janet and I am an expert in resolving banking issues - now just pass me your PIN code and we can sort this' etc
* iirc it was ten minutes ie a fucking long time but may now be two. I can't recall?
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
The obvious point is that the internal lawyers within the PO had far too much influence. I know this myself, remembering their surprise when I first got my senior job and started re-drafting and sending back the drafts they were sending for me to send out in my name. In my case, they quickly realised that I was going to be a partner and not a puppet, but I do feel for some of the more junior people out in the field who were sent their drafted statements by some HQ lawyer and didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to push back. Some of whom have recently been ridiculed by top lawyers for signing stuff they they didn’t really read at the time. Of course, “they should have”, but which of us in our time hasn’t signed something provided to us by an expert without really reading or thinking about it? On the internet nowadays, it happens so very often.
Yes, the internal lawyers were far too powerful, but also manifestly dishonest. We can say this openly now in the light of evidence to the inquiry.
One feature of this which you can witness on a daily basis if you are following the Inquiry is that the PO's own staff were merely rubber-stamping what the lawyers were saying or doing. None of them seem to have had the nous, intelligence, training or backbone to say 'Hold on a minute...this doesn't seem right.' They showed all the initiative and responsibility of Konzentration Kamp guards.
You might choose more empathetic words to describe the interaction between some trained lawyer on £80,000+ and some manager out in the field probably earning £25-30,000 and with a stack of other stuff to think about, at the time just pleased to have some ‘expert’ from HQ telling them what to do.
My accumulated wisdom, now that I’m out of the labour market, it that most problems (but not all - cf. various recent PMs - but certainly commonly at more junior levels) arise from systemic faults, rather than from malign individuals, and before we condemn we should have a good think about what we would have done in the same position.
Thanks for the rejoinder, Ian.
I agree with you about systems, although if you are following the Inquiry interviews you will have seen plenty of evidence of malice as well as system faults. The clue is in the way prosecutions continued long after it was obvious there were problems with Horizon.
Most of those low-paid managers were clueless, but the unquestioning zeal with which they pursued the innocent Subpostmasters is hard to defend, whatever the system faults.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
The killings in Zimbabwe weren't widely reported for about 15 or 20 years because Mugabe was such a popular figure at the time.
Really? I recall lots of horror stories about life under him. But maybe that was after your timeframe. Certainly he had goodwill at the start and for a while. Understandably so.
The Matabeleland killings by the North Korean trained 5th Brigade were quite well reported in Africa.
It was only when white people were targeted by the "war veterans" that it really made the news here.
Sunak is the biggest disappointment since season 2 of Westworld.
Hannah Barnes @hannahsbee My thoughts are with my former @BBCNewsnight colleagues today, as they’re told that the programme as we know and love it is to be no more. It’s a terrible day for UK investigative and original journalism. (1/2)
BBC Two's Newsnight is to be cut back and have its format overhauled as part of a plan to save money in the corporation's news department.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
A point about electronic evidence as discussed in the thread header, for which many thanks to Cyclefree - I remember reading a book some years ago by a forensic computer scientist who had a very poor view of some of the cases he had examined for the defence. IIRC, one was that the prosecution hadn't checked if the system clock was set right (it wasn't, so the evidence being tied in with other sources was completely out of kilter, with obvious problems for such things as alibis). Another was that the prosecution had not noticed that the sysadmin had poked around in the files etc. (out of c uriosity maybe rather than malice?) so the evidence was completely corrupted in thje legal sense. My clear sense was even then to go straight to a solicitor and ensure such a person is called in ab initio if I am ever accused of any such thing.
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
Fairy nuff, but your guys didn't know the technology was faulty, and open to tampering. The Post Office did, and so did Fujitsu, and so too too did many of the lawyers working for the prosecution.
Jail is too good them.
Sure, the ordinary sub wouldn't know. But the legal system in general must have been aware years earlier, judges and so on. That's what puzzles me.
The judiciary and the Justice System comes out of this very badly.
On a lighter note, I am nursing my bruised ego in my favourite station pub in Manchester's best station, Victoria. 20-odd beers, peanuts served by the glass, and St. Ettiene on the stereo. The photo below, from the way in, is for @Sunil_Prasannan if he's around.
Thanks! I could have taken that picture myself
Was last down Victoria way in September last year.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
You’re not an idiot. They do this every day, day in day out & have honed scripts that work & have practiced emotionally manipulating the person on the other end of the line over & over.
