On the Post Office issue, I note that my MP Lee Anderson is one of those going for Ed Davey.
To give him a little credit, he mentioned an Ashfield case in Parliament in 2022 as a backbencher, holding the then Tory Minister to account to some degree - which has not been mentioned by any previous Ashfield MP (searching TheyWorkForYou on the name).
His current attacks are entirely partisan, of course, and there's a high degree of cynicism in this.
The Ashfield PO victim was convicted in 2008.
And Anderson was on the staff of the previous Ashfield MP Gloria de Piero for 5 years ~2014-2019. I am not aware of any work on this issue then, but the same applies to de Piero - who IME has been a good constituency MP.
The only thing missing from Mr Bates v PO is a hapless but benevolent politician, from a party with 15 seats in the Commons, taking all the blame while the real crims get away with it. That would make it a proper "Very British Scandal".
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
I think the most important thing is the direction of travel: Haley is up 12 points.
Now, is it enough?
Probably not. But a Haley victory in New Hampshire is far from impossible, especially if she performs well in Iowa and manages a credible second place. In which case, a lot of that Christie support is likely to head her way.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list of 5 suspects. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
Fact isn't a requirement for Farage to fell a foe,
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
This came up when it was noticed that Starmer was DPP when the CPS declined to prosecute Jimmy Savile, and PBs lawyers said it was because of the lack of police evidence, and definitely not on the lovely lawyers at the CPS.
It does appear that DPP is a job from which it’s very difficult to subsequently enter frontline politics, as for example would be a senior judge. The nature of the job requires an impartiality, that is supposed to remain above party politics.
(Yes, if I were the head of any organisation, I’d sure as hell want to know about anything with potential to be front page news!).
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
Nothing will have been going on. The private prosecution of some obscure rural subpostmaster for a few thousand pounds, in most cases for false accounting rather than theft, in some local court will hardly have set any bells ringing. The handful of custodial sentences have - rightly - attracted shock and outrage, but the overwhelming majority resulted in lesser sentences. That, over more than a decade, there was a steady stream of them, spread around the country and mixed in with the court’s workload, is for the PO as the prosecuting authority to spot, and question.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
This came up when it was noticed that Starmer was DPP when the CPS declined to prosecute Jimmy Savile, and PBs lawyers said it was because of the lack of police evidence, and definitely not on the lovely lawyers at the CPS.
It does appear that DPP is a job from which it’s very difficult to subsequently enter frontline politics, as for example would be a senior judge. The nature of the job requires an impartiality, that is supposed to remain above party politics.
(Yes, if I were the head of any organisation, I’d sure as hell want to know about anything with potential to be front page news!).
Starmers previous history as DPP is one of the most impressive things about him. He is one of the more serious people in parliament amongst the vast ranks of MP's who have never done a tangible job. I don't think these attacks against him will work out very well. He can credibly say that as DPP he put dangerous people in jail. Against this the tories look like shady bankers and businessmen. Labour should use this as a line of attack against them in response.
How do none of his supporters care that Starmer was continuity Corbyn when elected as Labour leader?
He wasn't really, was he?
Wasn't Long-Bailey the proper Continuity Corbyn Candidate? Even then, Starmer was messy triangulation; move on from the failings of Corbyn while keeping the good bits or some such guff.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
This came up when it was noticed that Starmer was DPP when the CPS declined to prosecute Jimmy Savile, and PBs lawyers said it was because of the lack of police evidence, and definitely not on the lovely lawyers at the CPS.
It does appear that DPP is a job from which it’s very difficult to subsequently enter frontline politics, as for example would be a senior judge. The nature of the job requires an impartiality, that is supposed to remain above party politics.
(Yes, if I were the head of any organisation, I’d sure as hell want to know about anything with potential to be front page news!).
Starmers previous history as DPP is one of the most impressive things about him. He is one of the more serious people in parliament amongst the vast ranks of MP's who have never done a tangible job. I don't think these attacks against him will work out very well. He can credibly say that as DPP he put dangerous people in jail. Against this the tories look like shady bankers and businessmen. Labour should use this as a line of attack against them in response.
