Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
SFAICS this became absolutely acute at the point where the 1992 election was lost by Labour partly on account of saying something which allowed the 'Labour' Tax Bombshell' campaign. We have never recovered. This is 32 years ago.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
There's one other way, which also has a lot wrong with it.
Say as little as possible pre-election. Then having won, say "My predecessor left things in an even worse state then we thought." Go in hard with the painful stuff, and hope that it's worked in five years.
Horribly dishonest, but possibly better than we deserve.
There's another way which is to get rid of exemptions and special cases and simply tax everyone at the same rate.
Yes that will be a steep tax rise for those currently cushy and used to paying less than others with the same earnings have to pay, but for working people it wouldn't be a tax rise at all. Apart from working people engaging in dodging taxes.
Its not unreasonable to say that everyone earning the same amount should pay the same amount of tax, but it would be transformative to our tax take if it were so.
On the other hand I fully expect to hate Starmer with a wildly unbridled passion within 2 days of his taking office, so it evens out
I’m trying to think of a British politician I respect, from any side, for his or her wit, grace, courage, intellect, honesty, anything - it is damnably hard
Weirdly, the best I can do is Katie Forbes. I also respected Ruth Davidson. I must have a thing for Scottish lasses
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Refactoring is painful but at times it's unavoidable.
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1 2) update balance account 2 3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions 4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
Further to Ian's point, Eek, Richard Rolls testified to the Inquiry that when he told his Fujitsu Manager that they needed to recode from scratch, the manager agreed but lamented 'It ain't gonna happen'.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
SFAICS this became absolutely acute at the point where the 1992 election was lost by Labour partly on account of saying something which allowed the 'Labour' Tax Bombshell' campaign. We have never recovered. This is 32 years ago.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
There's one other way, which also has a lot wrong with it.
Say as little as possible pre-election. Then having won, say "My predecessor left things in an even worse state then we thought." Go in hard with the painful stuff, and hope that it's worked in five years.
Horribly dishonest, but possibly better than we deserve.
There's another way which is to get rid of exemptions and special cases and simply tax everyone at the same rate.
Yes that will be a steep tax rise for those currently cushy and used to paying less than others with the same earnings have to pay, but for working people it wouldn't be a tax rise at all. Apart from working people engaging in dodging taxes.
Its not unreasonable to say that everyone earning the same amount should pay the same amount of tax, but it would be transformative to our tax take if it were so.
The exemptions and special cases usually exist through necessity though. And people lose their shit when you take something away from them. Remember how the retired used to have a larger tax allowance than working people, and the coalition in their ramping up of tax free allowances for everyone aligned the tax free allowance upwards, including for the retired, but the absence of a special larger allowance (even though no worse off) was enough for George Osborne to have been accused of a "granny tax".
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Refactoring is painful but at times it's unavoidable.
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1 2) update balance account 2 3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions 4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
A key point to add to your 4 steps is to checkpoint at the start and end of the set of 4 steps so that, if any step fails you automatically roll-back to the checkpoint position.
not really a fallback checkpoint only works if you don't have other transactions in progress at the time but if you had 2 transactions running in parallel with 1 starting a millisecond after the other you end up with transaction 1 succeeding, but were transaction 2 to fail the rollback to the checkpoint for transaction 2 would set the balance back to where it was before transaction 1 started.
ideally you would have multiple locks on tables to make the disaster I outlined above impossible to ensure only 1 transaction is working on things at a time but that isn't always the case.
The point to take here is that even things that are really simple start to get complex when you are talking about multiple items occurring in parallel and the first solution you come up with may work i some scenarios but not others.
I'm really clear cut at work when doing this stuff even when I have the solution - that I'm going to sleep on it and let the nightly filing my brain does as I sleep pick up the flaws in the plan...
Matters less parochial, though I realise that the Eye of PB has moved on from Gaza. I believe there are now more dead journalists after 2 months of Gaza than in the whole Vietnam war. Needless to say many more dead journalists' kids.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
SFAICS this became absolutely acute at the point where the 1992 election was lost by Labour partly on account of saying something which allowed the 'Labour' Tax Bombshell' campaign. We have never recovered. This is 32 years ago.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
There's one other way, which also has a lot wrong with it.
Say as little as possible pre-election. Then having won, say "My predecessor left things in an even worse state then we thought." Go in hard with the painful stuff, and hope that it's worked in five years.
Horribly dishonest, but possibly better than we deserve.
There's another way which is to get rid of exemptions and special cases and simply tax everyone at the same rate.
Yes that will be a steep tax rise for those currently cushy and used to paying less than others with the same earnings have to pay, but for working people it wouldn't be a tax rise at all. Apart from working people engaging in dodging taxes.
Its not unreasonable to say that everyone earning the same amount should pay the same amount of tax, but it would be transformative to our tax take if it were so.
The exemptions and special cases usually exist through necessity though. And people lose their shit when you take something away from them. Remember how the retired used to have a larger tax allowance than working people, and the coalition in their ramping up of tax free allowances for everyone aligned the tax free allowance upwards, including for the retired, but the absence of a special larger allowance (even though no worse off) was enough for George Osborne to have been accused of a "granny tax".
That's politics and not necessity and who talks about that now?
Merge National Insurance, Graduate Tax and all other income-related taxes into the same rate of taxation as Income Tax and the tax take would go up tremendously as everyone starts on the same rate of tax. Yes, those who expect others to pay more tax than them will squeal like a pig, but the budget issues will be resolved and from there taxes can be lowered evenly across the board, or spending can rise, depending upon you political preference.
Everyone's income should be treated the same by HMRC no matter how its earned.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
Not that you follow the Bible fervently - or in the least respect - given that you don't give away all your money and "take no thought for the morrow". Eye of the needle. Lilies of the Field. Lazarus wanting to take a drop of water to Dives in hell. "That night he died". Let the dead bury their dead. All that kind of thing.
Still, to be fair, you are fervent enough about the bits of the Bible you choose to believe in.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Refactoring is painful but at times it's unavoidable.
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1 2) update balance account 2 3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions 4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
Further to Ian's point, Eek, Richard Rolls testified to the Inquiry that when he told his Fujitsu Manager that they needed to recode from scratch, the manager agreed but lamented 'It ain't gonna happen'.
I'm glad I've always been in the position to be able to walk away there and then (both because I have the money and a skillset / reputation) and not need to continue working - it's a flexibility a lot of people don't have which a lot of management pray upon..
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
Not that you follow the Bible fervently - or in the least respect - given that you don't give away all your money and "take no thought for the morrow". Eye of the needle. Lilies. "That night he died". Let the dead bury their dead. All that kind of thing.
Still, to be fair, you are fervent enough about the bits of the Bible you choose to believe in.
The bits he chooses to believe in typically being those bits that Christ did not say.
The “1800s” can now mean any time in the 19th century. So how do you specify the decade 1800-1810? You can’t. It’s a loss of meaning and precision
I hate the young, not just coz I’m obviously a bitter old git, but also because the young really are dim, and getting dimmer
I've read quite a lot of literature written as late as the 1960s referring to 'the gay 90s' of the 19th century, which was still within living memory for many.
I follow a number of academics on Twitter/X and one was moaning recently that his students keep thinking that the 18th Century refers to the 1800s and the 19th C to the 1900s, etc. I seem to recall learning about centuries at primary school.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
Not that you follow the Bible fervently - or in the least respect - given that you don't give away all your money and "take no thought for the morrow". Eye of the needle. Lilies. "That night he died". Let the dead bury their dead. All that kind of thing.
Still, to be fair, you are fervent enough about the bits of the Bible you choose to believe in.
The bits he chooses to believe in typically being those bits that Christ did not say.
Certainly Jesus wasn't as exercised about "homosexual marriage" as our resident donkey.