Whereas for you, it’s (very likely) the first time this has happened.
Well done for keeping your wits about you & not getting sucked into their scheme.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
It's call 'spoofing' and it is bloody nightmare for this kind of thing.
You need (we all need) to watch for "delayed disconnect" on landlines.
What is delayed disconnect?
The spam party asks you to hang up and dial another number.
Unless you put your phone down and then wait a certain time*, when you pick up to dial the other number it will still actually be connected to the original guy who will just hear some beeps and then say 'hi, my name is Janet and I am an expert in resolving banking issues - now just pass me your PIN code and we can sort this' etc
* iirc it was ten minutes ie a fucking long time but may now be two. I can't recall?
Another good reason to ditch the landline. We still have one but are increasing struggling to think why. We certainly won't be bothering with one when we move house, hopefully next year.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't. The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes? Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app? No, I don't use banking apps. Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader. Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin? Ok... ...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT. Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start. Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number. And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
Thanks for that. Could happen to anyone and very easy to get sucked into it.
Well done for checking it out.
You're especially vulnerable if you take the call (or receive the message) when you're stressed out or in the middle of something.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
The obvious point is that the internal lawyers within the PO had far too much influence. I know this myself, remembering their surprise when I first got my senior job and started re-drafting and sending back the drafts they were sending for me to send out in my name. In my case, they quickly realised that I was going to be a partner and not a puppet, but I do feel for some of the more junior people out in the field who were sent their drafted statements by some HQ lawyer and didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to push back. Some of whom have recently been ridiculed by top lawyers for signing stuff they they didn’t really read at the time. Of course, “they should have”, but which of us in our time hasn’t signed something provided to us by an expert without really reading or thinking about it? On the internet nowadays, it happens so very often.
Yes, the internal lawyers were far too powerful, but also manifestly dishonest. We can say this openly now in the light of evidence to the inquiry.
One feature of this which you can witness on a daily basis if you are following the Inquiry is that the PO's own staff were merely rubber-stamping what the lawyers were saying or doing. None of them seem to have had the nous, intelligence, training or backbone to say 'Hold on a minute...this doesn't seem right.' They showed all the initiative and responsibility of Konzentration Kamp guards.
You might choose more empathetic words to describe the interaction between some trained lawyer on £80,000+ and some manager out in the field probably earning £25-30,000 and with a stack of other stuff to think about, at the time just pleased to have some ‘expert’ from HQ telling them what to do.
My accumulated wisdom, now that I’m out of the labour market, it that most problems (but not all - cf. various recent PMs - but certainly commonly at more junior levels) arise from systemic faults, rather than from malign individuals, and before we condemn we should have a good think about what we would have done in the same position.
Thanks for the rejoinder, Ian.
I agree with you about systems, although if you are following the Inquiry interviews you will have seen plenty of evidence of malice as well as system faults. The clue is in the way prosecutions continued long after it was obvious there were problems with Horizon.
Most of those low-paid managers were clueless, but the unquestioning zeal with which they pursued the innocent Subpostmasters is hard to defend, whatever the system faults.
But they didn't. The lawyers did, and the POC top brass went along with it, on the back of assurances from Fujitsu that subsequently turned out to be worthless, and assurances from their lawyers that they could see the problem off in court.
Don't let this become another scandal where the top people ultimately responsible manage to palm much of the blame off onto the middle ranks and then duck and weave to avoid any fallout from the rest.
Rwandan support for the UK’s flagship migration scheme is at risk because of continued delays to getting flights off the ground, ministers have been warned.
Senior diplomats have privately told the Foreign Office that Rwanda’s commitment to the scheme cannot be taken for granted.
They fear that the longer the flights are delayed, the more questions will be asked by authorities in Kigali about the scheme’s sustainability.
Government sources told The Times they were braced for British-Rwandan relations to be tested further, when emergency legislation is introduced in parliament.
While ministers intend for the bill to confirm Rwanda is a safe place for migrants to be sent, officials believe opponents of the scheme will levy criticisms of the country in the Commons and Lords “that will be hard for Kigali to swallow”.
To keep the deal alive, the foreign secretary David Cameron has been advised that the government should robustly defend Rwanda.
Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chairwoman of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “We need to move away from the fixation with Rwanda as a silver bullet to tackling illegal migration, as these reports make this even more plain.