How was his role as DPP 'tangible' ? According to lots of people on here, the role involved doing nothing, and being responsible for nothing...
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, as shown not just by Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
This came up when it was noticed that Starmer was DPP when the CPS declined to prosecute Jimmy Savile, and PBs lawyers said it was because of the lack of police evidence, and definitely not on the lovely lawyers at the CPS.
It does appear that DPP is a job from which it’s very difficult to subsequently enter frontline politics, as for example would be a senior judge. The nature of the job requires an impartiality, that is supposed to remain above party politics.
(Yes, if I were the head of any organisation, I’d sure as hell want to know about anything with potential to be front page news!).
Starmers previous history as DPP is one of the most impressive things about him. He is one of the more serious people in parliament amongst the vast ranks of MP's who have never done a tangible job. I don't think these attacks against him will work out very well. He can credibly say that as DPP he put dangerous people in jail. Against this the tories look like shady bankers and businessmen. Labour should use this as a line of attack against them in response.
Most of the Tories don’t have the knowledge or capability to be shady bankers or businesspeople; they have to bring in the likes of Mone to do that for them.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The CPS isn't a five man team above a Post Office in Solihull.
Haven't you thus just implicated Brown, Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak?
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, as shown not just by Savile but also on assisted suicide.
You have to hand it to Farage. He has made Starmer the key suspect out of nothing. If the client journalists can bring Starmer down over this, and Farage always gets his man, woman or trading bloc, surely to goodness the next Sunak Government owes Farage his seat in the House of Lords.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
Yes; and you should actually try reading my comment.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The CPS isn't a five man team above a Post Office in Solihull.
Haven't you thus just implicated Brown, Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak?
That's precisely the point, and why I was asking the question about what the DPP's role actually is in relation to the comment I was responding to.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
TLA will be the next scandal. Giving single mums a criminal record so they can overpay Gary Lineker is not a good look. Let alone clogging up courts as the single highest category of offence.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
Yes; and you should actually try reading my comment.
As an aside, what is the role of, for example the Attorney Generals? Do they not have any oversight responsibilities? And what of the Prime Minister of the day.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
On the other hand, if the strategy is now to shore up remaining Tory support, it may be quite an astute move to target people without brains.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
Yes; and you should actually try reading my comment.
As an aside, what is the role of, for example the Attorney Generals? Do they not have any oversight responsibilities? And what of the Prime Minister of the day.
In the case of the PO, as they were private prosecutions, perhaps they had more oversight responsibilities than the CPS. Again, PB's many lawyers may know more about where oversight for private prosecutions lie. The frightening thought might be that there was *no* oversight of private prosecutions...
Parents who refuse to allow their children to change gender would face up to seven years in jail under SNP plans to ban “conversion therapy”... Stopping someone from “dressing in a way that reflects their sexual orientation or gender identity” was put forward as an example of an action that would become illegal, even if a parent believed they were acting in a child’s best interests.
@ydoethur you queried a comment I made a few weeks ago about how in practice people in Russia have 'freedom'. The answer is that they are free from laws like this. This type of thing is also why people vote for Trump as a 'least worst option'. People call them fascist etc but they have sound reasons that make sense to them and to me this explains the destabilisation of Western Culture - because the liberal establishment fails to stop the totalitarian tendencies of the "woke left".
Good. It is quite literally the biggest crisis that Scotland has ever faced. Thank God the SNP are here to save us!
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
The PO will be desperately hoping he doesn't give evidence. They have already contrived twice to delay his appearance before the Inquiry. They can't keep doing it.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
The smears on Starmer are cheap and poor. People will see through it. Davey is getting back what he, himself, is quite happy to do so he needs to suck it up. Nothing will, or should, come of it either.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
This throws up larger questions, doesn't it? If none of the main parties come out of this well, what is failing in politics and government to allow that to happen? As an example, do ministers rely too heavily on the civil service, who are themselves reluctant to prove too deeply into matters?