The “1800s” can now mean any time in the 19th century. So how do you specify the decade 1800-1810? You can’t. It’s a loss of meaning and precision
I hate the young, not just coz I’m obviously a bitter old git, but also because the young really are dim, and getting dimmer
I've read quite a lot of literature written as late as the 1960s referring to 'the gay 90s' of the 19th century, which was still within living memory for many.
I follow a number of academics on Twitter/X and one was moaning recently that his students keep thinking that the 18th Century refers to the 1800s and the 19th C to the 1900s, etc. I seem to recall learning about centuries at primary school.
That should be easily fixed. Ask them what century we are in - and then correct them. And do it every week until they grasp it.
Now I know it doesn't make much sense but how else do you cope when numbers start at 1 and you can't have such a thing as the 0 century..
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Refactoring is painful but at times it's unavoidable.
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1 2) update balance account 2 3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions 4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
Further to Ian's point, Eek, Richard Rolls testified to the Inquiry that when he told his Fujitsu Manager that they needed to recode from scratch, the manager agreed but lamented 'It ain't gonna happen'.
I'm glad I've always been in the position to be able to walk away there and then and not need to continue working - it's a flexibility a lot of people don't have which a lot of management pray upon..
Rolls did so, but not immediately. (Young family and all that, so one sympathises.)
The “1800s” can now mean any time in the 19th century. So how do you specify the decade 1800-1810? You can’t. It’s a loss of meaning and precision
I hate the young, not just coz I’m obviously a bitter old git, but also because the young really are dim, and getting dimmer
I've read quite a lot of literature written as late as the 1960s referring to 'the gay 90s' of the 19th century, which was still within living memory for many.
I follow a number of academics on Twitter/X and one was moaning recently that his students keep thinking that the 18th Century refers to the 1800s and the 19th C to the 1900s, etc. I seem to recall learning about centuries at primary school.
That should be easily fixed. Ask them what century we are in - and then correct them. And do it every week until they grasp it.
Now I know it doesn't make much sense but how else do you cope when numbers start at 1 and you can't have such a thing as the 0 century..
Though despite having spent most of my life now in the 21st century, the idea of "20th century" still feels like the present and the idea of the "21st century" still feels futuristic.
I still think of this as circle, or horseshoe if you prefer; extreme left and right become indistinguishable autocracies.
I don't think that a very accurate picture. The far right and far left don't look much alike apart from being prone to both factionalism and political violence. Its the acceptance of verbal and physical violence as a political tool that leads to anti-semitism, and factionalism is rooted in personality cults.
I suggest that it's hard to divide dictatorships into two radically different camps according to how it feels to be on the receiving end. Many of the attitudes and many of the outcomes are very similar. Ask the Poles. And of course Mr H (let's try and dodge Godwin's law with an initial) and his party started out as socialist. Yes, the two sides hate each other, but that's because they're rivals for the same radical intolerance and hate each other in the way of two violent gangs of opposing football team supporters. Yet they're both football gangs.
If you tried to generalise, a left-wing dictatorship tends to be pretty grim for most people except for a small preferred elite, whereas a right-wing dictatorship tends to be truly appalling for a minority and perhaps not quite so bad for a majority. But I'm not sure even that generalisation would stand up to too many examples.
It does just largely descend into the same thing. I do actively dislike the defining of fascism as just something horrible that you dont like. It was more than that it was a creed, a loose set of ideas which more than just hating disabled people and internationalists polluting national values (and sucking resources away from the nation).
I think there are some defining features of fascism that are distinct.
1) Leadership cults are integral to fascism. The vision of the Leader embodying the people, and therefore the state. They are however not unique to facism, being found in other totalitarian systems like Communism, Theocracies and absolute monarchies.
2) There is an idealisation of a unique people, with a common culture and outlook, with special distinctive features and manifest destiny.
This refuses to accept that the people are not a single variety, but are actually quite diverse ethnically, culturally, religiously etc. This is the root of the nativism and racism of fascist ideology.
3) There is a culture of physicality and machismo, that defines the reborn nation and has contempt for intellectualism and other habits seen as effete. This leads to systemic homophobia, misogyny and political violence.
I don't think we have more than a tiny percentage of such people in Britain.
No, quite. But, it is really easy to squint your eyes and apply the above to pretty much any government. 1) If you loath Blair or Johnson, its easy to attach a cult of personality to them and their followers.. There was certainly a cult of personality to Thatcher. 2) Could easily apply to the USA more than any on the planet, but not specifically racial. You join us you become us ethos. It's certainly the SNP claims of civic nationalism. But it can be argued if you dont think there is something specifically good about your own place/tribe, is suspicious and unusual. 3) The best way to create contempt for intellectualism is to put those with phds regularly in the news. Never before has public facing science and intellectualism shown itself to be an empty vessel. The rot began with the reaction to Brexit here, and Trump in the USA and chef kissed with Covid responses and reactions to BLM.
1 and 2 applied to Sturgeon’s SNP. 3 definitely didn’t.
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
I think that's an answer to a different question - key presses have nothing to do with database transactions but it's unfair to expect none technical people to pick up the issue.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
Saying a computer system is "robust" is meaningless. What does "robust" mean? Robust for what?
"Robust" is a word carefully chosen to mean, for the speaker, that the system runs and doesn't crash or collapse, yet to the listener, convey the impression it means "accurate".
Yes - but how daft must you be not to realise that. As I said, a lack of curiosity is very common in scandals, at least the ones I've been involved in.
An obvious, but missed, question for the Select Committee, despite Zahawi's bravura performance at the actual committee and risble acting in the drama, was to push back on what 'robust' actually meant. And those were our champion inquisitors, hand-picked for the job from a cast of millions.
And incidentally on the same point, while there were clearly some programming errors that led to mistakes in relatively rare circumstances, these were items that appeared on the lengthy bug lists that Fujitsu were collecting, and tended to be resolved as quickly as they could deal with them. The most likely explanation that has emerged so far as to why” so many discrepancies continued to appear over such an extended timescale is that they were caused by power outages (maybe of just a second or two) or poor connectivity, the sub post offices being particularly vulnerable because so many of them are in remote locations or operating out of inadequate premises. Such that the transaction made in the SPSO either wasn’t replicated at the server or got corrupted during transmission.
Sometimes, but not always, changing or repairing the kit or its wiring in the SPSO made the problems go away (or, alternatively, created problems where there had been none before).
This also explains why the majority of offices had no issues (which wouldn’t be the case with a major programming bug, which would of course affect everybody, depending on the spread of their transactions).
Whether such a system that couldn’t cope with (or even had, in the first place) unreliable power supply and connectivity, can reasonably be described as “robust”, is a good question?
There were some fundamental coding flaws as well - one mentioned in Wallis’s book was that some of the numerical codes transmitted across the system contained multiple bits of information that were run together, where the different codes being used not always had the same number of digits. Such that the items 123 45678 and 1234 5678 would both go across as 12345678. This created a rare error if the alternative ‘read’ of the code matched up with another ‘correct’ set of codes, and as an amateur looks like incredibly amateurish coding to me. As indeed the whistleblower from inside Fujitsu described.
That really isn't an excuse though - transactions across distributed systems was a common issue back in the 1990's with known implementation patterns to solve those issues.
It does sound as if Fujitsu had a bunch of programming cowboys who were learning as they went along, deployed onto one of the biggest IT projects in the world...
Not long before launch they brought in some experts to take a look at the program, given the problems they were having getting it ready, and one of them has given evidence that he told them that the accounting modules at the very heart of it were a mess, patched up into oblivion, and that really they should re-code it from scratch.
But, already suffering penalties for contractual overrun, instead they decided to continue patching and launch it hoping for the best...and the rest is history
Refactoring is painful but at times it's unavoidable.
and it's not as if a double book account keeping is difficult it's 4 steps that either need to all succeed or your things back
1) update balance account 1 2) update balance account 2 3) add transaction to account 1's list of transactions 4) add transaction to account 2's list of transactions
And all this is done at 1 central point because otherwise you have problems - it's why all the historic banks have mainframes...
