Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
Films based on true events can be disappointing. Often you need to know the background because the filmmakers do not have time to paint the whole picture (Oppenheimer, Wolf of Wall Street) (especially noticeable if you see a film some time after its release and publicity/review cycle) and you can end up with a romp through the subject's best known anecdotes (Legend (Kray twins), Bohemian Rhapsody) or discover that the writer and director have not properly understood the source material (Dunkirk, The Imitation Game, or Bohemian Rhapsody again).
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
To the first one - yes.
To the second - no, with respect that’s very naive. For a start that only really applies to listed companies anyway, and even then the level of transparency is a million miles different.
A large part of the issue with the post office scandal, of course, was trying to run it in a private sector fashion when the service is crying out to be run as a public service.
There is something in the criticism that a public service was being run by the wrong people in the wrong way. But it overlooks the fact that in important ways it was behaving like a public sector organization - its prosecution powers, for instance, gave it powers that few bodies had, its claim on unlimited funds when it came to litigation and the lack of any effective supervision or oversight.
I don't think the private sector is some sort of nirvana. It seems to me the difference is that the character and competence of those in charge is very important and has been far too undervalued. Part of what I mean by character is the willingness to ask questions and the humility to know that you do not know everything and need to learn. Far too many people at the top lack this.
One other point is the practice of having part-time Chairmen or directors with lots of different directorships. See, for instance, Tim Cook - Chairman of the Post Office during the Vennells era who thought he could do the job in 1 & 1/2 days a week. These jobs are serious ones which really require more effort and commitment. Too often they are treated as sinecures for people who collect a load of them. Then we wonder why things go wrong.
If Keir Starmer actually wants to announce an manifesto policy, he could do worse than announce the removal of the Post Office’s prosecution powers.
Plus -
1. An Act which can be passed in a day overturning all Post Office convictions 2000 - 2016. 2. The immediate review of the law on computer evidence to ensure that we get a provision which works without placing the burden of proof on defendants. 3. An independent compensation scheme which is not run by the Post Office and which will arrange for payments to be made within 3 months. 4. A public apology by the government to the subpostmasters.
3. To be funded by going after those who were criminally nonchalant about the lack of justice throughout this process
Ben Siegel @bensiegel · 1h Trump in Iowa: “If it weren’t for John McCain, we’d have something better than Obamacare. John McCain, for some reason, couldn’t get his arm up that day.”
Makes you wonder what would have happened if they'd given a genius President four years to fix it?
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
I didn’t find Oppenheimer boring as such, but it is overlong and they should definitely have focused more on the explosion - and also Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which are kinda glossed over)
Haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet. It’s on the list with mixed feelings after mixed reports
The new Reacher is simplistic fun
I’m waiting for a good period drama. Haven’t had one in ages. I was hoping The Winter King would replace Vikings or The Last Kingdom but it’s utterly dire - the most unrizz Merlin in screen history, for example. Pfffff!
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps Zimbabwe and North Korea are not the benchmarks to say we're heading towards the UK being a more unpleasant and dysfunctional society.
After all, you are the one who described the USA as "fucked" and yet they are not Zimbabwe or North Korea. Their problems, particularly around prescribed drug regulation, are those of private enrichment, public sphere impoverishment that we are in danger of repeating in some original variant.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Three quarters of a million died to end slavery. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. We had a petition. OK, there was a lot more to it but maybe Trump has half a point. Whether the American Civil War could have been negotiated away is best left to historians but one thing Trump got right as President was to say no to warmongering neocons. As Churchill put it, jaw jaw is better than war war.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps Zimbabwe and North Korea are not the benchmarks to say we're heading towards the UK being a more unpleasant and dysfunctional society.
After all, you are the one who described the USA as "fucked" and yet they are not Zimbabwe or North Korea. Their problems, particularly around prescribed drug regulation, are those of private enrichment, public sphere impoverishment that we are in danger of repeating in some original variant.
Public sphere impoverishment? With the highest taxes since the war?
So how does "Oppenheimer" compare with "Napoleon"?
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
I generally don’t mind at all if historical accuracy is bent - or even abandoned - to make a fantastic movie/drama (unless the subject material is incredibly recent)
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
Mostly everyone, Ian. Can it really be true however that at no time did Vennells and her closest colleagues appreciate that the doubts about Horizon implied that the PO could be responsible for a huge miscarriage of justice?
Her appearance before the Inquiry will indeed be interesting, as you indicated.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
The interesting thing will be the path the inquiry picks between two extremes.
On the one hand, as I suggested above, Vennells and a few junior folk might be singled out for the stocks, hoping thereby that justice will be done and everyone else can slip away into the night. With a stack of procedural recommendations, half of which will be implemented and half forgotten.
Or (and probably more legitimately), the inquiry might spread blame all around - and there are so many potential culprits: the Labour government and Benefits Agency that dropped the PO in it, ICL/Fujitsu for incompetence and subsequently dishonesty, the junior PO folk for their lack of training and PC Plod approach to their investigations, Post Office senior management for their credulity, lack of curiosity and later mendacity, the internal lawyers, the external lawyers, some courts, the Law Commission back in 1999, a series of Tory and LibDem junior ministers, the Federation of SPMs for their shameful sellout. Identifying all of the culprits, recommending changes to policies and procedures, but with no realistic way to ‘punish’ a cast of thousands.
The latter is probably the more just and useful a conclusion; but with the petition to strip Vennells of her honour fast approaching a million signatures, identifying a few principal scapegoats is more likely to sate public appetite.
It’s remarkable that the essential facts of this saga were all published by Computer Weekly way back in 2009, were examined in detail by a televised parliamentary committee in 2015, and by the Royal Court in 2019, yet have only gained public and political traction in the latter part of last year.
Every time we have this discussion @Carnyx you come up with this bullshit lie that public services are an externality, and that people are being moved in but when questioned "where from" you always go deathly silent.
Where is this magical, mystical land in this country with an overabundance of school places and other public services that people are supposedly moving from?
You ask why you should pay for education? Because its a public service. That's why. If you have grandchildren, and those grandchildren need to go to school, then why does the fact that you have a house of your own, while children live in overcrowded accommodation make you absolved for paying for education while only those who buy a house should pay for it?
If people are moving away from a town or city with bountiful public services and an overabundance of good quality services and school places, then I'd love to know where this mythical make-believe town or city is.
Public services *are* an externality when it comes to initial capital investment, as if there is no investment, thjere are no new houses - an elementary feature of the planning system. Indzeed, in my area the lack of sewerage capacity held up expansion for quite a long time. It's the running that is legitimately charged to the people inhabiting the new houses.
There is a normal dynamic tunrover of schools - new buildings, new sites- over a timescale of decades. The numbers and density depend on population changes. Fewer children as families move or are moved out, fewer schools there, more needed elsewhere. It's not the simple one off you claim.
Look at the figures for Glasgow population 1950 to present to see an excellent example. The centre of the city was depopulated in favour of outer areas - some local uthority schemes, some commercial operations. Those schools have to be paid for. I live near a similar urban area where the population is moving in much the same way.
Three quarters of a million died to end slavery. We had a petition. OK, there was a lot more to it but maybe Trump has half a point. Whether the American Civil War could have been negotiated away is best left to historians but one thing Trump got right as President was to say no to warmongering neocons. As Churchill put it, jaw jaw is better than war war.
Entire period 1820 thru 1861 was exteeeeeeeeeeeeened negotiation re: slavery in America.
No shortage of jawboning, that's for sure.
Trump's "point" is same as always: his own pride and joy. (And I don't mean DJTJr.)
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps Zimbabwe and North Korea are not the benchmarks to say we're heading towards the UK being a more unpleasant and dysfunctional society.