This has been going on for two decades; more, in fact. It has been reported on widely for many years even before prosecutions came to a stop. Why was there this inertia *outside* the PO/Fujitsu?
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
1) The incompetent architects and developers will get it in the neck - after all, they are specialists, not Proper Generalists and can Take The Blame. 2) There will be an attempt to brush away the lies (including perjury) in the management layers above (all the way to the civil servants and politicians) as "Just how managing an organisation works". There will be an announcement that "While there were failings, there is insufficient evidence to prosecute." 3) This won't save all the managers etc - just those above a magic level of deniability. 3) An attempt at trebles all round.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
The smears on Starmer are cheap and poor. People will see through it. Davey is getting back what he, himself, is quite happy to do so he needs to suck it up. Nothing will, or should, come of it either.
Besides, the big question when people vote later this year is going to be whether we can bear the thought of another Conservative term.
That's what Conservative loyalists criticising Starmer, Davey and the rest of them don't get, because the prospect is so awful.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
Yes; and you should actually try reading my comment.
As an aside, what is the role of, for example the Attorney Generals? Do they not have any oversight responsibilities? And what of the Prime Minister of the day.
In the case of the PO, as they were private prosecutions, perhaps they had more oversight responsibilities than the CPS. Again, PB's many lawyers may know more about where oversight for private prosecutions lie. The frightening thought might be that there was *no* oversight of private prosecutions...
My understanding is that, in practice, the DPP intervenes in private prosecutions. If asked.
My questions are
1) Is this correct? Are there any instances in which the DPP has "gone hunting" for bad private prosecutions, on its own? 2) There are claims that some prosecutions were under the DPP. Is this true? On what basis did this happen? Were the PO lawyers used or DPP lawyers? Were such prosecutions 100% run by the DPP or was it some kind of hybrid?
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
That thirst for vengeance has been there for a long term - I've had it for years when it comes to this case.
And Paula Vennells was a vicar who at various times will have stood at pulpit and preached "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - and in this case all these people are seeking is for that example to be followed - the 2 faced ****, ****, ****, **** b**ch.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
Yes, it’s difficult to work out whether he’s a whistleblower or a huge part of the problem.
I suspect a fair amount of both, but if he lied in court then he’s likely to be in a lot of trouble.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, as shown not just by Savile but also on assisted suicide.
A “pardon scheme” to overturn wrongful convictions of the Post Office scandal is being considered in Scotland, a government minister has said.
Angela Constance, the justice secretary, confirmed that emergency legislation will also be looked at as part of an effort to undo action carried out by the Crown Office north of the border.
More than 700 Post Office managers from across the UK were convicted after the faulty Horizon accounting software, made by Fujitsu, made it look like money was missing from branches.
Unlike in England, the Post Office does not have the ability to prosecute privately in Scotland with the powers instead lying with the Crown Office, which estimates that about 100 cases have been affected by the scandal.
The Crown Office claimed that the number of cases in Scotland were “lower than in England and Wales due to … policy decisions made in response to awareness of the Horizon system issues, and the fact that all cases in Scotland were prosecuted by the procurator fiscal under the application of Scots criminal law”.
So far, only 16 people in Scotland have come forward to have a conviction examined, only two of which have been overturned. Another four are currently appealing their convictions to the High Court of Justiciary Appeal Court, with decisions expected next month.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
Yes, it’s difficult to work out whether he’s a whistleblower or a huge part of the problem.
I suspect a fair amount of both, but if he lied in court then he’s likely to be in a lot of trouble.
I suspect he can't go to the inquiry and say the truth and not incriminate himself - because knowing how many people do status reports he probably wasn't 100% accurate and shall we say slight optimistic.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Should Sunak point the finger at Davey and Starmer in particular at PMQs?
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
No, he is not "where the buck stops". He has a very large amount of responsibility for the architecture of the system. He isn't depending on role definition) 100% responsible for the implementation.
The following people are responsible
1) The developers 2) The team leads 3) The architect 4) The managers 5) The lawyers 6) The politicians
The cleaning lady is not responsible. Probably.