Mind you I don't thnk they were the only people with problems - I've heard multiple stories of banks insisting on people starting from an empty base every time (resulting in the wheel being invented 50 times with 50 variants all with different bugs).
Further to Ian's point, Eek, Richard Rolls testified to the Inquiry that when he told his Fujitsu Manager that they needed to recode from scratch, the manager agreed but lamented 'It ain't gonna happen'.
I'm glad I've always been in the position to be able to walk away there and then and not need to continue working - it's a flexibility a lot of people don't have which a lot of management pray upon..
Rolls did so, but not immediately. (Young family and all that, so one sympathises.)
As I said in the update I have the advantage that I can (don't really need the cash and a reputation / skillset that gets me work easily).
If you need to work and give say 3 months notice it's going to take you 6 months minimum to escape by the time you've got your CV written and done all the interviews to escape but as you say people don't see things that way and may use the fact they didn't leave instantly as complacency.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
The answer is very simple in principle, though admittedly not entirely simple in execution.
We just need to adopt sortition. Place the political decision-making process in the hands of randomly selected representatives of the electorate. Do away with professional politicians. If current politicians want to pursue a similar career to their present one, let them be advocates of one course or another, but make it crystal clear to them that they _are_ going to be advocates and not decision-makers. Their job would be to present a sufficiently cogent case for any particular course of action, that it would be convincing to the representatives of the people, who would benefit from the same advice from the civil service that is currently provided to professional politicians.
I think now that the machines will take over before there is time for this to happen, but if not - God willing - it will happen sooner or later.
The Swiss system of referenda would allow us to vote on individual policies, not the agglomeration that is a manifesto.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
The answer is very simple in principle, though admittedly not entirely simple in execution.
We just need to adopt sortition. Place the political decision-making process in the hands of randomly selected representatives of the electorate. Do away with professional politicians. If current politicians want to pursue a similar career to their present one, let them be advocates of one course or another, but make it crystal clear to them that they _are_ going to be advocates and not decision-makers. Their job would be to present a sufficiently cogent case for any particular course of action, that it would be convincing to the representatives of the people, who would benefit from the same advice from the civil service that is currently provided to professional politicians.
I think now that the machines will take over before there is time for this to happen, but if not - God willing - it will happen sooner or later.
The Swiss system of referenda would allow us to vote on individual policies, not the agglomeration that is a manifesto.
That's not really the same thing, though, and I doubt it would be an improvement. Let's do away with professional politicians altogether.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
The answer is very simple in principle, though admittedly not entirely simple in execution.
We just need to adopt sortition. Place the political decision-making process in the hands of randomly selected representatives of the electorate. Do away with professional politicians. If current politicians want to pursue a similar career to their present one, let them be advocates of one course or another, but make it crystal clear to them that they _are_ going to be advocates and not decision-makers. Their job would be to present a sufficiently cogent case for any particular course of action, that it would be convincing to the representatives of the people, who would benefit from the same advice from the civil service that is currently provided to professional politicians.
I think now that the machines will take over before there is time for this to happen, but if not - God willing - it will happen sooner or later.
The Swiss system of referenda would allow us to vote on individual policies, not the agglomeration that is a manifesto.
But you can get the problem they’ve had in California where people vote for higher spending and lower taxes. Individual policies often impact on other policies.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
I was about to say “I feel a bit sorry for Sunak” but then I realised I absolutely don’t
His life has been one piece of amazing good fortune after another, resulting in him falling into the top job that he wasn’t really ready for. And unlike the calamities self-inflicted by his four predecessors, he’ll probably end up being seen quite sympathetically as the guy who got the impossible gig. And we know in advance that he’ll end up in the US being paid $squillions for his expertise in whatever it was.
The “1800s” can now mean any time in the 19th century. So how do you specify the decade 1800-1810? You can’t. It’s a loss of meaning and precision
I hate the young, not just coz I’m obviously a bitter old git, but also because the young really are dim, and getting dimmer
I've read quite a lot of literature written as late as the 1960s referring to 'the gay 90s' of the 19th century, which was still within living memory for many.
I follow a number of academics on Twitter/X and one was moaning recently that his students keep thinking that the 18th Century refers to the 1800s and the 19th C to the 1900s, etc.
They'll probably ban "19th century" etc. from the National Curriculum soon, using "1800s" instead.
Already, clocks in many exam rooms are digital because many pupils don't know how to tell the time when there's an hour hand and a minute hand.
Ray Kurzweil says smartphones are making everyone cleverer. I wonder whether he's been on the shrooms too.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
I would just comment that no amount of compensation can address the serious mental health issues, including PTSD, suffered by many nor of course those who committed suicide and the ones who have died
No amount of money can compensate the suffering that some went through and will always endure, but one thing that will definitely help is if the truth comes out fully, and without further delay.
One thing the Government could and should do, immediately, and without cost to the the taxpayer, is tell the current Board of the Post Office to stop delaying proceedings and give the maximum and most urgent assistance to the Inquiry in its work.
Anyone who has been watching the Inquiry will know that thus far the PO has done everything in its power to obstruct the unearthing of the whole truth.
Even its Chair expects the whole of 2024 to be taken up with evidence, and that’s assuming things run to plan. And he’s not going to write it up in one overnight essay crisis, is he?
A statutory enquiry seems a good thing to have, but they always take so long that the original issue is almost forgotten by the time they finish.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours. Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Have you considered Laurence Fox and the 'reclaim' party? I would in all seriousness vote for them because I think their arguments should form part of the mainstream political discourse and not ridiculed/cancelled as they are at present. The more people attack the 'far right' the more I am minded to vote for them as an alternative to the failing model of business as usual.
The ones who accepted Andrew Bridgen, the vaccine conspiracy theorist? Even if business as usual isn’t working, I’m pretty confident that believing a pack of lies about COVID vaccines being like the Holocaust is not the way forward.
The “1800s” can now mean any time in the 19th century. So how do you specify the decade 1800-1810? You can’t. It’s a loss of meaning and precision
I hate the young, not just coz I’m obviously a bitter old git, but also because the young really are dim, and getting dimmer
I've read quite a lot of literature written as late as the 1960s referring to 'the gay 90s' of the 19th century, which was still within living memory for many.
I follow a number of academics on Twitter/X and one was moaning recently that his students keep thinking that the 18th Century refers to the 1800s and the 19th C to the 1900s, etc.
They'll probably ban "19th century" etc. from the National Curriculum soon, using "1800s" instead.
Already, clocks in many exam rooms are digital because many pupils don't know how to tell the time when there's an hour hand and a minute hand.
Ray Kurzweil says smartphones are making everyone cleverer. I wonder whether he's been on the shrooms too.
They seem to make children more knowledgeable on some very niche trivia topics.
My son’s TikTok stream seemingly showers him endlessly with global geopolitics and economics facts, because he has been amassing pub quiz levels of knowledge that he’s definitely not getting at home or at school.
It started back then, but it is still going on and has only recently begun to be addressed seriously.
Somebody briefed him very, very badly.
Yup. With arguably the most inexcusable bits - when they knew something was badly wrong but were denying and obfuscating, during the coalition and Cameron years. Not that specific politicians bear direct responsibility.
No one escapes blame, but "it was a long time ago" is precisely the wrong response given it's in large part what the worst people on the Post Office side were counting on by dragging it out for so long. That time and expense would force these poor people to give up, and inevitably politicians would have done so too.
I would just comment that no amount of compensation can address the serious mental health issues, including PTSD, suffered by many nor of course those who committed suicide and the ones who have died
No amount of money can compensate the suffering that some went through and will always endure, but one thing that will definitely help is if the truth comes out fully, and without further delay.
One thing the Government could and should do, immediately, and without cost to the the taxpayer, is tell the current Board of the Post Office to stop delaying proceedings and give the maximum and most urgent assistance to the Inquiry in its work.
Anyone who has been watching the Inquiry will know that thus far the PO has done everything in its power to obstruct the unearthing of the whole truth.