After all, you are the one who described the USA as "fucked" and yet they are not Zimbabwe or North Korea. Their problems, particularly around prescribed drug regulation, are those of private enrichment, public sphere impoverishment that we are in danger of repeating in some original variant.
Public sphere impoverishment? With the highest taxes since the war?
Yes, that is what perplexes ordinary voters. We have surely all heard someone ask where all the money is going because nothing works.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
What the past few years have revealed is that there is absolutely no political interest in scrapping the planning system. The direction of travel is entirely the other way - more regulation, more requirements, more legislation - all political parties are signed up to this agenda.
The central fact about British politics is that the voters hate freedom.
If you want to liberalize planning to stop the state from sabotaging the provision of housing I think you need to take away people's freedom in some other respect to compensate. For example you could introduce controlled migration between counties, so if you want to move from one place to another you have to get the permission of a local committee in the place you want to move to, and another committee in the place you want to leave.
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
I didn’t find Oppenheimer boring as such, but it is overlong and they should definitely have focused more on the explosion - and also Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which are kinda glossed over)
Haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet. It’s on the list with mixed feelings after mixed reports
The new Reacher is simplistic fun
I’m waiting for a good period drama. Haven’t had one in ages. I was hoping The Winter King would replace Vikings or The Last Kingdom but it’s utterly dire - the most unrizz Merlin in screen history, for example. Pfffff!
I gave up quickly on Winter King. All that money utterly wasted.
Without any war or science just legal musings and office level politics, Oppenheimer is very boring.
All the Reachers are good.
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
There’s a new Inside Out next year.
Next up on my list is Berlin. I will start right now as this thread is boring without the 8 digit lead Opinium to get excited over.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
I didn’t find Oppenheimer boring as such, but it is overlong and they should definitely have focused more on the explosion - and also Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which are kinda glossed over)
Haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet. It’s on the list with mixed feelings after mixed reports
The new Reacher is simplistic fun
I’m waiting for a good period drama. Haven’t had one in ages. I was hoping The Winter King would replace Vikings or The Last Kingdom but it’s utterly dire - the most unrizz Merlin in screen history, for example. Pfffff!
I gave up quickly on Winter King. All that money utterly wasted.
Without any war or science just legal musings and office level politics, Oppenheimer is very boring.
All the Reachers are good.
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
There’s a new Inside Out next year.
Next up on my list is Berlin. I will start right now as this thread is boring without the 8 digit lead Opinium to get excited over.
Yes. How could they fuck up the Winter King so badly?! It’s about King Arthur FFS
Yet it’s less compelling than a 23 year old episode of Emmerdale
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
I really really hope not. The lawyers involved have behaved disgracefully and they, above all, should be made to pay a price for their misconduct, including criminal prosecutions if necessary.
I will certainly give them a lashing on here as and when the evidence comes out.
Incidentally your attack on the courts is silly: where someone pleads guilty, the court cannot ignore that. Where there is a trial, the verdict is that of the jury. The courts were hamstrung by the stupid decision to change the law on computer evidence.
The Ministry of Justice on the other hand - why weren't they noticing all these prosecutions? Why weren't they looking at how the Post Office was using its prosecution powers? There is plenty more to come out and I look forward to learning all about it, even if it makes me thoroughly ashamed of some members of my profession.
The lawyers who were dir3ctly involved ought, if aything, to bear a greater responsibility, as there’s no way they couldn’t have know what they were doing.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
It's a scandal that really seems to caught the public's attention - everyone I meet seems to be discussing it.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
Mostly everyone, Ian. Can it really be true however that at no time did Vennells and her closest colleagues appreciate that the doubts about Horizon implied that the PO could be responsible for a huge miscarriage of justice?
Her appearance before the Inquiry will indeed be interesting, as you indicated.
As I suggested above, I think the true scale of the scandal they were sitting on only became apparent to those at the top during Second Sight. While many further down knew the problems with their bit of the jigsaw but never saw the bigger picture.
At that point Vennells had the choice between certain financial, career, and repetitional disaster immediately, or gambling that some high paid dodgy lawyers could make the whole thing go away. Morally, she clearly made the wrong choice - the right decision made more difficult by all the other senior folk in the room urging her on (easy when the buck was never stopping with them) who are all now keeping their heads down and feigning amnesia when asked anything too close to the mark.
But logically, she made the right choice, since she chose a 50% chance of marginally greater ruin over 100% of ruin nevertheless. Had she come clean in 2015, no-one now would be giving her any credit for not having spun the affair out for a then unimaginable - now very real, almost ten more years - since had it not happened, it wouldn’t have seemed possible.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
The situation described above (room full of people in opposition to the truth) is how it happens -
1) you may be wrong 2) you will be an enemy of everyone here 3) if you rock the boat, we will make sure you drown first 4) this stack of paper muddies the whole thing etc
Totally different angle on housing: I've got a relative trying to buy a house after the person living in it died, and apparently there's this whole process involving probate and so forth that takes absolutely ages. There will be people here who know more about this than me but I wonder if you could do a combination of regulatory slash-and-burn and process efficiency improvements to cut the time these buildings are empty, which would have an equivalent effect on the market to building a whole load of new ones.
A couple of days ago someone asked if my water fast interfered with sleeping. I replied No, it’s fine
I can now report that’s totally untrue. My sleep pattern is all over the place. I’ve just woken up at 4am after 3 hours kip. I might sleep again in another 3-4 hours. It would make this quite impractical to combine with a normal job/family commitments
I also nearly succumbed to food last night with rages of starving hunger as I discovered a new packet of roasted peanuts in a cupboard. OMFG
Nonetheless here I am, 80 hours in. I can see ribs in my stomach that I haven’t seen in years. Like old friends from Sixth Form
I think I will end the fast later today. This evening. Enough
Sweet Chilli coated peanuts are irresistible. 🤤
How to break a long fast is a hotly debated issue!
Apparently the ideal is bone broth or lightly steamed vegetables like sprouts or broccoli. Yummy, not
What you want to avoid is “refeeding” where you gorge yourself on carbs, sugars, fatty food and lapse into a coma
So a gentle reintro is required. Think I might try miso soup and a little bit of sashimi
At least you are in a part of the world where food can be both healthy and tasty.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
It's a scandal that really seems to caught the public's attention - everyone I meet seems to be discussing it.
That Leon’s attention span is well below median is hardly breaking news.
Three quarters of a million died to end slavery. We had a petition. OK, there was a lot more to it but maybe Trump has half a point. Whether the American Civil War could have been negotiated away is best left to historians but one thing Trump got right as President was to say no to warmongering neocons. As Churchill put it, jaw jaw is better than war war.
Entire period 1820 thru 1861 was exteeeeeeeeeeeeened negotiation re: slavery in America.
No shortage of jawboning, that's for sure.
Trump's "point" is same as always: his own pride and joy. (And I don't mean DJTJr.)
🫣
I’ve got more idea about the US Civil War than Donald Trump. It could never have been negotiated. The whole essence of the Abraham Lincoln addresses I poured over last week, he is saying it’s so fundamental to Progressive Nationalist like himself there is absolutely no middle way fudge.
“Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.”
Make America Great Again? From people who can’t even say getting rid of slavery was a great thing America did.
Chevy Chase announces he's reprising his famous pratfall routine(s) for new film about thrills & spills of "the Gerald Ford of Scotland" - the patsy left holding the bag for HIS disgraced predecessor?
Some may demur, on grounds that CC does NOT much resemble HHY. Well, he wasn't exactly Jerry's spitting image either.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
So how does "Oppenheimer" compare with "Napoleon"?