Any one of the above who lied, fucked up etc deserves a share of the blame. And a share of the punishment. There is enough blame for all to share. There should be enough punishment.
On the Davey Starmer pile-on, it only works if people decide to blindly swallow what they are being fed and don't think.
The reason why the latest poll has the Tories 26 points behind is that a decisive break away from being gaslit back to thinking was made by the public during the Lizaster. So Farage and GBeebies et al can push their various lines, but the public aren't as stupid as they think they are.
Their big error is simple - no Tory fall guy. Horizon starts in 1996 and only really breaks onto the public consciousness in recent years. The spin is that bad things only happened in the few years when Davey was Minister and Starmer was DPP. No other times, so no other people responsible.
This is pitiful even for GBeebies "news", and the one thing the ITV program showed to public outrage is this went on for *decades*.
So, where is the Tory scapegoat? Had they sacrificed one of their own pawns to then demand the heads of the Lab/LD kings then maybe. Instead, the only resignation being demanded is Davey Starmer. Which the public can see straight through.
Meanwhile, Rishi awarded billions upon billions to Fujitsu *after* much of the scandal was known. Perhaps that was also Starmer's fault.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, as shown not just by Savile but also on assisted suicide.
A “pardon scheme” to overturn wrongful convictions of the Post Office scandal is being considered in Scotland, a government minister has said.
Angela Constance, the justice secretary, confirmed that emergency legislation will also be looked at as part of an effort to undo action carried out by the Crown Office north of the border.
More than 700 Post Office managers from across the UK were convicted after the faulty Horizon accounting software, made by Fujitsu, made it look like money was missing from branches.
Unlike in England, the Post Office does not have the ability to prosecute privately in Scotland with the powers instead lying with the Crown Office, which estimates that about 100 cases have been affected by the scandal.
The Crown Office claimed that the number of cases in Scotland were “lower than in England and Wales due to … policy decisions made in response to awareness of the Horizon system issues, and the fact that all cases in Scotland were prosecuted by the procurator fiscal under the application of Scots criminal law”.
So far, only 16 people in Scotland have come forward to have a conviction examined, only two of which have been overturned. Another four are currently appealing their convictions to the High Court of Justiciary Appeal Court, with decisions expected next month.
Got to ask how came there are 14 people where their conviction was examined and not overturned - that's a curious state of affairs worthy of a bit of investigation.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
On the Davey Starmer pile-on, it only works if people decide to blindly swallow what they are being fed and don't think.
The reason why the latest poll has the Tories 26 points behind is that a decisive break away from being gaslit back to thinking was made by the public during the Lizaster. So Farage and GBeebies et al can push their various lines, but the public aren't as stupid as they think they are.
Their big error is simple - no Tory fall guy. Horizon starts in 1996 and only really breaks onto the public consciousness in recent years. The spin is that bad things only happened in the few years when Davey was Minister and Starmer was DPP. No other times, so no other people responsible.
This is pitiful even for GBeebies "news", and the one thing the ITV program showed to public outrage is this went on for *decades*.
So, where is the Tory scapegoat? Had they sacrificed one of their own pawns to then demand the heads of the Lab/LD kings then maybe. Instead, the only resignation being demanded is Davey Starmer. Which the public can see straight through.
Meanwhile, Rishi awarded billions upon billions to Fujitsu *after* much of the scandal was known. Perhaps that was also Starmer's fault.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Should Sunak point the finger at Davey and Starmer in particular at PMQs?
A magnificent black swan moment or a risk?
Unwise. Sunak's fingerprints (quibbling about how expensive compensation is) are on this as well. And they're more recent, after it was accepted that something had gone horribly wrong.
But when did the unwisdom of a course of action stop Rishi following it?
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Should Sunak point the finger at Davey and Starmer in particular at PMQs?
A magnificent black swan moment or a risk?
I would love him to try it. Perhaps someone could wave the front page of the FT at him in response...
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
That thirst for vengeance has been there for a long term - I've had it for years when it comes to this case.