Even its Chair expects the whole of 2024 to be taken up with evidence, and that’s assuming things run to plan. And he’s not going to write it up in one overnight essay crisis, is he?
A statutory enquiry seems a good thing to have, but they always take so long that the original issue is almost forgotten by the time they finish.
Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.
1) we need to change the law so computer evidence is not accepted with care and attention - the blanket rule we used for speed cameras isn't fit for purpose.
2) because the evidence is so suspect just pardon and compensate everyone charged and refund any money claimed.
3) Post Office Management should be subjected to a Putin style one to one review and replaced on mass.
4) Post office shouldn't have right to prosecute people - and one with such authority should be overseen by the CPS.
5) I'm sure Cyclefree could come up with the other recommendations without much effort...
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours. Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
Ignore the rationale behind it - it was immoral and at the time Vennells was a CoE priest.
Now I used to attend the CoE but having met too many priests that followed Vennell's method of take the easy option rather than the morally correct 1 I no longer have any dealings with them or attend church.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Don't want to go all Brecht here, but isn't the bigger problem, what the British electorate will vote for?
We've spent decades voting to get more and pay less, filling the gap by selling stuff off (yes, I am looking at you Margaret) and borrowing unsustainably (what's that Gordon? Actually, I do mean you) and sweating assets beyond their limits (in case you were feeling left out George).
There's no way out of this that doesn't involve quite a bit less consumption, quite a bit more tax (especially on the gains people have made through asset inflation) and a redirection of spending to investment for the future.
But if an election comes down to "accept the hangover" vs. "hair of the dog", the second will always win, no matter how persuasive the leader of the first is.
SFAICS this became absolutely acute at the point where the 1992 election was lost by Labour partly on account of saying something which allowed the 'Labour' Tax Bombshell' campaign. We have never recovered. This is 32 years ago.
No party aiming at government (there are only 2) is going to risk this, so we are stuck with the ludicrous strangulation of real discussion about debt, tax, spend, borrow at election time.
I can see only two ways out, neither of which are likely. A voter revolt, or a cross party truce to agree a common formula like 'Both Tory and Labour will tax at the level which will meet our spending commitments. Taxes can go up as well as down. Taxes are high because state managed expenditure is nearly 50% of GDP. Get over it'.
Or maybe, just maybe, expenditure shouldn't be 50% of GDP?
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours. Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
Ignore the rationale behind it - it was immoral and at the time Vennells was a CoE priest.
Now I used to attend the CoE but having met too many priests that followed Vennell's method of take the easy option rather than the morally correct 1 I no longer have any dealings with them or attend church.
Vennells is no longer a priest either, anyway the vast majority of C of E priests are actually decent people doing the best for their Parish and community
An idle thought. I often read on here that the days of 'live', collective TV watching (apart from sport and the Queen's funeral etc.) are well and truly dead, and how most people never watch live TV, preferring to stream their content at a time that suits them.
I'd suggest that the impact of Mr Bates vs. The Post Office shows that there is still an important place for collective TV watching. Even if many folk didn't watch it from Mon -Thurs (I actually binge-watched all four episodes last night), it's quite clear that over the last week it's been watched by millions - and that's what's made the impact so great.
Don't be harsh on yourself. It's easy to understand why people would find Post Offices, ancient emails, unglamourous people in mundane posts and the like very boring. This explains to a large extent why this scandal was the slowest of slow burners. Do look at the show though. I don't expect it to knock your socks off, but I do think it does convey the human suffering well, even if it necessarily has to gloss over the finer details.
I look forward to reading your review. Much as I enjoy taking the piss out of you from time to time, I do appreciate your talents as a critic.
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours. Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
Ignore the rationale behind it - it was immoral and at the time Vennells was a CoE priest.
Now I used to attend the CoE but having met too many priests that followed Vennell's method of take the easy option rather than the morally correct 1 I no longer have any dealings with them or attend church.
Vennells is no longer a priest either, anyway the vast majority of C of E priests are actually decent people doing the best for their Parish and community
I'm pretty sure she is still a priest but on gardening leave. As she is non-stipendiary, she's not getting any money from the CoE (not that she needs it). I gather from the Rev. Richard Coles, who has been backing the campaign to get justice for the post office staff, the CoE is waiting for the inquiry to report before making the final decision on her future.
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours. Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
Ignore the rationale behind it - it was immoral and at the time Vennells was a CoE priest.
Now I used to attend the CoE but having met too many priests that followed Vennell's method of take the easy option rather than the morally correct 1 I no longer have any dealings with them or attend church.
Vennells is no longer a priest either, anyway the vast majority of C of E priests are actually decent people doing the best for their Parish and community
I'm pretty sure she is still a priest but on gardening leave. As she is non-stipendiary, she's not getting any money from the CoE (not that she needs it). I gather from the Rev. Richard Coles, who has been backing the campaign to get justice for the post office staff, the CoE is waiting for the inquiry to report before making the final decision on her future.
My understanding is also that she is suspended (so not technically gardening leave) but hasn't been unfrocked. I'm not quite sure whether her suspension was voluntary or not.
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours. Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
Ignore the rationale behind it - it was immoral and at the time Vennells was a CoE priest.
Now I used to attend the CoE but having met too many priests that followed Vennell's method of take the easy option rather than the morally correct 1 I no longer have any dealings with them or attend church.
Vennells is no longer a priest either, anyway the vast majority of C of E priests are actually decent people doing the best for their Parish and community
Yet they are willing to sit in Deanery synod or employ people who really rank as some of the very worst 2 face people I've met in my life.
And I often have to deal with people willing to sell tax avoidance schemes to people who just want £25 extra in their pay packet at the end of the week (they are total scam) but I can name a number of CoE priests who are way worse when it comes to their dealings with other people.
My original intent was to make a grand sweeping series of ideas of our time, and initial work did take place on three of these: Matthew Goodwin on Values, Voice and Virtue, Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and Mary Harrington on Transhumanism. But it became apparent that I couldn't complete them in a realistic time and if you can't do it in a realistic time you can't do it at all. So my articles on for example Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism will not now appear, although the first three may in truncated form.
This article, first in a looser openended series, is a response to that. Unlike previous articles which were written backstage ("in the toilets" as @Moonrabbit puts it) and perfected before submission, this was submitted as an early draft and unsourced. Illustrations, diagrams and points from your comments will be added and this expanded version presented to you backstage at a later date.
(Some of you will be mouthing "agile programming" at this point. )
Once again, thank you: your contributions will make the work much better and has hopefully engaged your interest. Thanks again to @TSE and @rcs1000 for publishing it.
Just when Lib Dems thought it was safe to forget The Coalition ...
Who would have thought that a 20-month stint as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs could come back to destroy your career a decade later?
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
That occurred to me, too. There are also three types of Post Offices. Crown Offices, owned and run by the Post Office itself, sub Post Offices run by companies, (eg WHSmith) and the Alan Bates etc type. I’ve asked before and few seem to know; did they all use the same system?
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?
Not really - unless they can demonstrate the Government was completely aware of the facts.
Claiming you acted on behalf of the Government because your lied to the Government about the situation doesn't really give you a get out clause does it?
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
Interesting interview with Mr Bates here on Ed Davey, via a link in the text:
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?
It might, depending on which government it was. That's the catch - all three major parties have unclean hands on this. There have even been mutterings (probably wrong, but you never know) the SNP knew and didn't want to be told.
So the three shortlisted for this afternoon’s Wellingborough prospective parliamentary candidate selection are:
- Helen Harrison - Rev Dr Beatrice Brandon - Tom Mercer
Cllr Helen Harrison is the live-in girlfriend of disgraced Tory MP Peter Bone and is, it’s safe to say, a controversial choice
She’s the only local person shortlisted and will be very much seen as the continuity candidate.
She sits on North Northamptonshire Council’s executive.