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
I generally don’t mind at all if historical accuracy is bent - or even abandoned - to make a fantastic movie/drama (unless the subject material is incredibly recent)
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
Fuck the facts: entertain us
Amadeus is great. The bit on his deathbed giving Salieri insight into how truly gifted genius composes. But I always thought the historical Salieri did claim to have murdered Mozart?
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
I didn’t find Oppenheimer boring as such, but it is overlong and they should definitely have focused more on the explosion - and also Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which are kinda glossed over)
Haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet. It’s on the list with mixed feelings after mixed reports
The new Reacher is simplistic fun
I’m waiting for a good period drama. Haven’t had one in ages. I was hoping The Winter King would replace Vikings or The Last Kingdom but it’s utterly dire - the most unrizz Merlin in screen history, for example. Pfffff!
If you want a good, very black comedy - with a fair amount of grand guignol thrown in, Death’s Game on Amazon Prime is highly entertaining.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
It's a scandal that really seems to caught the public's attention - everyone I meet seems to be discussing it.
The Post Office scandal has caught the public's attention because of the ITV television series Mr Bates vs The Post Office which might not have been shown wherever in the world Leon is.
Totally different angle on housing: I've got a relative trying to buy a house after the person living in it died, and apparently there's this whole process involving probate and so forth that takes absolutely ages. There will be people here who know more about this than me but I wonder if you could do a combination of regulatory slash-and-burn and process efficiency improvements to cut the time these buildings are empty, which would have an equivalent effect on the market to building a whole load of new ones.
Yes, the house up the hill from me was left empty for four years, whilst the legal processes around the death of the owner slowly got resolved, leaving the estate agent to eventually advertise its garden as having been “managed in a natural way maximising the benefit to wildlife” when the truth of the matter was that it was an overgrown wilderness that no-one had ventured into for half a decade at least.
So how does "Oppenheimer" compare with "Napoleon"?
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
I generally don’t mind at all if historical accuracy is bent - or even abandoned - to make a fantastic movie/drama (unless the subject material is incredibly recent)
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
Fuck the facts: entertain us
Amadeus is great. The bit on his deathbed giving Salieri insight into how truly gifted genius composes. But I always thought the historical Salieri did claim to have murdered Mozart?
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
The situation described above (room full of people in opposition to the truth) is how it happens -
1) you may be wrong 2) you will be an enemy of everyone here 3) if you rock the boat, we will make sure you drown first 4) this stack of paper muddies the whole thing etc
Possible rejoinders along road NOT taken:
1) same back at ya 2) hardly news, as you already are my enemy 3) not if I nick YOUR life jacket AND punch a hole in YOUR lifeboat 4) take your stack of paper and shove it up your fat . . . etc.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
It’s what you get if you take away the money and staff and expect public services to continue delivering everything as before.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
Until we change to a society where honesty and competence are valued more highly than social background and aggression, nothing will change in Government, business or public institutions.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
The situation described above (room full of people in opposition to the truth) is how it happens -
1) you may be wrong 2) you will be an enemy of everyone here 3) if you rock the boat, we will make sure you drown first 4) this stack of paper muddies the whole thing etc
Possible rejoinders along road NOT taken:
1) same back at ya 2) hardly news, as you already are my enemy 3) not if I nick YOUR life jacket AND punch a hole in YOUR lifeboat 4) take your stack of paper and shove it up your fat . . . etc.
I would have gone with the press conference, in which I make sure to drop everyone else in the shit, before they can do the same to me.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
Mostly everyone, Ian. Can it really be true however that at no time did Vennells and her closest colleagues appreciate that the doubts about Horizon implied that the PO could be responsible for a huge miscarriage of justice?
Her appearance before the Inquiry will indeed be interesting, as you indicated.
As I suggested above, I think the true scale of the scandal they were sitting on only became apparent to those at the top during Second Sight. While many further down knew the problems with their bit of the jigsaw but never saw the bigger picture.
At that point Vennells had the choice between certain financial, career, and repetitional disaster immediately, or gambling that some high paid dodgy lawyers could make the whole thing go away. Morally, she clearly made the wrong choice - the right decision made more difficult by all the other senior folk in the room urging her on (easy when the buck was never stopping with them) who are all now keeping their heads down and feigning amnesia when asked anything too close to the mark.
But logically, she made the right choice, since she chose a 50% chance of marginally greater ruin over 100% of ruin nevertheless. Had she come clean in 2015, no-one now would be giving her any credit for not having spun the affair out for a then unimaginable - now very real, almost ten more years - since had it not happened, it wouldn’t have seemed possible.
But she's facing the very real prospect of chokey now, Ian, and possibly quite a long stretch. As Ms C pointed out earlier, the choice she made wasn't just morally incorrect, it was probably illegal.
I don't think that's logical or smart.
Btw, may I take the opportunity of saying that I have found your dialogues with Ms C on this subject riveting. They have contributed greatly to one of the most compelling discussions I have ever followed on PB, and I have been kicking around this place since its early days.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
It’s just a dull, monotonous, one-sided whine. Sorry
It’s like reading the Daily Express rewritten by a diligent and articulate lawyer who is paid by the word, so goes on at length
You can do better. At your best you are truly acute
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
I really don't think he's that calculating. Listen to how he rambles. He's not thinking this through. He knows nothing about the actual history. He thinks he's actually right in what he says.
“The story of Antonio Salieri as depicted in the play and film "Amadeus" is largely fictionalized. While Salieri and Mozart were contemporaries in Vienna and may have been rivals to some extent, the intense, bitter rivalry depicted in "Amadeus" is a dramatic invention.
“In reality, there is little evidence to suggest that Salieri was envious of Mozart to the point of plotting his downfall or his death. The idea that Salieri was involved in Mozart's death is a myth with no factual basis. The portrayal in "Amadeus" is a dramatic and artistic interpretation, not a historical account.”
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
I didn’t find Oppenheimer boring as such, but it is overlong and they should definitely have focused more on the explosion - and also Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which are kinda glossed over)
I thought Oppenheimer was great, saw it on IMAX at Waterloo, and recently twice on Blu-Ray. The latter has a decent *historical* documentary as a special feature.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
It’s just a dull, monotonous, one-sided whine. Sorry
It’s like reading the Daily Express rewritten by a diligent and articulate lawyer who is paid by the word, so goes on at length
You can do better. At your best you are truly acute
Nah, you're just sulking, Leon, because you are not setting the agenda.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
SEN provision. CAMHS. CYPS. The (lack of) treatment of vulnerable young people can be added to your lengthy list. Mental health waiting lists of literally years and years.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
That's because you are never here.
Also for a journalist you seem - how can I politely put this?- remarkably uninterested in, maybe even unsympathetic to, the human tragedies at the heart of both scandals: a 47 year old Scottish subpostmistrrss committing suicide leaving 2 motherless boys aged 14 and 12, a 10-week pregnant subpostmistress being jailed on her son's 10th birthday, an Italian couple in a burning tower sending their last text messages to their parents saying they know they won't get out alive.
These are human stories - even the story of the religious minister-cum-CEO having to choose between doing the right thing or the profitable save-my-own-skin thing.
Aren't you meant to be a bit of a storyteller? Any number of Spectator articles there for your friend.
(Or I'll just have to write them myself. They need some new writers.😀)
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
I didn’t find Oppenheimer boring as such, but it is overlong and they should definitely have focused more on the explosion - and also Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which are kinda glossed over)
Haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet. It’s on the list with mixed feelings after mixed reports
The new Reacher is simplistic fun
I’m waiting for a good period drama. Haven’t had one in ages. I was hoping The Winter King would replace Vikings or The Last Kingdom but it’s utterly dire - the most unrizz Merlin in screen history, for example. Pfffff!