And Paula Vennells was a vicar who at various times will have stood at pulpit and preached "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - and in this case all these people are seeking is for that example to be followed - the 2 faced ****, ****, ****, **** b**ch.
I understand but I have big problems with people being encouraged to think the CBE is just the start, the next step is to raid all her assets. There are lots of miscarriages of justice, they need to be corrected and people comphensated where appropriate, also if there is perjury etc it should be prosecuted, but peoples assets should not be taken from them.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
They didn't sell off the Post Office. (Though Davey did spend quite a lot of time looking at mutualisation.)
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
It's the Daily Mail; it's what they do.
It just looks respectable because it has a gothic masthead and serif headlines.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
The key point is that he appeared in court as an "expert witness".
And, in one sense, he was, since in a court case between the Post Office and one of its subpostmasters, he was coming in as someone well aquainted with the software system to evidence its performance and capability, based on his knowledge and expertise.
But, in another critical sense, he wasn't, for - as CF and other lawyers will know better than me - being an "expert witness" comes with a list of expectations, two of which are that they are independent from the case, and that they are obliged to disclose any evidence both for and against their concusions.
From the evidence so far, the inquiry is likely to conclude that Jenkins went into court to evidence that the system was mostly hunky-dory, when he knew the rather different reality. So the inquiry, and subsequently the Police, will be considering whether he's been a very naughty boy indeed. Of course, he will have been asked, or more probably told, both by his employer Fujitsu and the customer Post Office, to go and reassure the court as to the system's robustness. Which might offer some mitigation if he's willing to point a finger at whoever provided such direction, if they did. But as an expert witness (or indeed any sort of witness) he won't be able to escape from his personal responsibility to give accurate evidence in court.
New Hampshire is certainly a must win for Haley. It is normally the most likely of the early Republican primary and caucus states to vote for a moderate
New Hampshire is not a must win but a must come a good second to Trump. As previously explained, I expect DeSantis to have dropped out but if I am wrong and RDS does linger in the hope that Trump is disqualified, then it is important Haley comfortably beats DeSantis.
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
Ugly ?
That is perfectly reasonable. The campaigner is absolutely right. These people have been through hell, some took their own lives and many lost their livelihoods, homes and reputations and the victims desire for redress is ‘ugly’ not the deeds that precipitated this.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
No. The issue is that NASA never learnt how to build anything on a budget.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
No. The issue is that NASA never learnt how to build anything on a budget.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
In 10 years time there will still be no moon landing by a human
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
The PO will be desperately hoping he doesn't give evidence. They have already contrived twice to delay his appearance before the Inquiry. They can't keep doing it.
Jenkins's previous requests for immunity, which were refused, are covered by Wallis's blog and podcasts.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
Yes; and you should actually try reading my comment.
As an aside, what is the role of, for example the Attorney Generals? Do they not have any oversight responsibilities? And what of the Prime Minister of the day.
Of course they do. Farage is a lying toad in suggesting otherwise.
Not only in the continuing acceptance of the PO conducting its own prosecutions - but also in maintaining the rules if evidence which reverse the burden of proof in respect of computer evidence. That second point, as Cyclefree has repeatedly noted, is likely to carry on causing miscarriages of justice long after the PO cases are finally sorted out.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
No, he is not "where the buck stops". He has a very large amount of responsibility for the architecture of the system. He isn't depending on role definition) 100% responsible for the implementation.
The following people are responsible
1) The developers 2) The team leads 3) The architect 4) The managers 5) The lawyers 6) The politicians
The cleaning lady is not responsible. Probably.
Any one of the above who lied, fucked up etc deserves a share of the blame. And a share of the punishment. There is enough blame for all to share. There should be enough punishment.
We are talking Fujitsu here a firm that most people escaped at the earliest opportunity and a place (from stories I heard saying avoid) that was very much code exactly what we tell you - I think what you have done there is point the blame at a number of fresh graduates - who were probably cross trained on the cheap into IT.