“The findings of the Supreme Court are not easily overcome and it is not beyond the capability of parliament to resolve the challenge in a legally compliant way.”
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
The obvious point is that the internal lawyers within the PO had far too much influence. I know this myself, remembering their surprise when I first got my senior job and started re-drafting and sending back the drafts they were sending for me to send out in my name. In my case, they quickly realised that I was going to be a partner and not a puppet, but I do feel for some of the more junior people out in the field who were sent their drafted statements by some HQ lawyer and didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to push back. Some of whom have recently been ridiculed by top lawyers for signing stuff they they didn’t really read at the time. Of course, “they should have”, but which of us in our time hasn’t signed something provided to us by an expert without really reading or thinking about it? On the internet nowadays, it happens so very often.
Yes, the internal lawyers were far too powerful, but also manifestly dishonest. We can say this openly now in the light of evidence to the inquiry.
One feature of this which you can witness on a daily basis if you are following the Inquiry is that the PO's own staff were merely rubber-stamping what the lawyers were saying or doing. None of them seem to have had the nous, intelligence, training or backbone to say 'Hold on a minute...this doesn't seem right.' They showed all the initiative and responsibility of Konzentration Kamp guards.
You might choose more empathetic words to describe the interaction between some trained lawyer on £80,000+ and some manager out in the field probably earning £25-30,000 and with a stack of other stuff to think about, at the time just pleased to have some ‘expert’ from HQ telling them what to do.
My accumulated wisdom, now that I’m out of the labour market, it that most problems (but not all - cf. various recent PMs - but certainly commonly at more junior levels) arise from systemic faults, rather than from malign individuals, and before we condemn we should have a good think about what we would have done in the same position.
Thanks for the rejoinder, Ian.
I agree with you about systems, although if you are following the Inquiry interviews you will have seen plenty of evidence of malice as well as system faults. The clue is in the way prosecutions continued long after it was obvious there were problems with Horizon.
Most of those low-paid managers were clueless, but the unquestioning zeal with which they pursued the innocent Subpostmasters is hard to defend, whatever the system faults.
But they didn't. The lawyers did, and the POC top brass went along with it, on the back of assurances from Fujitsu that subsequently turned out to be worthless, and assurances from their lawyers that they could see the problem off in court.
Don't let this become another scandal where the top people ultimately responsible manage to palm much of the blame off onto the middle ranks and then duck and weave to avoid any fallout from the rest.
I agree. My feeling is that this will take so long that no-one responsible will suffer any penalty beyond some well-written tut-tutting by the Judge.
Ministers should be first in the queue for a kicking, the Law Commisssion, lots and lots of Post Office and Fujitsu senior managers from the CEO down and very many lawyers, internal and external.
I look forward to giving this last group a well deserved shoeing in due course.
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
People were right to celebrate the end of apartheid as it was awful, and I’m guessing that you, like me, spent lots of time in SA under apartheid and saw it in reality, but maybe people need to learn that getting interventionist and angsty about how things will turn out once their simplistic hopes come true is actually quite important.
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
But what happens next is usually unknowable. It certainly was in this case. And no, I spent no time living under apartheid. My best mate in the mid 80s did though. He was white but found it intolerable and fled.
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
A point about electronic evidence as discussed in the thread header, for which many thanks to Cyclefree - I remember reading a book some years ago by a forensic computer scientist who had a very poor view of some of the cases he had examined for the defence. IIRC, one was that the prosecution hadn't checked if the system clock was set right (it wasn't, so the evidence being tied in with other sources was completely out of kilter, with obvious problems for such things as alibis). Another was that the prosecution had not noticed that the sysadmin had poked around in the files etc. (out of c uriosity maybe rather than malice?) so the evidence was completely corrupted in thje legal sense. My clear sense was even then to go straight to a solicitor and ensure such a person is called in ab initio if I am ever accused of any such thing.
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
The deeper difficulty is not the bare problem. This is obvious and always has been ever since someone tried to defend a case against a speed camera - O happy simple days.
Everything beyond face to face conversation and paper with handwriting on it goes through systems, of potentially infinite complexity, which no individual fully understands. If a prosecutor has to prove, every time, and in reliable scientific terms that what came out from a device was what went in at the other end, or that a till receipt for 47p in fact reflects the reality of the transaction the entire criminal law edifice would collapse.