If you want a good, very black comedy - with a fair amount of grand guignol thrown in, Death’s Game on Amazon Prime is highly entertaining.
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
I really don't think he's that calculating. Listen to how he rambles. He's not thinking this through. He knows nothing about the actual history. He thinks he's actually right in what he says.
Trump repeats what somebody else tells him. In this case, reckon it's what his political advisors advise.
The rambling is just his own personal touch, aiding air of "authenticity".
Like Boris Johnson's hairdo.
Which folks figured was just BoJo rolling out of bed after (another) rough night. When come to find, it was professionally crafted by one of Britain's most high-regarded (or rather rewarded) mop-manglers.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
The situation described above (room full of people in opposition to the truth) is how it happens -
1) you may be wrong 2) you will be an enemy of everyone here 3) if you rock the boat, we will make sure you drown first 4) this stack of paper muddies the whole thing etc
Possible rejoinders along road NOT taken:
1) same back at ya 2) hardly news, as you already are my enemy 3) not if I nick YOUR life jacket AND punch a hole in YOUR lifeboat 4) take your stack of paper and shove it up your fat . . . etc.
I would have gone with the press conference, in which I make sure to drop everyone else in the shit, before they can do the same to me.
So how does "Oppenheimer" compare with "Napoleon"?
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
I generally don’t mind at all if historical accuracy is bent - or even abandoned - to make a fantastic movie/drama (unless the subject material is incredibly recent)
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
Fuck the facts: entertain us
Amadeus is great. The bit on his deathbed giving Salieri insight into how truly gifted genius composes. But I always thought the historical Salieri did claim to have murdered Mozart?
AIUI that was made up? But I shall go and check
What about the opera by Rimsky Korsakov composed in 1897 Mozart and Salieri about that very topic?
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
That's because you are never here.
Also for a journalist you seem - how can I politely put this?- remarkably uninterested in, maybe even unsympathetic to, the human tragedies at the heart of both scandals: a 47 year old Scottish subpostmistrrss committing suicide leaving 2 motherless boys aged 14 and 12, a 10x week pregnant subpostmistress being jailed on her son's 10th birthday, an Italian couple in a burning tower sending their last text messages to their parents saying they know they won't get out alive.
Nonetheless I know how to frame a story to make it interesting. The Post Office stuff as it appears on here doesn’t do that
BUT I am obviously not objecting to people discussing it; it’s a free forum. Moreover, I furnish you all - uninvited - with intolerably dull details of my next meal, so I’m in no position to kvetch
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
Until we change to a society where honesty and competence are valued more highly than social background and aggression, nothing will change in Government, business or public institutions.
That pretty much sums up what lies behind most of my headers over the last 7 years (gulp!).
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
That's because you are never here.
Also for a journalist you seem - how can I politely put this?- remarkably uninterested in, maybe even unsympathetic to, the human tragedies at the heart of both scandals: a 47 year old Scottish subpostmistrrss committing suicide leaving 2 motherless boys aged 14 and 12, a 10x week pregnant subpostmistress being jailed on her son's 10th birthday, an Italian couple in a burning tower sending their last text messages to their parents saying they know they won't get out alive.
Nonetheless I know how to frame a story to make it interesting. The Post Office stuff as it appears on here doesn’t do that
BUT I am obviously not objecting to people discussing it; it’s a free forum. Moreover, I furnish you all - uninvited - with intolerably dull details of my next meal, so I’m in no position to kvetch
Do please continue, if such is your wont
Watch the ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office if you can stream from ITVx wherever you are. It has brought the scandal home to people in a way that years of Private Eye, Computer Weekly, PB headers and the public inquiry failed to do.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
It’s just a dull, monotonous, one-sided whine. Sorry
It’s like reading the Daily Express rewritten by a diligent and articulate lawyer who is paid by the word, so goes on at length
You can do better. At your best you are truly acute
I have been truly acute on this topic. As has @IanB2.
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
I really don't think he's that calculating. Listen to how he rambles. He's not thinking this through. He knows nothing about the actual history. He thinks he's actually right in what he says.
Trump repeats what somebody else tells him. In this case, reckon it's what his political advisors advise.
The rambling is just his own personal touch, aiding air of "authenticity".
Like Boris Johnson's hairdo.
Which folks figured was just BoJo rolling out of bed after (another) rough night. When come to find, it was professionally crafted by one of Britain's most high-regarded (or rather rewarded) mop-manglers.
Johnson's rambling was a scripted persona. Today's Trump, that's authentic mental confusion.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
That's because you are never here.
Also for a journalist you seem - how can I politely put this?- remarkably uninterested in, maybe even unsympathetic to, the human tragedies at the heart of both scandals: a 47 year old Scottish subpostmistrrss committing suicide leaving 2 motherless boys aged 14 and 12, a 10x week pregnant subpostmistress being jailed on her son's 10th birthday, an Italian couple in a burning tower sending their last text messages to their parents saying they know they won't get out alive.
Nonetheless I know how to frame a story to make it interesting. The Post Office stuff as it appears on here doesn’t do that
BUT I am obviously not objecting to people discussing it; it’s a free forum. Moreover, I furnish you all - uninvited - with intolerably dull details of my next meal, so I’m in no position to kvetch
Do please continue, if such is your wont
Watch the ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office if you can stream from ITVx wherever you are. It has brought the scandal home to people in a way that years of Private Eye, Computer Weekly, PB headers and the public inquiry failed to do.
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
I hope I am wrong, but I think it looks unpromising. The special effects are sludgy (a common complaint in the 2020s) and the dialogue is just a stack of cliches - "What's the move?" "We won't go without a fight". I believed every word of Band of Brothers not because it was true but because it sounded like things real people say. This just sounds like something a screenwriter wrote.
Plus - if you will forgive me - we badly need a British drama on this. We only got "Dunkirk" because Christopher Nolan can film the phone book. David Puttnam spent years trying to get Len Deighton's "Bomber" off the ground (pun!) but had to retool to "Memphis Belle" for US audiences. I want our own triumphs and disasters, not somebody else's.
So how does "Oppenheimer" compare with "Napoleon"?
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
I generally don’t mind at all if historical accuracy is bent - or even abandoned - to make a fantastic movie/drama (unless the subject material is incredibly recent)
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
Fuck the facts: entertain us
Amadeus is great. The bit on his deathbed giving Salieri insight into how truly gifted genius composes. But I always thought the historical Salieri did claim to have murdered Mozart?
AIUI that was made up? But I shall go and check
What about the opera by Rimsky Korsakov composed in 1897 Mozart and Salieri about that very topic?
So how does "Oppenheimer" compare with "Napoleon"?
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
I generally don’t mind at all if historical accuracy is bent - or even abandoned - to make a fantastic movie/drama (unless the subject material is incredibly recent)
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
Fuck the facts: entertain us
Amadeus is great. The bit on his deathbed giving Salieri insight into how truly gifted genius composes. But I always thought the historical Salieri did claim to have murdered Mozart?
AIUI that was made up? But I shall go and check
What about the opera by Rimsky Korsakov composed in 1897 Mozart and Salieri about that very topic?
Yes absolutely. Pushkin short story and Rimskys opera seems to have started it and influenced the play
I’ve had a Quick Look. This quote seems to sum up what most people think. “Salieri didn’t murder Mozart, but Pushkin for sure murdered Salieri” because the rivalry between them basically comes from Pushkins short story it seems. The short story and Rinskys spin being influence on Schaefer’s play. If anything, it was Salieri in the job Mozart wanted, for he would have been wealthier and more secure then.