You also miss out the testers are would be equally to blame if not more so and the BAs who would have written the stories that the code and test scripts were based on.
Now in theory the team leads may have some responsibility but again I would put them into the doing an impossible job, while outside their depth and scared witless pot as well
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
Ugly ?
That is perfectly reasonable. The campaigner is absolutely right. These people have been through hell, some took their own lives and many lost their livelihoods, homes and reputations and the victims desire for redress is ‘ugly’ not the deeds that precipitated this.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
No, he is not "where the buck stops". He has a very large amount of responsibility for the architecture of the system. He isn't depending on role definition) 100% responsible for the implementation.
The following people are responsible
1) The developers 2) The team leads 3) The architect 4) The managers 5) The lawyers 6) The politicians
The cleaning lady is not responsible. Probably.
Any one of the above who lied, fucked up etc deserves a share of the blame. And a share of the punishment. There is enough blame for all to share. There should be enough punishment.
But the order of weight of responsibility is probably: 4), 5), 6), 3), 2), 1) And depending on what 1, 2, and 3 can show they flagged upwards they may not really be responsible at all.
Somewhere in the mix are the support staff too, the helpdesk teams and their managers.
No system of any size was ever implemented without any errors - it's the management of that that is critical.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
No. The issue is that NASA never learnt how to build anything on a budget.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
In 10 years time there will still be no moon landing by a human
The difference is though that in the 1960s the US dedicated about 2.5% of GDP on the Apollo project alone.
Continuing that level of expenditure was never viable.
SpaceX are doing things at an affordable, sustainable rate. Which takes longer, but means that when its done, then it can be done repeatedly on an ongoing basis.
There is far more future with the way SpaceX operate than the Senate Launch System.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
Yes, it’s difficult to work out whether he’s a whistleblower or a huge part of the problem.
I suspect a fair amount of both, but if he lied in court then he’s likely to be in a lot of trouble.
I suspect he can't go to the inquiry and say the truth and not incriminate himself - because knowing how many people do status reports he probably wasn't 100% accurate and shall we say slight optimistic.
The disadvantage Jenkins has is that he's on record as having answered presumably precise and well-crafted questions from trained lawyers. So his wriggle room to re-write history is pretty limited.
Whereas the senior POCL folk are answering for the first time, and the evidence is a collection of board minutes and internal memos and emails and the recollection of colleagues, and the cleverer ones will of course pitch their evidence as far as they think credible toward the "I expressed lots of concerns but wasn't really listened to", with the very senior ones relying on denying or downplaying whatever can be evidenced that they were told, and not remembering that they ever were.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
No. The issue is that NASA never learnt how to build anything on a budget.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
In 10 years time there will still be no moon landing by a human
In 10 years time, Dear Moon* will be flown (90% probability, I think).
Given the funding for Lunar landing going to SpaceX, it seems quite probable that either that or the follow up will be a landing.
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
Ugly ?
That is perfectly reasonable. The campaigner is absolutely right. These people have been through hell, some took their own lives and many lost their livelihoods, homes and reputations and the victims desire for redress is ‘ugly’ not the deeds that precipitated this.
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
Ugly ?
That is perfectly reasonable. The campaigner is absolutely right. These people have been through hell, some took their own lives and many lost their livelihoods, homes and reputations and the victims desire for redress is ‘ugly’ not the deeds that precipitated this.
🙄
Ugly? As I said before all they are asking is that Paula Vennells is subjected to what she preached.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
I agree that the attacks on Starmer over 'defending' bad 'uns is wrong - and said as much yesterday.
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
I suspect there is potential for a CPS oversight role for issues relating to a few complex cases over the lifetime of the prosecutions from 1995 to 2015. The chances of many crossing Starmer's desk are minimal but not necessarily nil.
(Snip)
I would be very surprised if that's the case. *If* he's running the department, I'd expect him to have a broad knowledge of what's going on, and what's happening in the department. Especially if cases were difficult in legal, media or political senses.
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
The DPP and CPS didn't have a role. That may well have been one of the problems. There was no outsider reviewing the evidence, other than judges who were deliberately misled on it.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, not just on Savile but also on assisted suicide.