Rev Beatrice Brandon is attached to the Church of England and describes herself as adviser and consultant for the hearing ministry and the ministry and deliverance.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
No, he wasn't involved in any work on the Post Office case. He was specifically advising on energy and climate change. Its in the register of MPs interests.
My original intent was to make a grand sweeping series of ideas of our time, and initial work did take place on three of these: Matthew Goodwin on Values, Voice and Virtue, Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and Mary Harrington on Transhumanism. But it became apparent that I couldn't complete them in a realistic time and if you can't do it in a realistic time you can't do them. So my articles on for example Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism will not now appear, although the first three may in truncated form.
This article, first in a looser openended series, is a response to that. Unlike previous articles which were written backstage ("in the toilets" as @Moonrabbit puts it) and perfected before submission, this was submitted as an early draft and unsourced. Illustrations, diagrams and points from your comments will be added and this expanded version presented to you backstage at a later date.
(Some of you will be mouthing "agile programming" at this point. )
Once again, thank you: your contributions will make the work much better and has hopefully engaged your interest. Thanks again to @TSE and @rcs1000 for publishing it.
Thank you. It was an interesting read, and worth waiting for.
Maybe things aren’t so complicated in real life. Fascism just boils down to boots if you explain things the MoonRabbit way.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
No, he wasn't involved in any work on the Post Office case. He was specifically advising on energy and climate change. Its in the register of MPs interests.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
Interesting interview with Mr Bates here on Ed Davey, via a link in the text:
So the three shortlisted for this afternoon’s Wellingborough prospective parliamentary candidate selection are:
- Helen Harrison - Rev Dr Beatrice Brandon - Tom Mercer
Cllr Helen Harrison is the live-in girlfriend of disgraced Tory MP Peter Bone and is, it’s safe to say, a controversial choice
She’s the only local person shortlisted and will be very much seen as the continuity candidate.
She sits on North Northamptonshire Council’s executive.
Rev Beatrice Brandon is attached to the Church of England and describes herself as adviser and consultant for the hearing ministry and the ministry and deliverance.
From https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Deliverance_ministry In Christianity, deliverance ministry refers to groups that perform practices to cleanse people of demons and evil spirits.
So basically another Fruit Loop..
leaves Tom Mercer of which we know nothing - although I can find a Corporate M&A lawyer of that name.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
see TSE but Ed Davey was working in a very different part of the Herbert Smith Freehills.
I don't think it will matter. The impact of this TV show is such that anybody who was anywhere near this scandal is fucked.
I didn't watch it because I can't sit through 4 hours of schmaltzy pap about lawyers and IT wankers but Mrs DA watched it, was livid and said she's never going in a Post Office again.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?
It might, depending on which government it was. That's the catch - all three major parties have unclean hands on this. There have even been mutterings (probably wrong, but you never know) the SNP knew and didn't want to be told.
Latter probably trying to wipe shitty hands on other folk. Post office per se is not a devolved matter. And as for criminal prosecutions, didn't we discuss this before? The PO can't bring private prosecutions in Scotland, unlike in E&W, IIRC. So it has to rely on the proper arm of state, and the Scottish procurators-fiscal had a more robust attitude to the PO atttitude to machine evidence. We talked aboiut this a month or two back but I don't recall the details; however the upshot was IIRC that the PO was told to bugger off with this crap stuff.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
Well yes, but that was not my question.
Did Horizon errors occur creating surpluses? If so the PO knew the system was faulty.
@OldKingCole makes a good point about the crown and company Sub Post Office's too.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
see TSE but Ed Davey was working in a very different part of the Herbert Smith Freehills.
I don't think it will matter. The impact of this TV show is such that anybody who was anywhere near this scandal is fucked.
I didn't watch it because I can't sit through 4 hours of schmaltzy pap about lawyers and IT wankers but Mrs DA watched it, was livid and said she's never going in a Post Office again.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
That sounds like fun. Eternity, on your own.
I would rather spend eternity on my own than with avowed secular atheists
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
Yes, it did. The conscientious ones (which is most of them) put the money aside, expecting it to be corrected further down the road.
But - although I’m not an expert on the detail - most Post Offices had more cash going out of them than into them, as the people coming in to collect their pensions or cash their giros outweighed purchases of stamps and the like. So if we just simplify and imagine that the problem was the central server ‘missing’ transactions that occurred out in the branch, due to an instantaneous power or connectivity failures, then the odds are that the majority of missed transactions would be cash withdrawals - hence at the end of the day more errors would be shortfalls than excesses.
I do hope I’m not running ahead of the evidence in pinning so much on the few references to power issues being at the heart of this - but that’s my intuition based on the evidence so far.
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours. Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
Ignore the rationale behind it - it was immoral and at the time Vennells was a CoE priest.
Now I used to attend the CoE but having met too many priests that followed Vennell's method of take the easy option rather than the morally correct 1 I no longer have any dealings with them or attend church.
Vennells is no longer a priest either, anyway the vast majority of C of E priests are actually decent people doing the best for their Parish and community
I'm pretty sure she is still a priest but on gardening leave. As she is non-stipendiary, she's not getting any money from the CoE (not that she needs it). I gather from the Rev. Richard Coles, who has been backing the campaign to get justice for the post office staff, the CoE is waiting for the inquiry to report before making the final decision on her future.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
see TSE but Ed Davey was working in a very different part of the Herbert Smith Freehills.
It will be a sad day when former ministers are not allowed to accept small payments such as £275m because of pettifogging concerns about conflicts of interest.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
No, he wasn't involved in any work on the Post Office case. He was specifically advising on energy and climate change. Its in the register of MPs interests.
Doesn’t look good tho; does it?
Of course not, but of the many politicians involved over the decades Davey is one of the very few to express regret, and to acknowledge that the Post Office had misled him.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
Well yes, but that was not my question.
Did Horizon errors occur creating surpluses? If so the PO knew the system was faulty.
@OldKingCole makes a good point about the crown and company Sub Post Office's too.
Yes, I bleive it did, Foxy, but the SPMs didn't get to keep the 'overs', because in real terms they didn't actually exist. They were just book entries (wrong ones, of course.)
As far as I am aware, the PO has never returned any of the money it trousered from the innocent SPMs. I think this is the starting point for the Met's fraud inquiries.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
Yes, it did. The conscientious ones (which is most of them) put the money aside, expecting it to be corrected further down the road.
In which case that is further evidence that the PO knew Horizon was not infallible.
Did Ed Davey and the Post Office employees believe:
1) that the money was missing and that theft was more plausible than the IT failure that they were assured by Fujitsu was foolproof
or
2) the postmasters were innocent but should be persecuted and prosecuted anyway
The first, surely?
I think we are in danger of another witchhunt here, instead of addressing - you know - little things like how the PO can mount a prosecution separate from the usual checks and balances, is the money actually missing and did someone at Fujitsu steal it, and how are we the taxpayers going to get our money back from Fujitsu to compensate for their supply of a faulty product?
Instead we want to get Vennells to give her gong back.
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
see TSE but Ed Davey was working in a very different part of the Herbert Smith Freehills.
I don't think it will matter. The impact of this TV show is such that anybody who was anywhere near this scandal is fucked.
I didn't watch it because I can't sit through 4 hours of schmaltzy pap about lawyers and IT wankers but Mrs DA watched it, was livid and said she's never going in a Post Office again.
Not the same as the Royal Mail or Parcelforce, mind.
And most post offices are ordinary corner shops and the like anyway. The head of the Subbies Union was complaining only the other day that any boycott would damage them.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
That sounds like fun. Eternity, on your own.
I would rather spend eternity on my own than with avowed secular atheists
I'm sure. It would hardly be pleasant for you to have your rank hypocrisy pointed out eternally.
So the three shortlisted for this afternoon’s Wellingborough prospective parliamentary candidate selection are:
- Helen Harrison - Rev Dr Beatrice Brandon - Tom Mercer
Cllr Helen Harrison is the live-in girlfriend of disgraced Tory MP Peter Bone and is, it’s safe to say, a controversial choice
She’s the only local person shortlisted and will be very much seen as the continuity candidate.