Then again. There is something… the thing I heard about Salieri admitting the rumour of killing him was true. “So how did this respected musician become the rumoured murderer of the great Mozart? Nobody knows for certain. But in his final weeks Mozart is reported to have believed he had been poisoned, and had gone so far as to blame hostile Italian factions at the Viennese court. People put two and two together and pointed the finger at Salieri. And who could resist a story this good? Certainly not his fellow composers. There are mentions of it in Beethoven's Conversation Books. Weber, Mozart's father-in-law, had heard it by 1803, and cold-shouldered Salieri ever after. And 20 years later it was still doing the rounds; Rossini joked about it when he met Salieri in 1822. As the rumour gathered strength, all denials only served to reinforce it. Then, in 1823, Salieri - hospitalised, terminally ill and deranged - is said to have accused himself of poisoning Mozart. In more lucid moments he took it back. But the damage was done. Even if few believed the ramblings of a confused old man, the fact that Salieri had "confessed" to Mozart's murder gave the rumour some semblance of validity.”
Will it definitely be bottom right on the final print or could it move to front and centre? If that is indicative of the final position, is it indicative of the story's likely size.
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
I really don't think he's that calculating. Listen to how he rambles. He's not thinking this through. He knows nothing about the actual history. He thinks he's actually right in what he says.
Trump repeats what somebody else tells him. In this case, reckon it's what his political advisors advise.
The rambling is just his own personal touch, aiding air of "authenticity".
Like Boris Johnson's hairdo.
Which folks figured was just BoJo rolling out of bed after (another) rough night. When come to find, it was professionally crafted by one of Britain's most high-regarded (or rather rewarded) mop-manglers.
Johnson's rambling was a scripted persona. Today's Trump, that's authentic mental confusion.
Go check out some clips of The Donald from BEFORE he ran for President.
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
I hope I am wrong, but I think it looks unpromising. The special effects are sludgy (a common complaint in the 2020s) and the dialogue is just a stack of cliches - "What's the move?" "We won't go without a fight". I believed every word of Band of Brothers not because it was true but because it sounded like things real people say. This just sounds like something a screenwriter wrote.
Plus - if you will forgive me - we badly need a British drama on this. We only got "Dunkirk" because Christopher Nolan can film the phone book. David Puttnam spent years trying to get Len Deighton's "Bomber" off the ground (pun!) but had to retool to "Memphis Belle" for US audiences. I want our own triumphs and disasters, not somebody else's.
Yeah I just saw a trailer of “Masters” and I got ominous collywobbles
They are never a good sign
Band of Brothers was great, and Pacific was good. Maybe this is their first dud
It’s surely time for a proper new Battle of Britain movie; it is one of the most heroic stories in the history of human warfare, replete with incredible, real-life drama - the world really did stand in the balance - no need for any elaboration
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
Also, local government. Being driven into bankruptcy by government imposed legal obligations which government won’t fund.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Is there a PB award for being labelled "hyperbolic" by @Leon?
Order of the Kettle, first class.
I am aware of the irony of me, of all people, accusing someone else of excitable over-reaction, nonetheless I don’t recognise @Cyclefree’s portrait of a nation on the verge of venal dissolution
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
That's because you are never here.
Also for a journalist you seem - how can I politely put this?- remarkably uninterested in, maybe even unsympathetic to, the human tragedies at the heart of both scandals: a 47 year old Scottish subpostmistrrss committing suicide leaving 2 motherless boys aged 14 and 12, a 10x week pregnant subpostmistress being jailed on her son's 10th birthday, an Italian couple in a burning tower sending their last text messages to their parents saying they know they won't get out alive.
Nonetheless I know how to frame a story to make it interesting. The Post Office stuff as it appears on here doesn’t do that
BUT I am obviously not objecting to people discussing it; it’s a free forum. Moreover, I furnish you all - uninvited - with intolerably dull details of my next meal, so I’m in no position to kvetch
Do please continue, if such is your wont
Watch the ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office if you can stream from ITVx wherever you are. It has brought the scandal home to people in a way that years of Private Eye, Computer Weekly, PB headers and the public inquiry failed to do.
I shall do that. I have heard good things
ITV deserve praise for going for this.
Pretty sure the modern BBC would not have touched it but happy to be told otherwise (e.g. they lost a bidding war for the story).
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
I hope I am wrong, but I think it looks unpromising. The special effects are sludgy (a common complaint in the 2020s) and the dialogue is just a stack of cliches - "What's the move?" "We won't go without a fight". I believed every word of Band of Brothers not because it was true but because it sounded like things real people say. This just sounds like something a screenwriter wrote.
Plus - if you will forgive me - we badly need a British drama on this. We only got "Dunkirk" because Christopher Nolan can film the phone book. David Puttnam spent years trying to get Len Deighton's "Bomber" off the ground (pun!) but had to retool to "Memphis Belle" for US audiences. I want our own triumphs and disasters, not somebody else's.
You are being Mr Poo Poo, viewy.
But you are right, Band of Brothers, and Pacific too, worked because the script worked. It will need a fine script to be a fine mini series. But this has much the same team behind it as those had.
Will it definitely be bottom right on the final print or could it move to front and centre? If that is indicative of the final position, is it indicative of the story's likely size.
We all know there is a definite *story* floating around Scotch politics
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
I really don't think he's that calculating. Listen to how he rambles. He's not thinking this through. He knows nothing about the actual history. He thinks he's actually right in what he says.
Trump repeats what somebody else tells him. In this case, reckon it's what his political advisors advise.
The rambling is just his own personal touch, aiding air of "authenticity".
Like Boris Johnson's hairdo.
Which folks figured was just BoJo rolling out of bed after (another) rough night. When come to find, it was professionally crafted by one of Britain's most high-regarded (or rather rewarded) mop-manglers.
Johnson's rambling was a scripted persona. Today's Trump, that's authentic mental confusion.
Go check out some clips of The Donald from BEFORE he ran for President.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
It’s just a dull, monotonous, one-sided whine. Sorry
It’s like reading the Daily Express rewritten by a diligent and articulate lawyer who is paid by the word, so goes on at length
You can do better. At your best you are truly acute
I have been truly acute on this topic. As has @IanB2.
There it is. Sorry.
Cope.
😀
There's a strong Eichmann in Jerusalem aspect to it all, with the bureaucrats in charge completely oblivious to the human cost and unable to question what they were doing.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
It’s just a dull, monotonous, one-sided whine. Sorry
It’s like reading the Daily Express rewritten by a diligent and articulate lawyer who is paid by the word, so goes on at length
You can do better. At your best you are truly acute
I have been truly acute on this topic. As has @IanB2.
There it is. Sorry.
Cope.
😀
There's a strong Eichmann in Jerusalem aspect to it all, with the bureaucrats in charge completely oblivious to the human cost and unable to question what they were doing.
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
I really don't think he's that calculating. Listen to how he rambles. He's not thinking this through. He knows nothing about the actual history. He thinks he's actually right in what he says.
Trump repeats what somebody else tells him. In this case, reckon it's what his political advisors advise.
The rambling is just his own personal touch, aiding air of "authenticity".
Like Boris Johnson's hairdo.
Which folks figured was just BoJo rolling out of bed after (another) rough night. When come to find, it was professionally crafted by one of Britain's most high-regarded (or rather rewarded) mop-manglers.
Johnson's rambling was a scripted persona. Today's Trump, that's authentic mental confusion.
Go check out some clips of The Donald from BEFORE he ran for President.
Indeed. He's gotten worse.
Haven't we all? But still doesn't mean you can count on Trump going full-gaga as well as MAGA on the 2024 campaign trail.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
Until we change to a society where honesty and competence are valued more highly than social background and aggression, nothing will change in Government, business or public institutions.