That though comes down to reasonable doubt sorry. Most people faced by wrong computer facts are in no position to prove it. I say this as a software engineer....hell I would have trouble proving it against a system I didn't know and that is before I ask to look at the software to identify possible issues and get told no its a secret and we cant let you look at it.
If you wish to stack it against people where its there word against the computers then arguing the burden is too much for the prosecution of actually proving what they allege happened because a computer says it did then thats the way to do it
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
People were right to celebrate the end of apartheid as it was awful, and I’m guessing that you, like me, spent lots of time in SA under apartheid and saw it in reality, but maybe people need to learn that getting interventionist and angsty about how things will turn out once their simplistic hopes come true is actually quite important.
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
But what happens next is usually unknowable. It certainly was in this case. And no, I spent no time living under apartheid. My best mate in the mid 80s did though. He was white but found it intolerable and fled.
A lot of it was knowable. People said that what has happened would happen and nobody wanted to listen to them, or report on the warnings because it wasn’t something that fitted the accepted worldview in polite media company.
If you had been a white person, especially a South African white person, warning that there would be this outcome, as many did warn including many many people I knew, you were dismissed as misguided, closed minded or racist.
Rwandan support for the UK’s flagship migration scheme is at risk because of continued delays to getting flights off the ground, ministers have been warned.
Senior diplomats have privately told the Foreign Office that Rwanda’s commitment to the scheme cannot be taken for granted.
They fear that the longer the flights are delayed, the more questions will be asked by authorities in Kigali about the scheme’s sustainability.
Government sources told The Times they were braced for British-Rwandan relations to be tested further, when emergency legislation is introduced in parliament.
While ministers intend for the bill to confirm Rwanda is a safe place for migrants to be sent, officials believe opponents of the scheme will levy criticisms of the country in the Commons and Lords “that will be hard for Kigali to swallow”.
To keep the deal alive, the foreign secretary David Cameron has been advised that the government should robustly defend Rwanda.
Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chairwoman of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “We need to move away from the fixation with Rwanda as a silver bullet to tackling illegal migration, as these reports make this even more plain.
“The findings of the Supreme Court are not easily overcome and it is not beyond the capability of parliament to resolve the challenge in a legally compliant way.”
This is in top tier of scandals involving the justice system in the history of the UK
It is, and Ms Cyclefree makes a couple of points of importance that I had not previously appreciated.
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
The obvious point is that the internal lawyers within the PO had far too much influence. I know this myself, remembering their surprise when I first got my senior job and started re-drafting and sending back the drafts they were sending for me to send out in my name. In my case, they quickly realised that I was going to be a partner and not a puppet, but I do feel for some of the more junior people out in the field who were sent their drafted statements by some HQ lawyer and didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to push back. Some of whom have recently been ridiculed by top lawyers for signing stuff they they didn’t really read at the time. Of course, “they should have”, but which of us in our time hasn’t signed something provided to us by an expert without really reading or thinking about it? On the internet nowadays, it happens so very often.
Yes, the internal lawyers were far too powerful, but also manifestly dishonest. We can say this openly now in the light of evidence to the inquiry.
One feature of this which you can witness on a daily basis if you are following the Inquiry is that the PO's own staff were merely rubber-stamping what the lawyers were saying or doing. None of them seem to have had the nous, intelligence, training or backbone to say 'Hold on a minute...this doesn't seem right.' They showed all the initiative and responsibility of Konzentration Kamp guards.
You might choose more empathetic words to describe the interaction between some trained lawyer on £80,000+ and some manager out in the field probably earning £25-30,000 and with a stack of other stuff to think about, at the time just pleased to have some ‘expert’ from HQ telling them what to do.
My accumulated wisdom, now that I’m out of the labour market, it that most problems (but not all - cf. various recent PMs - but certainly commonly at more junior levels) arise from systemic faults, rather than from malign individuals, and before we condemn we should have a good think about what we would have done in the same position.
Thanks for the rejoinder, Ian.
I agree with you about systems, although if you are following the Inquiry interviews you will have seen plenty of evidence of malice as well as system faults. The clue is in the way prosecutions continued long after it was obvious there were problems with Horizon.
Most of those low-paid managers were clueless, but the unquestioning zeal with which they pursued the innocent Subpostmasters is hard to defend, whatever the system faults.
But they didn't. The lawyers did, and the POC top brass went along with it, on the back of assurances from Fujitsu that subsequently turned out to be worthless, and assurances from their lawyers that they could see the problem off in court.