She sits on North Northamptonshire Council’s executive.
Rev Beatrice Brandon is attached to the Church of England and describes herself as adviser and consultant for the hearing ministry and the ministry and deliverance.
From https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Deliverance_ministry In Christianity, deliverance ministry refers to groups that perform practices to cleanse people of demons and evil spirits.
So basically another Fruit Loop..
leaves Tom Mercer of which we know nothing - although I can find a Corporate M&A lawyer of that name.
@WellingboroughC have lost their marbles as well as Bone's trousers with this list. Sheer lunacy to have Bone's mistress as a possible candidate. As for Mercer he, his wife & local Tory cronies spent several years hiding the complaint against Bone. No shame, no standards.
Basically it seems the sanity Tory plan would be to have Helen as candidate as it would stop Peter Bone standing as an independent candidate.
Then she can lose badly and be binned before the general election...
Downside losing badly would mean no early general election so Labour basically need to do a token campaign and focus on the other election taking place that day...
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?
It might, depending on which government it was. That's the catch - all three major parties have unclean hands on this. There have even been mutterings (probably wrong, but you never know) the SNP knew and didn't want to be told.
Latter probably trying to wipe shitty hands on other folk. Post office per se is not a devolved matter. And as for criminal prosecutions, didn't we discuss this before? The PO can't bring private prosecutions in Scotland, unlike in E&W, IIRC. So it has to rely on the proper arm of state, and the Scottish procurators-fiscal had a more robust attitude to the PO atttitude to machine evidence. We talked aboiut this a month or two back but I don't recall the details; however the upshot was IIRC that the PO was told to bugger off with this crap stuff.
There were prosecutions in Scotland as well, but not as many and I can only find one prison sentence.
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?
It might, depending on which government it was. That's the catch - all three major parties have unclean hands on this. There have even been mutterings (probably wrong, but you never know) the SNP knew and didn't want to be told.
Latter probably trying to wipe shitty hands on other folk. Post office per se is not a devolved matter. And as for criminal prosecutions, didn't we discuss this before? The PO can't bring private prosecutions in Scotland, unlike in E&W, IIRC. So it has to rely on the proper arm of state, and the Scottish procurators-fiscal had a more robust attitude to the PO atttitude to machine evidence. We talked aboiut this a month or two back but I don't recall the details; however the upshot was IIRC that the PO was told to bugger off with this crap stuff.
Yes, there were very few Scottish cases. Well done, Scots.
The major Birmingham University global survey on attitude to religion throws up some interesting stuff.
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
A rather restricted survey given it only surveyed a few increasingly secular western nations and a comfortable majority of the global population by contrast remains religious.
Of course science has produced the nuclear bomb which it only takes a meltdown from the likes of Putin or Trump to destroy us all, plus bombs and guns which kill regularly and who knows what AI could lead to if it replaces lots of jobs and we can't control it (as well as the great positives of improved technology and medicine science has produced).
Much of our greatest architecture and art comes from religion, many of our schools and hospitals have religious origins too and foodbanks and homeless shelters etc are also often provided by religious bodies
Surely if you're religious the only thing that matters is whether it's true?
You surely don't believe the existence of God is determined by the results of YouGov surveys, in the same way as the future existence of the Tory party?
Well yes, in the sense if God exists even if you are the only believer who follows the Bible fervently left on earth you are also the only one left certain to go to heaven
That sounds like fun. Eternity, on your own.
I would rather spend eternity on my own than with avowed secular atheists
Just think though - an eternity of nudging them sany saying "I was right, though, wasn't I?"
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?
It might, depending on which government it was. That's the catch - all three major parties have unclean hands on this. There have even been mutterings (probably wrong, but you never know) the SNP knew and didn't want to be told.
Latter probably trying to wipe shitty hands on other folk. Post office per se is not a devolved matter. And as for criminal prosecutions, didn't we discuss this before? The PO can't bring private prosecutions in Scotland, unlike in E&W, IIRC. So it has to rely on the proper arm of state, and the Scottish procurators-fiscal had a more robust attitude to the PO atttitude to machine evidence. We talked aboiut this a month or two back but I don't recall the details; however the upshot was IIRC that the PO was told to bugger off with this crap stuff.
There were prosecutions in Scotland as well, but not as many.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
Indeed. And who was the DPP during the scandal?
Not relevant. PO did its own prosecutions in E&W, remember.
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
It wasn't just immoral, though, was it ? To know that your organisation had sent innocent people to jail, to cover that up, and to continue doing so, goes way beyond 'immoral'.
There should, and must be widespread legal consequences for those who took executive decisions, having such knowledge - as as Cyclefree et al have noted, that's a lot more people than Vennells.
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
That was really my point here - we know we have a system that was unfit for purpose people were jailed falsely because of that unfitness and various people continued to prosecute people and covered it up.
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?
It might, depending on which government it was. That's the catch - all three major parties have unclean hands on this. There have even been mutterings (probably wrong, but you never know) the SNP knew and didn't want to be told.
Latter probably trying to wipe shitty hands on other folk. Post office per se is not a devolved matter. And as for criminal prosecutions, didn't we discuss this before? The PO can't bring private prosecutions in Scotland, unlike in E&W, IIRC. So it has to rely on the proper arm of state, and the Scottish procurators-fiscal had a more robust attitude to the PO atttitude to machine evidence. We talked aboiut this a month or two back but I don't recall the details; however the upshot was IIRC that the PO was told to bugger off with this crap stuff.
Yes, there were very few Scottish cases. Well done, Scots.
Interesting to see that the cases in the linky in Ydoethur's comment were all sheriff court cases - pretty low level (though utter shite for the poor folk involved). Might be relevant.
So when Rishi Rich says that he is going to cut welfare payments, I'll stick my neck out and guess that this does not include the triple l9cked state pension.
The triple lock is a good thing. Our state pension is not generous. Where money can be saved is on higher rate tax relief on pension contributions which benefits the well-paid, such as politicians and columnists who call instead for an end to the triple lock.
But it locks in an inexorable rise in cost for an item in the accounts that is already both sizeable and inexorably growing due to the ageing population.
It would be more sensible to target funding at those poorer pensioners genuinely in need, rather than helicoptering it onto the entire cohort of the retired, when their disposable income is now - remarkably - already greater on average than those in work.
Pensions are already taxed as income. And none of the triple lock critics say it should be abolished but kept for the poor. Yes, if we project forward ad infinitum, pensions will become unaffordable but that day is far off.
missing the point that unearned income (including capital gains) is taxed less than income from employment.
Pensioners do not pay national insurance, and pension income is taxed as income, so it is the same.
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
Indeed. And who was the DPP during the scandal?
David Calvert-Smith, Ken Macdonald, and Alison Saunders.
Plus some other random nonentity whose name eludes me.
Although of course it wasn't up to the DPP. I think I'm right in saying the CPS can adopt private prosecutions by government agencies, but not prevent them?
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
Yes, it did. The conscientious ones (which is most of them) put the money aside, expecting it to be corrected further down the road.
But - although I’m not an expert on the detail - most Post Offices had more cash going out of them than into them, as the people coming in to collect their pensions or cash their giros outweighed purchases of stamps and the like. So if we just simplify and imagine that the problem was the central server ‘missing’ transactions that occurred out in the branch, due to an instantaneous power or connectivity failures, then the odds are that the majority of missed transactions would be cash withdrawals - hence at the end of the day more errors would be shortfalls than excesses.
I do hope I’m not running ahead of the evidence in pinning so much on the few references to power issues being at the heart of this - but that’s my intuition based on the evidence so far.
Interesting comments (also passim) - and caveat noted!
Unless we are missing something in the letters we've seen he is just guilty of not pressing things further and accepting the first answer - hardly surprising when he probably had a million other things to got on with.
No, I think this might be career ending for him
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
see TSE but Ed Davey was working in a very different part of the Herbert Smith Freehills.