That pretty much sums up what lies behind most of my headers over the last 7 years (gulp!).
Sometime over lockdown times I re-watched "The Quatermass Conclusion" (or Quatermass 4). One of the things that interested me amongst the general dreck was the idea of the increase in brutishness as the situation got worse.
I've mused on it since though and it's made me wonder. As 'various things get worse' (whether your bag is global warming, small boats, or whatever) is whether that elbowing, shouty, grim mannerless gets increased.
Nigel Kneale was prescient of a few things in his time. Just gave me something to chew on.
Re: Trump and slavery, one might assume that he simply has not been paying attention to the flap over Nikki Haley's own fractured history lesson.
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
I really don't think he's that calculating. Listen to how he rambles. He's not thinking this through. He knows nothing about the actual history. He thinks he's actually right in what he says.
Trump repeats what somebody else tells him. In this case, reckon it's what his political advisors advise.
The rambling is just his own personal touch, aiding air of "authenticity".
Like Boris Johnson's hairdo.
Which folks figured was just BoJo rolling out of bed after (another) rough night. When come to find, it was professionally crafted by one of Britain's most high-regarded (or rather rewarded) mop-manglers.
Johnson's rambling was a scripted persona. Today's Trump, that's authentic mental confusion.
Go check out some clips of The Donald from BEFORE he ran for President.
Indeed. He's gotten worse.
Haven't we all? But still doesn't mean you can count on Trump going full-gaga as well as MAGA on the 2024 campaign trail.
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
I hope I am wrong, but I think it looks unpromising. The special effects are sludgy (a common complaint in the 2020s) and the dialogue is just a stack of cliches - "What's the move?" "We won't go without a fight". I believed every word of Band of Brothers not because it was true but because it sounded like things real people say. This just sounds like something a screenwriter wrote.
Plus - if you will forgive me - we badly need a British drama on this. We only got "Dunkirk" because Christopher Nolan can film the phone book. David Puttnam spent years trying to get Len Deighton's "Bomber" off the ground (pun!) but had to retool to "Memphis Belle" for US audiences. I want our own triumphs and disasters, not somebody else's.
It’s over three decades since ITV did the series Piece of Cake from Derek Robinson’s novel. Someone should do the his (WWI) Goshawk Squadron, which is a great book. You could lift most of the dialogue straight into the screenplay.
Will it definitely be bottom right on the final print or could it move to front and centre? If that is indicative of the final position, is it indicative of the story's likely size.
We all know there is a definite *story* floating around Scotch politics
The articles I have written on this - since 7 May of last year - here and elsewhere have had more reactions and comments than anything else I've written on any other topic. Partly because I have tried to explain what it has been about and why it matters - and that the IT aspects are in some respects the least important aspect: the MacGuffin.
It's a story about abuse of power: a pretty universal theme. That is what resonates ultimately and what the drama captured very well.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Did the bank shareholders take full responsibility of their neglect during the GFC?
Have the rail franchise companies taken full responsibility of their neglect?
Will the water company shareholders be taking full responsibility of their neglect, in the coming years?
Bank shareholders were largely wiped out and the UK government didn’t lose money.
“The story of Antonio Salieri as depicted in the play and film "Amadeus" is largely fictionalized. While Salieri and Mozart were contemporaries in Vienna and may have been rivals to some extent, the intense, bitter rivalry depicted in "Amadeus" is a dramatic invention.
“In reality, there is little evidence to suggest that Salieri was envious of Mozart to the point of plotting his downfall or his death. The idea that Salieri was involved in Mozart's death is a myth with no factual basis. The portrayal in "Amadeus" is a dramatic and artistic interpretation, not a historical account.”
That’s like a very quick and light interrogating of the net by the bot - nothing about Mozart complaining of being poisoned by the Italians or Salieri’s deathbed confession.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Let's see:-
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers - Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,. - The police: need I say more? - The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal - The press: hacking etc., - Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children - Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated - The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions - Ditto in the army and navy - The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission - The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation - The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years - OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings - The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters - The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector - Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
It’s just a dull, monotonous, one-sided whine. Sorry
It’s like reading the Daily Express rewritten by a diligent and articulate lawyer who is paid by the word, so goes on at length
You can do better. At your best you are truly acute
I have been truly acute on this topic. As has @IanB2.
There it is. Sorry.
Cope.
😀
There's a strong Eichmann in Jerusalem aspect to it all, with the bureaucrats in charge completely oblivious to the human cost and unable to question what they were doing.
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
I hope I am wrong, but I think it looks unpromising. The special effects are sludgy (a common complaint in the 2020s) and the dialogue is just a stack of cliches - "What's the move?" "We won't go without a fight". I believed every word of Band of Brothers not because it was true but because it sounded like things real people say. This just sounds like something a screenwriter wrote.
Plus - if you will forgive me - we badly need a British drama on this. We only got "Dunkirk" because Christopher Nolan can film the phone book. David Puttnam spent years trying to get Len Deighton's "Bomber" off the ground (pun!) but had to retool to "Memphis Belle" for US audiences. I want our own triumphs and disasters, not somebody else's.
The Radio4 version of Bomber is sufficient for me.
Will it definitely be bottom right on the final print or could it move to front and centre? If that is indicative of the final position, is it indicative of the story's likely size.
We all know there is a definite *story* floating around Scotch politics
What is it?
I have absolutely no desire to be banned, I want to keep you all up to date on my diet
So I won’t say any more on here. But if you peruse some well-known Scottish political blogs you’ll soon learn
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
I didn’t find Oppenheimer boring as such, but it is overlong and they should definitely have focused more on the explosion - and also Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which are kinda glossed over)
I thought Oppenheimer was great, saw it on IMAX at Waterloo, and recently twice on Blu-Ray. The latter has a decent *historical* documentary as a special feature.
I found it a bit dull. Neither great drama, nor interesting history.
The books The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and the Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus are much more worthwhile.
Three quarters of a million died to end slavery. We had a petition. OK, there was a lot more to it but maybe Trump has half a point. Whether the American Civil War could have been negotiated away is best left to historians but one thing Trump got right as President was to say no to warmongering neocons. As Churchill put it, jaw jaw is better than war war.
Entire period 1820 thru 1861 was exteeeeeeeeeeeeened negotiation re: slavery in America.
No shortage of jawboning, that's for sure.
Trump's "point" is same as always: his own pride and joy. (And I don't mean DJTJr.)
Trump is increasingly obviously bonkers. Yesterday he claimed to have been told by a fan that he would beat a joint ticket of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln by 35%
Quite apart from the fact that he lost the popular vote to HRC and Joe Biden so this is delusional, it is almost blasphemous about the Founding Fathers. It would be like Boris Johnson saying he would thrash Churchill and William Pitt in an election.
Surely at some point before November these delusions of granduer are going to get even MAGA Republicans to stop and think.
“The story of Antonio Salieri as depicted in the play and film "Amadeus" is largely fictionalized. While Salieri and Mozart were contemporaries in Vienna and may have been rivals to some extent, the intense, bitter rivalry depicted in "Amadeus" is a dramatic invention.
“In reality, there is little evidence to suggest that Salieri was envious of Mozart to the point of plotting his downfall or his death. The idea that Salieri was involved in Mozart's death is a myth with no factual basis. The portrayal in "Amadeus" is a dramatic and artistic interpretation, not a historical account.”
That’s like a very quick and light interrogating of the net by the bot - nothing about Mozart complaining of being poisoned by the Italians or Salieri’s deathbed confession.
I WANT it to be true: that makes for a much better narrative; but nearly everything I’ve read gives me doubts….