Don't let this become another scandal where the top people ultimately responsible manage to palm much of the blame off onto the middle ranks and then duck and weave to avoid any fallout from the rest.
Agreed, Ian, but there's plenty of evidence of appalling behaviour at the lowest levels too - notably investigators who simply demanded money with menaces.
The culpability runs from top to bottom, though it must be said of course that those at the top bear the greatest responsibility.
Tony Roe @tonyroe · 1h Devolution on the way for 'Greater Lincolnshire' which will see Stamford and Scunthorpe, 80 miles apart, with the same elected Mayor from 2025 to take big infrastructure decisions. Democracy will be reduced argue Independent polticians. We've been out to Stamford to get reaction
The Algarkirk Liberation Army is mobilising for independence as we speak, as is the Army for the Liberation of Algarkirk. What have we in common with Stamford or Scunthorpe?
Ah eureka moment! South Africa's problems are not reported because an African country struggling after ending white supremacy rule is an inconvenient truth for the woke left who control the media narrative in the west. Oh my giddy aunt I'm slow.
Or the media narrative in the west was so blinded by Nelson Mandela, who was truly a good guy, that they couldn’t look past him at what the ANc were actually saying and doing before he was President and whilst he was president and so it’s a bit embarrassing to say “you know we got really excited about this brave exciting new future for SA under Nelson, well we might have got it wrong and our focus should have been on the corrupt, murderous thugs in all the senior positions in the ANC, sorry.”
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
Not sure it was simplistic for people here to celebrate the end of Apartheid without getting overly angsty or interventionist about how South Africa would subsequently develop. I can't imagine what a better or more appropriate mindset would have looked like.
People were right to celebrate the end of apartheid as it was awful, and I’m guessing that you, like me, spent lots of time in SA under apartheid and saw it in reality, but maybe people need to learn that getting interventionist and angsty about how things will turn out once their simplistic hopes come true is actually quite important.
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
But what happens next is usually unknowable. It certainly was in this case. And no, I spent no time living under apartheid. My best mate in the mid 80s did though. He was white but found it intolerable and fled.
South Africa could I think see a double peak in economic success after the present dip, as long as it gets around the Argentina problem.
It got rich on the back of valuable raw materials and manufacturing and trading links to Europe.
Then following Apartheid it suffered (and continues to suffer) the usual post-colonial political and social adjustment, at the same time as losing its old European and US links as Asia grew into an industrial superpower, leaving it with just the raw materials.
But it has good demographics and a growing working age population. The rest of the African continent is about to take off economically, albeit in fits and starts, so it’ll find itself with a much bigger market on its doorstep.
The Argentina problem I refer to is not the one of governance, which other African and Latam countries share. It’s the fact it’s stuck down the bottom of the world thousands of miles from the main global trading routes. That is a major geographical problem. It’s no coincidence the most successful economies of the Southern hemisphere are all major primary producers, through mining and agriculture.
Comments
https://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/2606253.html?page=2 (see the post about halfway down the page by
astonvilla1 September 16 2021, 09:58:52 UTC)
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lagershed
So best to move along, nothing to see as it undermines the simplistic narrative they went with against the warnings from people, who made these warnings, they assumed were just racist.
DM really does know how to get at the deepest Cthulhu-abyssal fears of its target market.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12762075/businessman-accused-holding-village-ransom-buying-small-pieces-land-charging-locals-parking.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12783335/Storage-Hunters-star-41-smiles-axes-cherry-tree.html
The Inquiry will not be looking at the role of the Law Commission, or Government. Since these are two of the biggest contributors to the scandal, the final report is bound to be a bit lopsided.
The other elephant in the room not mentioned in this thread piece, though she does so elsewhere, is the formidable amount of time it is taking to work through the evidence. This is partly due to the Post Office's deliberate attempts to slow the machinery down. The Government, which owns the PO, could do something about this, so we can safely assume it is happy to have the Inquiry wade slowly through treacle.
First, the prosecutions continued long after it became apparent that the Horizon computer system was faulty.
Second, there were failures at every single level - from the dumb operatives investigating the Subpostmasters, all the way up through the organisation to the Post Office Board. They were all culpable in greater or smaller measure. So too the IT consultants (Fujitsu and elsewhere) and lawyers.
It wasn't just incompetence on a massive scale, but malicious criminality across the board.