I don't think it will matter. The impact of this TV show is such that anybody who was anywhere near this scandal is fucked.
I didn't watch it because I can't sit through 4 hours of schmaltzy pap about lawyers and IT wankers but Mrs DA watched it, was livid and said she's never going in a Post Office again.
Ok the material is good - powerful versus weak, huge corporation versus tiny folk, lovely cake making Sikh housewives smashed in the face with hammers by evil Vince cable, but it’s superbly manipulative
As a politician you don’t want to be anywhere near the wrong side of this story. Anyone who is within fall out range is damaged. Anyone in the blast zone is finished
One of the absurdities of the post office prosecutions were that people were sent to jail for minor fraud and theft. There is a real thirst for vengeance amongst the English which we are seeing again with the desire for 'jail time' for those in the Post Office that initiated the prosecutions. Other than keeping the most dangerous offenders away from the rest of society jail is an enormous waste of money, punishment and rehabilitation is better done outside of custody. If the rest of Europe can accept this why can't the English?
Yes, although if someone actually did steal £36,000 in cash from their employer, that is pretty serious stuff.
One thought that occurred while out with my pooch is to wonder if Horizon make other errors, in the Sub-posties favour?
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
All errors that resulted in prosecutions were in one direction.
Indeed. And who was the DPP during the scandal?
David Calvert-Smith, Ken Macdonald, and Alison Saunders.
Plus some other random nonentity whose name eludes me.
Although of course it wasn't up to the DPP. I think I'm right in saying the CPS can adopt private prosecutions by government agencies, but not prevent them?
Though I'm sure the Tories will enjoy smearing Messrs Davey and Starmer as much as they can.
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
The other way of looking at it is, we already know enough to be pretty sure the Post Office (and several persons therein, although individual blame is yet to be assigned) is guilty of fraud, false accounting, extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury.
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
Some those are easier to prove beyond reasonable doubt than are others. We know enough to be pretty sure isn't quite the same thing as we can prove in court to a criminal standard. More evidence is likely to make that task easier, especially as our justice system is such a mess.
Incidentally, it's pretty astounding that the PO is still allowed a role in the appeals.
Comments
Yes that will be a steep tax rise for those currently cushy and used to paying less than others with the same earnings have to pay, but for working people it wouldn't be a tax rise at all. Apart from working people engaging in dodging taxes.
Its not unreasonable to say that everyone earning the same amount should pay the same amount of tax, but it would be transformative to our tax take if it were so.
I’m trying to think of a British politician I respect, from any side, for his or her wit, grace, courage, intellect, honesty, anything - it is damnably hard
Weirdly, the best I can do is Katie Forbes. I also respected Ruth Davidson. I must have a thing for Scottish lasses
Before him, Bismarck. Before that maybe Vortigern
ideally you would have multiple locks on tables to make the disaster I outlined above impossible to ensure only 1 transaction is working on things at a time but that isn't always the case.
The point to take here is that even things that are really simple start to get complex when you are talking about multiple items occurring in parallel and the first solution you come up with may work i some scenarios but not others.
I'm really clear cut at work when doing this stuff even when I have the solution - that I'm going to sleep on it and let the nightly filing my brain does as I sleep pick up the flaws in the plan...
Merge National Insurance, Graduate Tax and all other income-related taxes into the same rate of taxation as Income Tax and the tax take would go up tremendously as everyone starts on the same rate of tax. Yes, those who expect others to pay more tax than them will squeal like a pig, but the budget issues will be resolved and from there taxes can be lowered evenly across the board, or spending can rise, depending upon you political preference.
Everyone's income should be treated the same by HMRC no matter how its earned.
Still, to be fair, you are fervent enough about the bits of the Bible you choose to believe in.
Now I know it doesn't make much sense but how else do you cope when numbers start at 1 and you can't have such a thing as the 0 century..
He’s literally the richest man in the world, or thereabouts. And probably the most influential private citizen on the planet
I think the phrase is “I’ll have what he’s having”
If you need to work and give say 3 months notice it's going to take you 6 months minimum to escape by the time you've got your CV written and done all the interviews to escape but as you say people don't see things that way and may use the fact they didn't leave instantly as complacency.
So it’s hard to feel sorry for him, for sure.
Get Elon a white Persian and a black leather swivel chair and he fits the person spec to a T.
Already, clocks in many exam rooms are digital because many pupils don't know how to tell the time when there's an hour hand and a minute hand.
Ray Kurzweil says smartphones are making everyone cleverer. I wonder whether he's been on the shrooms too.
A statutory enquiry seems a good thing to have, but they always take so long that the original issue is almost forgotten by the time they finish.
We know that mysterious surpluses turned up centrally and were booked as profit.
If mysterious erroneous credits did occur at SPO level, what happened? Did the PO claim them, thereby acknowledging that Horizon did make errors? Or were all the errors only in one direction?
Yes, I know about not getting the credit in life for taking the tough decision. Are you a parent too.
It seems to me that Vennells and associates missed their opportunity when Second Sight began to report its adverse findings about the Horizon system. They could and should have fronted up then, admitted their mistake and prevented further miscarriages of justice as a result. Instead they tried to brazen it out. Yes, I suppose it was a 'logical' response in the sense that there was a rationale behind it, but it was a poor one, as well as being immoral.
After that, it seems they believed they had little option but to keep on trying to brazen it out, hoping that if they upped the stakes high enough, the other side would fold. As a former professional gambler I can only shake my head at that. You never bet the house on anything.
Vennells was awarded the CBE in 2019, and given positions that year on the Board of the Imperial College Health Trust and in the Cabinet Office. One can only imagine that her backers thought the 'brazen-in-out' strategy was working. As the inadequacies of Horizon were widely acknowledged by then and the truth was slowly and painfully becoming apparent, you have to wonder about the people who approved these honours.
Lazy? Stupid? Brass-necked? Incompetent? Shameless? You decide.
Anyway, much as I have enjoyed your duet with MsC, I am glad that a much larger chorus can now be heard singing about this subject. It deserves all the attention it is getting.
My son’s TikTok stream seemingly showers him endlessly with global geopolitics and economics facts, because he has been amassing pub quiz levels of knowledge that he’s definitely not getting at home or at school.
1) we need to change the law so computer evidence is not accepted with care and attention - the blanket rule we used for speed cameras isn't fit for purpose.
2) because the evidence is so suspect just pardon and compensate everyone charged and refund any money claimed.
3) Post Office Management should be subjected to a Putin style one to one review and replaced on mass.
4) Post office shouldn't have right to prosecute people - and one with such authority should be overseen by the CPS.
5) I'm sure Cyclefree could come up with the other recommendations without much effort...
Now I used to attend the CoE but having met too many priests that followed Vennell's method of take the easy option rather than the morally correct 1 I no longer have any dealings with them or attend church.
I'd suggest that the impact of Mr Bates vs. The Post Office shows that there is still an important place for collective TV watching. Even if many folk didn't watch it from Mon -Thurs (I actually binge-watched all four episodes last night), it's quite clear that over the last week it's been watched by millions - and that's what's made the impact so great.
Your name check is noted with thanks.
Don't be harsh on yourself. It's easy to understand why people would find Post Offices, ancient emails, unglamourous people in mundane posts and the like very boring. This explains to a large extent why this scandal was the slowest of slow burners. Do look at the show though. I don't expect it to knock your socks off, but I do think it does convey the human suffering well, even if it necessarily has to gloss over the finer details.
I look forward to reading your review. Much as I enjoy taking the piss out of you from time to time, I do appreciate your talents as a critic.
'Got to say I think we already know everything that's going to come out of this.'
Not sure about that. The Inquiry has just taken possession of 80 tapes of covertly recorded conversations. God knows what's on them, but I suspect they are not going to be helpful to the PO.
As for your point three, I guess the venue you have in mind would be a very high building, with many windows?