So how does "Oppenheimer" compare with "Napoleon"?
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
I generally don’t mind at all if historical accuracy is bent - or even abandoned - to make a fantastic movie/drama (unless the subject material is incredibly recent)
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
Fuck the facts: entertain us
Amadeus is great. The bit on his deathbed giving Salieri insight into how truly gifted genius composes. But I always thought the historical Salieri did claim to have murdered Mozart?
AIUI that was made up? But I shall go and check
What about the opera by Rimsky Korsakov composed in 1897 Mozart and Salieri about that very topic?
The BBC produced this screenplay in the mid eighties on the issue. A team of real lawyers cross examined actors playing the characters including a hursuite Patrick Stewart as Salieri.
Will it definitely be bottom right on the final print or could it move to front and centre? If that is indicative of the final position, is it indicative of the story's likely size.
We all know there is a definite *story* floating around Scotch politics
What is it?
I have absolutely no desire to be banned, I want to keep you all up to date on my diet
So I won’t say any more on here. But if you peruse some well-known Scottish political blogs you’ll soon learn
I mean - that could be anything from 'SNP killed my granny' to 'Nicola has 100 properties in the South of France that she lets out to gay asylum seekers who hate the Englanders' to 'Scottish Labour secret deal with Keir to (save}kill) the Union' to....
You need to be a little less coy if you're going to tease us from afar.
Comments
Another mega-hyped flick where historical accuracy is consigned to the peanut gallery, to make room for the artistic pretensions of the director?
Personally think I'd rather watch "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" one more time.
Haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet. It’s on the list with mixed feelings after mixed reports
The new Reacher is simplistic fun
I’m waiting for a good period drama. Haven’t had one in ages. I was hoping The Winter King would replace Vikings or The Last Kingdom but it’s utterly dire - the most unrizz Merlin in screen history, for example. Pfffff!
After all, you are the one who described the USA as "fucked" and yet they are not Zimbabwe or North Korea. Their problems, particularly around prescribed drug regulation, are those of private enrichment, public sphere impoverishment that we are in danger of repeating in some original variant.
Two examples: Amadeus invents the Salieri murder story out of broad cloth, it is total bollocks - yet it is probably the greatest biopic of a composer ever made, and a brilliant analysis of genius and envy
The Great is likewise 80% fabulation yet somehow it does capture the violent lunacy of 18th century Russia - and it is hysterically funny
Fuck the facts: entertain us
Her appearance before the Inquiry will indeed be interesting, as you indicated.
On the one hand, as I suggested above, Vennells and a few junior folk might be singled out for the stocks, hoping thereby that justice will be done and everyone else can slip away into the night. With a stack of procedural recommendations, half of which will be implemented and half forgotten.
Or (and probably more legitimately), the inquiry might spread blame all around - and there are so many potential culprits: the Labour government and Benefits Agency that dropped the PO in it, ICL/Fujitsu for incompetence and subsequently dishonesty, the junior PO folk for their lack of training and PC Plod approach to their investigations, Post Office senior management for their credulity, lack of curiosity and later mendacity, the internal lawyers, the external lawyers, some courts, the Law Commission back in 1999, a series of Tory and LibDem junior ministers, the Federation of SPMs for their shameful sellout. Identifying all of the culprits, recommending changes to policies and procedures, but with no realistic way to ‘punish’ a cast of thousands.
The latter is probably the more just and useful a conclusion; but with the petition to strip Vennells of her honour fast approaching a million signatures, identifying a few principal scapegoats is more likely to sate public appetite.
It’s remarkable that the essential facts of this saga were all published by Computer Weekly way back in 2009, were examined in detail by a televised parliamentary committee in 2015, and by the Royal Court in 2019, yet have only gained public and political traction in the latter part of last year.
There is a normal dynamic tunrover of schools - new buildings, new sites- over a timescale of decades. The numbers and density depend on population changes. Fewer children as families move or are moved out, fewer schools there, more needed elsewhere. It's not the simple one off you claim.
Look at the figures for Glasgow population 1950 to present to see an excellent example. The centre of the city was depopulated in favour of outer areas - some local uthority schemes, some commercial operations. Those schools have to be paid for. I live near a similar urban area where the population is moving in much the same way.
Attack the poor and cut funding for public services to give tax cuts in a desperate election bribe . The Tory party need to be destroyed at the GE .
No shortage of jawboning, that's for sure.
Trump's "point" is same as always: his own pride and joy. (And I don't mean DJTJr.)
If you want to liberalize planning to stop the state from sabotaging the provision of housing I think you need to take away people's freedom in some other respect to compensate. For example you could introduce controlled migration between counties, so if you want to move from one place to another you have to get the permission of a local committee in the place you want to move to, and another committee in the place you want to leave.
Without any war or science just legal musings and office level politics, Oppenheimer is very boring.
All the Reachers are good.
I have high hopes for Masters of the air. Austin Butler and NCuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan and Rafferty Law AND directed by Fukunaga (which I will have to look up how to say correctly). It’s bound to look the part.
There’s a new Inside Out next year.
Next up on my list is Berlin. I will start right now as this thread is boring without the 8 digit lead Opinium to get excited over.
Also, the Post Office scandal remains even more boring than Grenfell
On the other hand, could be that DJT thinks - probably with some reason - that NH's approach is actually tailor-made for the Republican caucus/primary electorate. Regardless of how bunch of Woke-jobs writing in NYT, etc. moan & groan about it.
My sense is that it's Door Number Two.
Addendum - NOT to say it ain't a problem for Haley, it is. NOT because she said it, but because a week later she's yet to draw any sort of line under it.
Yet it’s less compelling than a 23 year old episode of Emmerdale
No. No. Yes. No.
The first Reacher movie was terrible.
The second was worse.
Then Amazon came up with a radical idea for the TV show. Take what's on the page and put it on screen. A crazy plan, but it actually worked...
Luckily someone realized this was madness, so season 2 has a whole different set of characters and storylines than the book.
AND IT SUCKS !!!!
At that point Vennells had the choice between certain financial, career, and repetitional disaster immediately, or gambling that some high paid dodgy lawyers could make the whole thing go away. Morally, she clearly made the wrong choice - the right decision made more difficult by all the other senior folk in the room urging her on (easy when the buck was never stopping with them) who are all now keeping their heads down and feigning amnesia when asked anything too close to the mark.
But logically, she made the right choice, since she chose a 50% chance of marginally greater ruin over 100% of ruin nevertheless. Had she come clean in 2015, no-one now would be giving her any credit for not having spun the affair out for a then unimaginable - now very real, almost ten more years - since had it not happened, it wouldn’t have seemed possible.
FM YOUSAF STORY EMBARGOED UNTIL SUNDAY MORNING
1) you may be wrong
2) you will be an enemy of everyone here
3) if you rock the boat, we will make sure you drown first
4) this stack of paper muddies the whole thing
etc
Mainly coz the star is a highly believable man-monster who simply beats the crap out of everyone
Hope it’s juicy
I’ve got more idea about the US Civil War than Donald Trump. It could never have been negotiated. The whole essence of the Abraham Lincoln addresses I poured over last week, he is saying it’s so fundamental to Progressive Nationalist like himself there is absolutely no middle way fudge.
“Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.”
Make America Great Again? From people who can’t even say getting rid of slavery was a great thing America did.
Some may demur, on grounds that CC does NOT much resemble HHY. Well, he wasn't exactly Jerry's spitting image either.
- Parliament: look at the recent header about how many MPs have been recalled for misbehaviour / the misbehaviour of the last Speaker, Johnson and various Cabinet Ministers
- Government procurement: PPE during Covid / Lady Mone etc.,.