I understand why Leon and some others find it boring, but take note. If it could happen to the poor sodding Subpostmasters, it could happen to me and thee.
https://gript.ie/exclusive-the-stabbing-suspects-deportation-saga/
"Many years ago now I coined a word, "lagershed", on a blog I visit called Politialbetting.com. The word is based on the 9pm watershed and refers to the time after which chat on a blog becomes overly influenced by the intake of intoxicating beverages. It's used quite frequently there by the regulars but has yet to be taken up by Chambers, Collins etc.
So recently I submitted a definition to the Urban dictionary and it has been accepted. Fame at last."
Okay, so the author would want to show off his triumphs, and I didn't verify them, but after seeing what the PO have perpetrated ... more generally, I can't believe there haven't been miscarriages of justice already.
The crime is terrible. Albeit, the crime has been terrible there for the last twenty years. (Indeed, the murder rate is actually better than it was when I first visited in in 2000.)
What has got dramatically worse, though, is the provision of basic services. Power is often unavailable for six to ten hours per day ("load shedding"). Which means electronics break. And at night it means the traffic lights don't work. Which means the - already dangerous - roads have gotten ever more deadly.
My COO is from South Africa. He left the country back in 2000. At that time, it was educated whites that fled to the UK on working holiday and education visas (or based on family ties).
Now it is the educated black middle class who are going. Two of our developers are young black South Africans out of top universities, who want to live somewhere where the lights work. (Interestingly, the education system still works. These guys - well one guy and one girl - are shit hot.)
Jail is too good them.
Everything beyond face to face conversation and paper with handwriting on it goes through systems, of potentially infinite complexity, which no individual fully understands. If a prosecutor has to prove, every time, and in reliable scientific terms that what came out from a device was what went in at the other end, or that a till receipt for 47p in fact reflects the reality of the transaction the entire criminal law edifice would collapse.
One feature of this which you can witness on a daily basis if you are following the Inquiry is that the PO's own staff were merely rubber-stamping what the lawyers were saying or doing. None of them seem to have had the nous, intelligence, training or backbone to say 'Hold on a minute...this doesn't seem right.' They showed all the initiative and responsibility of Konzentration Kamp guards.
The government said it would consider these. But then - as you will read in my next header - changed its mind. The lazy bastards won't even do the work to try and find a sensible answer to your very valid questions.
A longer version of this header can be found here. https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/how-was-this-sausage-made/
For the lawyers among you it explores further the nonsensical way the Law Commission approached its job.
Nick Wallis has written an excellent book on this scandal.
But there is a book to be written - and I rather think I am going to try and do it - on the common factors in all these scandals. Because that is what I keep seeing and it is what keeps being missed. Each scandal comes along with its own story and set of incompetents and villains and crushed by misery victims and inevitable report. It feels like one damn thing after another.
But there is very little joining of the dots, noticing the common patterns and the common ways in which remedies might be applied. There is very little learning and not enough going back to unpick the fundamental structures and attitudes which lead to these problems and their constant repetition. Which is what I think I am trying to do in my articles on this and similar instances.
I started doing this in my job because I kept seeing the same behaviours over and over again. And it is what I do in my work now. But I think there is scope for trying to draw some of this together in a way which illuminates. Let's face it - no-one is going to read the endless inquiry reports and because there are so many of them it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if you could synthesise them in an attractive, compelling and thought-provoking way......
"A Handbook of British Cock-Ups" is my current working title.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi
My guess is the former two would be doing far better now.
My accumulated wisdom, now that I’m out of the labour market, it that most problems (but not all - cf. various recent PMs - but certainly commonly at more junior levels) arise from systemic faults, rather than from malign individuals, and before we condemn we should have a good think about what we would have done in the same position.
Myself I can't believe that anyone sincerely believes there haven't. This is something no-one honest with an understanding of justice could have believed for a good while.
Discuss.
Had a call on my way home from Barclays. Suspicious payment. Have I made a payment of £629 to a Mr. Ahmed from Bradford with the reference 'rent'? No, I haven't.
The payment was made on telephone banking - do you know how your details could have been compromised? Any suspicious emails you've clicked on? Do you have your card in your possession? I'm actually on a tram right now, could you call me again in 20 minutes?
Sure, I'll book you in for a call at 5.30.
In the meamtime, I google the number I've been phoned from - Barclays fraud prevention. Fine.