Unless we find that they actually broke into Post Offices to nick cash in the dead of night, or tried to poison Mr Bates and his associates, or threatened to beat up postmasters refusing to pay the funds they didn't owe, the likely criminal charge is not going to change much now. we may find out we've done more of these things of course but that won't change the conclusion or, should charges ever be brought, the punishment.
https://tools.usps.com/find-location.htm?location=1386593
A lot of that can be fixed tomorrow we don't need the rest of the tribunal to do that. I suspect all those tapes will do is add a lot more names into the going to jail for extortion, perverting the course of justice and perjury lists.
And I often have to deal with people willing to sell tax avoidance schemes to people who just want £25 extra in their pay packet at the end of the week (they are total scam) but I can name a number of CoE priests who are way worse when it comes to their dealings with other people.
Thank you all for your responses. They deserve a longer response than this but my initial response is:
- @Monksfield , @Foxy, @Smart51, @WildernessPt2, @Luckyguy1983, @algarkirk, @Leon : You made good points which I have noted: thank you for making them
- @ydoethur: I think she meant the UK govt
- @Benpointer: Yes, I should have include the horseshoe
- @Cleitophon: Well yes, but "anemic quantification" is my job description. I will however try to read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Origins_of_Dictatorship_and_Democracy
- @DavidL: "An interesting piece". That bad, huh?
- @DavidL: A later version will incorporate diagrams: see below
- @MoonRabbit: There's a reason why this was trailed BTL instead of in the toilets: see below
- @Poulter: see below as to why I didn't cover technofascism
- @all: Sorry to anybody I missed
My original intent was to make a grand sweeping series of ideas of our time, and initial work did take place on three of these: Matthew Goodwin on Values, Voice and Virtue, Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and Mary Harrington on Transhumanism. But it became apparent that I couldn't complete them in a realistic time and if you can't do it in a realistic time you can't do it at all. So my articles on for example Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism will not now appear, although the first three may in truncated form.This article, first in a looser openended series, is a response to that. Unlike previous articles which were written backstage ("in the toilets" as @Moonrabbit puts it) and perfected before submission, this was submitted as an early draft and unsourced. Illustrations, diagrams and points from your comments will be added and this expanded version presented to you backstage at a later date.
(Some of you will be mouthing "agile programming" at this point.
Once again, thank you: your contributions will make the work much better and has hopefully engaged your interest. Thanks again to @TSE and @rcs1000 for publishing it.
Who would have thought that a 20-month stint as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs could come back to destroy your career a decade later?
“In 2017 Alan Bates led a group litigation against the Post Office
It responded by hiring lawyers from Herbert Smith Freehills to fight its corner
Ed Davey agreed to be taken on by Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant on political issues & policy analysis, paid £833 per hour”
https://x.com/flaminhaystacks/status/1743733279444873578?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
That changes things a bit, no?
There are also three types of Post Offices. Crown Offices, owned and run by the Post Office itself, sub Post Offices run by companies, (eg WHSmith) and the Alan Bates etc type.
I’ve asked before and few seem to know; did they all use the same system?
Claiming you acted on behalf of the Government because your lied to the Government about the situation doesn't really give you a get out clause does it?
https://www.libdems.org.uk/the-post-office-horizon-scandal
So the three shortlisted for this afternoon’s Wellingborough prospective parliamentary candidate selection are:
- Helen Harrison
- Rev Dr Beatrice Brandon
- Tom Mercer
Cllr Helen Harrison is the live-in girlfriend of disgraced Tory MP Peter Bone and is, it’s safe to say, a controversial choice
She’s the only local person shortlisted and will be very much seen as the continuity candidate.
She sits on North Northamptonshire Council’s executive.
Rev Beatrice Brandon is attached to the Church of England and describes herself as adviser and consultant for the hearing ministry and the ministry and deliverance.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know what that means
https://twitter.com/Katie_Cronin/status/1743989503960764779
Maybe things aren’t so complicated in real life. Fascism just boils down to boots if you explain things the MoonRabbit way.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Deliverance_ministry
In Christianity, deliverance ministry refers to groups that perform practices to cleanse people of demons and evil spirits.
So basically another Fruit Loop..
leaves Tom Mercer of which we know nothing - although I can find a Corporate M&A lawyer of that name.
I didn't watch it because I can't sit through 4 hours of schmaltzy pap about lawyers and IT wankers but Mrs DA watched it, was livid and said she's never going in a Post Office again.
Did Horizon errors occur creating surpluses? If so the PO knew the system was faulty.
@OldKingCole makes a good point about the crown and company Sub Post Office's too.
But - although I’m not an expert on the detail - most Post Offices had more cash going out of them than into them, as the people coming in to collect their pensions or cash their giros outweighed purchases of stamps and the like. So if we just simplify and imagine that the problem was the central server ‘missing’ transactions that occurred out in the branch, due to an instantaneous power or connectivity failures, then the odds are that the majority of missed transactions would be cash withdrawals - hence at the end of the day more errors would be shortfalls than excesses.
I do hope I’m not running ahead of the evidence in pinning so much on the few references to power issues being at the heart of this - but that’s my intuition based on the evidence so far.
As far as I am aware, the PO has never returned any of the money it trousered from the innocent SPMs. I think this is the starting point for the Met's fraud inquiries.
1) that the money was missing and that theft was more plausible than the IT failure that they were assured by Fujitsu was foolproof
or
2) the postmasters were innocent but should be persecuted and prosecuted anyway
The first, surely?
I think we are in danger of another witchhunt here, instead of addressing - you know - little things like how the PO can mount a prosecution separate from the usual checks and balances, is the money actually missing and did someone at Fujitsu steal it, and how are we the taxpayers going to get our money back from Fujitsu to compensate for their supply of a faulty product?
Instead we want to get Vennells to give her gong back.
And most post offices are ordinary corner shops and the like anyway. The head of the Subbies Union was complaining only the other day that any boycott would damage them.
https://www.peeblesshirenews.com/news/24030273.nfsp-mr-bates-vs-post-office-boycott-cause-harm/
TBF he has been campaigniong for keeping things like DVLA contracts available through post offices:
https://www.peeblesshirenews.com/news/24007022.success-national-campaign-led-west-linton-postmaster/
https://twitter.com/OddManOut5/status/1744004805184434301
@WellingboroughC
have lost their marbles as well as Bone's trousers with this list. Sheer lunacy to have Bone's mistress as a possible candidate. As for Mercer he, his wife & local Tory cronies spent several years hiding the complaint against Bone. No shame, no standards.
Basically it seems the sanity Tory plan would be to have Helen as candidate as it would stop Peter Bone standing as an independent candidate.
Then she can lose badly and be binned before the general election...
Downside losing badly would mean no early general election so Labour basically need to do a token campaign and focus on the other election taking place that day...
https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/film-and-tv/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-itv-scottish-postmasters-4465230
There will undoubtedly have been more issues with Scottish postmasters forced to pay money they didn't owe though.
I started to watch it but nodded off.
The podcast of the scandal was riveting.
To know that your organisation had sent innocent people to jail, to cover that up, and to continue doing so, goes way beyond 'immoral'.
There should, and must be widespread legal consequences for those who took executive decisions, having such knowledge - as as Cyclefree et al have noted, that's a lot more people than Vennells.
Plus some other random nonentity whose name eludes me.
Although of course it wasn't up to the DPP. I think I'm right in saying the CPS can adopt private prosecutions by government agencies, but not prevent them?
Ok the material is good - powerful versus weak, huge corporation versus tiny folk, lovely cake making Sikh housewives smashed in the face with hammers by evil Vince cable, but it’s superbly manipulative
As a politician you don’t want to be anywhere near the wrong side of this story. Anyone who is within fall out range is damaged. Anyone in the blast zone is finished
We know enough to be pretty sure isn't quite the same thing as we can prove in court to a criminal standard.
More evidence is likely to make that task easier, especially as our justice system is such a mess.
Incidentally, it's pretty astounding that the PO is still allowed a role in the appeals.