- The police: need I say more?
- The NHS: endless maternity scandals / ill treatment of whistleblowers / sexual harassment of staff and patients / the blood contamination scandal
- The press: hacking etc.,
- Children's homes: read the IICSA reports on how we treat the most vulnerable children
- Care of the disabled: any number of scandals in how vulnerable patients are treated
- The Fire service: racism / sexism / homophobia and those found guilt of such behaviour allowed to resign on full pensions
- Ditto in the army and navy
- The legal system: look at the behaviour of lawyers in the Post Office affair and the Law Commission
- The SFO: misbehaviour so bad that a 10 year investigation into ENRC had to be abandoned and the SFO will now need to pay compensation
- The British Museum: has some its treasures looted and sold by one of its curators over years
- OFSTED: @ydoethur wrote a lengthy header on its failings
- The Home Office: Windrush / its treatment of migrants, for starters
- The Prison Service: have you read the reports of the Prisons Inspector
- Building regulations: see Grenfell
How about these for starters?
This is a public realm, a society which has for too long lived off the credit built by previous generations, has run those institutions down and failed to rebuild and reinvest and which deludes itself by pretending that it is better than it really is.
That self-delusion needs to stop. To put matters right will need hard work. But first of all it needs the realisation that our institutions are nowhere near as good as we like to pretend.
1) same back at ya
2) hardly news, as you already are my enemy
3) not if I nick YOUR life jacket AND punch a hole in YOUR lifeboat
4) take your stack of paper and shove it up your fat . . . etc.
I don't think that's logical or smart.
Btw, may I take the opportunity of saying that I have found your dialogues with Ms C on this subject riveting. They have contributed greatly to one of the most compelling discussions I have ever followed on PB, and I have been kicking around this place since its early days.
It’s like reading the Daily Express rewritten by a diligent and articulate lawyer who is paid by the word, so goes on at length
You can do better. At your best you are truly acute
“The story of Antonio Salieri as depicted in the play and film "Amadeus" is largely fictionalized. While Salieri and Mozart were contemporaries in Vienna and may have been rivals to some extent, the intense, bitter rivalry depicted in "Amadeus" is a dramatic invention.
“In reality, there is little evidence to suggest that Salieri was envious of Mozart to the point of plotting his downfall or his death. The idea that Salieri was involved in Mozart's death is a myth with no factual basis. The portrayal in "Amadeus" is a dramatic and artistic interpretation, not a historical account.”
Admit it.
The (lack of) treatment of vulnerable young
people can be added to your lengthy list.
Mental health waiting lists of literally years and years.
Also for a journalist you seem - how can I politely put this?- remarkably uninterested in, maybe even unsympathetic to, the human tragedies at the heart of both scandals: a 47 year old Scottish subpostmistrrss committing suicide leaving 2 motherless boys aged 14 and 12, a 10-week pregnant subpostmistress being jailed on her son's 10th birthday, an Italian couple in a burning tower sending their last text messages to their parents saying they know they won't get out alive.
Use your imagination, @Leon.
These are human stories - even the story of the religious minister-cum-CEO having to choose between doing the right thing or the profitable save-my-own-skin thing.
Aren't you meant to be a bit of a storyteller? Any number of Spectator articles there for your friend.
(Or I'll just have to write them myself. They need some new writers.😀)
The rambling is just his own personal touch, aiding air of "authenticity".
Like Boris Johnson's hairdo.
Which folks figured was just BoJo rolling out of bed after (another) rough night. When come to find, it was professionally crafted by one of Britain's most high-regarded (or rather rewarded) mop-manglers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_Salieri_(opera)
Nonetheless I know how to frame a story to make it interesting. The Post Office stuff as it appears on here doesn’t do that
BUT I am obviously not objecting to people discussing it; it’s a free forum. Moreover, I furnish you all - uninvited - with intolerably dull details of my next meal, so I’m in no position to kvetch
Do please continue, if such is your wont
There it is. Sorry.
Cope.
😀
Plus - if you will forgive me - we badly need a British drama on this. We only got "Dunkirk" because Christopher Nolan can film the phone book. David Puttnam spent years trying to get Len Deighton's "Bomber" off the ground (pun!) but had to retool to "Memphis Belle" for US audiences. I want our own triumphs and disasters, not somebody else's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_Salieri_(play)
Not many know he's the only man to win 4 World Cups.
I’ve had a Quick Look. This quote seems to sum up what most people think.
“Salieri didn’t murder Mozart, but Pushkin for sure murdered Salieri” because the rivalry between them basically comes from Pushkins short story it seems. The short story and Rinskys spin being influence on Schaefer’s play.
If anything, it was Salieri in the job Mozart wanted, for he would have been wealthier and more secure then.
Then again. There is something… the thing I heard about Salieri admitting the rumour of killing him was true.
“So how did this respected musician become the rumoured murderer of the great Mozart? Nobody knows for certain. But in his final weeks Mozart is reported to have believed he had been poisoned, and had gone so far as to blame hostile Italian factions at the Viennese court. People put two and two together and pointed the finger at Salieri. And who could resist a story this good? Certainly not his fellow composers. There are mentions of it in Beethoven's Conversation Books. Weber, Mozart's father-in-law, had heard it by 1803, and cold-shouldered Salieri ever after. And 20 years later it was still doing the rounds; Rossini joked about it when he met Salieri in 1822.
As the rumour gathered strength, all denials only served to reinforce it. Then, in 1823, Salieri - hospitalised, terminally ill and deranged - is said to have accused himself of poisoning Mozart. In more lucid moments he took it back. But the damage was done. Even if few believed the ramblings of a confused old man, the fact that Salieri had "confessed" to Mozart's murder gave the rumour some semblance of validity.”
They are never a good sign
Band of Brothers was great, and Pacific was good. Maybe this is their first dud
It’s surely time for a proper new Battle of Britain movie; it is one of the most heroic stories in the history of human warfare, replete with incredible, real-life drama - the world really did stand in the balance - no need for any elaboration
Being driven into bankruptcy by government imposed legal obligations which government won’t fund.
Again, seriously boring to someone like Leon.
Pretty sure the modern BBC would not have touched it but happy to be told otherwise (e.g. they lost a bidding war for the story).
But you are right, Band of Brothers, and Pacific too, worked because the script worked. It will need a fine script to be a fine mini series. But this has much the same team behind it as those had.
Sludgy special fx in 2020s?
I will watch this ITV drama from tomorrow
I've mused on it since though and it's made me wonder. As 'various things get worse' (whether your bag is global warming, small boats, or whatever) is whether that elbowing, shouty, grim mannerless gets increased.
Nigel Kneale was prescient of a few things in his time. Just gave me something to chew on.
You could lift most of the dialogue straight into the screenplay.
Not many SE5s knocking around, though.
It's a story about abuse of power: a pretty universal theme. That is what resonates ultimately and what the drama captured very well.
So arguably, yes, they did face the consequences.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/06/reform-uk-boycott-chris-skidmore-by-election-gloucester/
GB Shaw
So I won’t say any more on here. But if you peruse some well-known Scottish political blogs you’ll soon learn
The books The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and the Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus are much more worthwhile.
https://twitter.com/BidenHQ/status/1743460500493742423?t=TntSxJMepUulohnuM423Tg&s=19
Quite apart from the fact that he lost the popular vote to HRC and Joe Biden so this is delusional, it is almost blasphemous about the Founding Fathers. It would be like Boris Johnson saying he would thrash Churchill and William Pitt in an election.
Surely at some point before November these delusions of granduer are going to get even MAGA Republicans to stop and think.
You need to be a little less coy if you're going to tease us from afar.