5.30 comes and they call me back - can you confirm your card number? Have you got the app?
No, I don't use banking apps.
Ok, have you got your pinsentry reader?
Haven't come across this approach before, but lets go with it. OK, I've got my pinsentry reader.
Ok, can you put your card in and press 'respond' and enter your pin?
Ok...
...and read out the 8 digit number?
At this point - although I've checked this is Barclays ringing me - every single klaxon in my brain is screaming at me. Politely explain that I'm going to have to resolve this another way as this is exactly the information a scammer would need to get into my account. Barclays say that's fine, but I will need to make a face to face appointment in a branch and bring some photo id.
Hang up and phone Barclays phone banking. This is a bit of a palaver since I don't use phone banking and have no idea what my phone banking id is. But not as much of a palaver as you might expect.
Explain to the nice lady on the phone what had happened. "Good grief, no, we would never do that."
COOKIE YOU BLOODY IDIOT.
Of course it wasn't Barclays, as your subconscious was screaming at you from the start.
Turns out it's possible to make it look like you're phoning from a completely different number. I didn't know that.
The conversation had felt 'wrong' all the way through - but I put that down to the poor quality of the phone line (which itself should have been a red flag) and the natural panic about someone having my banking details. I had even thought about asking here if anyone had had a similar phone call while I was on my way home before they called me back, then thought "don't be so bloody lazy" and googled it. I even challenged him, and he - rather than tell me anything only Barclays would know, like recent transactions, told me to google the phone number.
And there were probably a dozen other little clues too which the subconscious picked up but the conscious didn't - just slightly the wrong way through the conversation, just slightly too desperate a manner as he was getting close.
He was, however, very plausible.
Anyway, no money missing from account and card cancelled. So all probably fine; just feeling a bloody idiot.
erasing). Almost certainly, the Cape would now be a successful democracy, had it become a Dominion.
One 19th century politician, defending the franchise in the Cape, explained “I’d rather face the Hottentot on the hustings than on the battlefield.”
The Nationalists acted like shits, after 1948, and ruined the country they professed to love.
It made me think, every Jew I know (bar one) is left wing and is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. This is not representative - but at the same time, they seem utterly unrepresented in wider media.
Sadly, like Hague before him, electoral panic within the Tory Party has pushed him onto ground where he has to be inauthentic. Which won’t work, as Hague found out the hard way.
And thanks for putting the anecdote on here: it's useful to remember (or learn...) how good these things can be.
In 1990, Botswana had a GDP per capita a third of South Africa's. It's now almost 20% higher.
Never click on a Facebook post either advertising something that sounds to good to be true, or that merely sounds interesting and invites you to click a link to some external website. There are Russian basements full of people creating such stuff just waiting for you to click to say that you want to know more….
Well done for checking it out.
Like Lee Kwan Yiew, Sir Seretse Khama was a statesman. There are so few of them.
Devotees of Hollywood movies might like to believe that most incidences of injustice get uncovered, sooner or later, and thus resistance is generally futile.
In the real world, can we really be so sure?
Picking a completely random place, Palestine maybe. All the lovely folk chanting and lighting candles singing kumbaya wanting a single state, from the river to the sea, might like to contemplate who they really are backing and what those people really want.
So it actually creates a major responsibility for the media to not just report what makes them feel nice and fuzzy but the hard truths of what happens next.
Otherwise it’s just wishcasting and by the time the reality takes shape it’s too late to actually apply any influence to stop the hardliners hiding behind the acceptable faces.
It was intended to follow the path of Canadian confederation and the Commonwealth of Australia, but the Union of South Africa just smashed a lot of culturally very different places together, and then suffered a reverse takeover by the Boers.
Tragedy.
You need (we all need) to watch for "delayed disconnect" on landlines.
If the bank rings me, I now always ask for a reference number or similar, and then insist on hanging up and ringing them back on their published number.
Interestingly, Santander did this to me (rang off, rang me back) to check I was actually calling from my registered mobile last time I rang them (I was changing who had access to my business account, which I'd imagine is a process they take fairly seriously).
It was only when white people were targeted by the "war veterans" that it really made the news here.
Hannah Barnes
@hannahsbee
My thoughts are with my former
@BBCNewsnight
colleagues today, as they’re told that the programme as we know and love it is to be no more. It’s a terrible day for UK investigative and original journalism. (1/2)
Here’s one for the PB brains, is there any other country that is defined by a border between a river and the sea? I’m guessing a South American country is most likely but maybe a small west African country could have had its border set that way.
The PO is still in denial. The Government too, I suspect.
@tonyroe
·
1h
Devolution on the way for 'Greater Lincolnshire' which will see Stamford and Scunthorpe, 80 miles apart, with the same elected Mayor from 2025 to take big infrastructure decisions. Democracy will be reduced argue Independent polticians. We've been out to Stamford to get reaction
https://twitter.com/tonyroe/status/1729924202080178429
https://x.com/rosscolquhoun/status/1729835910588432672?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Except it's not a new call; it's the old one.
AIUI you can get around it by using a different phone or mobile, or making another call to someone (make sure it connects).
I wonder why landline systems are set up in this way. Some artefact of old systems?
The long-running show will lose its dedicated reporters, be shortened by 10 minutes and drop its investigative films to focus on studio-based debates.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67564479
Unless you put your phone down and then wait a certain time*, when you pick up to dial the other number it will still actually be connected to the original guy who will just hear some beeps and then say 'hi, my name is Janet and I am an expert in resolving banking issues - now just pass me your PIN code and we can sort this' etc
* iirc it was ten minutes ie a fucking long time but may now be two. I can't recall?
I agree with you about systems, although if you are following the Inquiry interviews you will have seen plenty of evidence of malice as well as system faults. The clue is in the way prosecutions continued long after it was obvious there were problems with Horizon.
Most of those low-paid managers were clueless, but the unquestioning zeal with which they pursued the innocent Subpostmasters is hard to defend, whatever the system faults.
And as for the Law Commission.....
Was last down Victoria way in September last year.
Whereas for you, it’s (very likely) the first time this has happened.
Well done for keeping your wits about you & not getting sucked into their scheme.
Don't let this become another scandal where the top people ultimately responsible manage to palm much of the blame off onto the middle ranks and then duck and weave to avoid any fallout from the rest.
Senior diplomats have privately told the Foreign Office that Rwanda’s commitment to the scheme cannot be taken for granted.
They fear that the longer the flights are delayed, the more questions will be asked by authorities in Kigali about the scheme’s sustainability.
Government sources told The Times they were braced for British-Rwandan relations to be tested further, when emergency legislation is introduced in parliament.
While ministers intend for the bill to confirm Rwanda is a safe place for migrants to be sent, officials believe opponents of the scheme will levy criticisms of the country in the Commons and Lords “that will be hard for Kigali to swallow”.
To keep the deal alive, the foreign secretary David Cameron has been advised that the government should robustly defend Rwanda.
Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chairwoman of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “We need to move away from the fixation with Rwanda as a silver bullet to tackling illegal migration, as these reports make this even more plain.
“The findings of the Supreme Court are not easily overcome and it is not beyond the capability of parliament to resolve the challenge in a legally compliant way.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rwanda-relations-pushed-to-limit-as-deportation-scheme-stalls-f0fx58mx7
Ministers should be first in the queue for a kicking, the Law Commisssion, lots and lots of Post Office and Fujitsu senior managers from the CEO down and very many lawyers, internal and external.
I look forward to giving this last group a well deserved shoeing in due course.
If you wish to stack it against people where its there word against the computers then arguing the burden is too much for the prosecution of actually proving what they allege happened because a computer says it did then thats the way to do it
If you had been a white person, especially a South African white person, warning that there would be this outcome, as many did warn including many many people I knew, you were dismissed as misguided, closed minded or racist.
The culpability runs from top to bottom, though it must be said of course that those at the top bear the greatest responsibility.
It got rich on the back of valuable raw materials and manufacturing and trading links to Europe.
Then following Apartheid it suffered (and continues to suffer) the usual post-colonial political and social adjustment, at the same time as losing its old European and US links as Asia grew into an industrial superpower, leaving it with just the raw materials.
But it has good demographics and a growing working age population. The rest of the African continent is about to take off economically, albeit in fits and starts, so it’ll find itself with a much bigger market on its doorstep.
The Argentina problem I refer to is not the one of governance, which other African and Latam countries share. It’s the fact it’s stuck down the bottom of the world thousands of miles from the main global trading routes. That is a major geographical problem. It’s no coincidence the most successful economies of the Southern hemisphere are all major primary producers, through mining and agriculture.