I think we've gone slightly off-piste with this; my comments are not referring to the PO scandal, but to the following comment from another poster:
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
You are aware, aren't you, that the Post Office, alongside the Television Licencing Authority and the RSPCA can prosecute without referral to the CPS?
Yes; and you should actually try reading my comment.
As an aside, what is the role of, for example the Attorney Generals? Do they not have any oversight responsibilities? And what of the Prime Minister of the day.
In the case of the PO, as they were private prosecutions, perhaps they had more oversight responsibilities than the CPS. Again, PB's many lawyers may know more about where oversight for private prosecutions lie. The frightening thought might be that there was *no* oversight of private prosecutions...
My understanding is that, in practice, the DPP intervenes in private prosecutions. If asked.
My questions are
1) Is this correct? Are there any instances in which the DPP has "gone hunting" for bad private prosecutions, on its own? 2) There are claims that some prosecutions were under the DPP. Is this true? On what basis did this happen? Were the PO lawyers used or DPP lawyers? Were such prosecutions 100% run by the DPP or was it some kind of hybrid?
These were not kind of private prosecutions normally talked about when discussing a potential role for the DPP (which quote limited role is discussed at length on the CPS website). The Post Office has statutory powers to conduct its own prosecutions. That is very much a matter for government.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
No. The issue is that NASA never learnt how to build anything on a budget.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
In 10 years time there will still be no moon landing by a human
The difference is though that in the 1960s the US dedicated about 2.5% of GDP on the Apollo project alone.
Continuing that level of expenditure was never viable.
SpaceX are doing things at an affordable, sustainable rate. Which takes longer, but means that when its done, then it can be done repeatedly on an ongoing basis.
There is far more future with the way SpaceX operate than the Senate Launch System.
It not even especially magic. A space launch system that includes just... space launch. Rather than supporting a pyramid of pork with all the politicians one top of it.
So they built a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket. Which could, in many ways, have been built any time after 1957, or so. The blocks to that architecture were political and cultural.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
Apollo cost about 2.5 percent of American GDP per year for a decade.
There was an estimate of a 20% failure rate, which wasn't far off. (A1 caught fire and A13 was an incredibly luck escape).
We wouldn't accept either of those these days.
(ETA: Besides, apart from PR, why send humans? Robots can do pretty much anything better, safer and cheaper.)
Yes, but what we discovered was that, however scientific the achievement, it was the poetry of the Moon landings that captured the imagination. "The Shadow of the Moon" shows this brilliantly, and it is why the human landings still matter more than all the robot probes ever sent..
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Coupled with the evidence from one of the PO managers close to implementation, who said that the PO repeatedly tried to get information about the design and programming from Fujitsu but Fujitsu relied on the clauses in the PFI contract maintaining their commercial secrecy to avoid telling them anything. When the inquiry considers how Fujitsu managed the project and what they told the customer, drawing from the evidence in phase 2 and probably more from phase 6 (by when it will be hot and sunny outside) should be interesting.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
No. The issue is that NASA never learnt how to build anything on a budget.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
I both agree with, and disagree with, this.
On the space suits, I believe that every few years NASA would start a new space suit project, only for funding to be cut after a couple of years. Bridenstine said something like "We spent more starting projects to make new spacesuits than it would have cost to stick with the first project."
It's mostly not about NASA not learning to build anything to a budget: it's about political interference. NASA are told what to build, and what to spend building it. Hence the stupidity of SLS's second mobile launcher, which no sane organisation would build. But NASA is forced to, at vast cost.
The biggest problem with Aries is not the SLS - which has flown, albeit at vast cost - or the spacesuits. The main problem is SpaceX's lander. They've still got a massive amount of work to do and, worse, technology to develop and prove. That's where the delay'll come in.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
I really hope that is not going to be yet another case where low-level grunts get prosecuted, whilst their managers and superiors in the organisation get away scot-free.
Gareth Jenkins isn't a low level grunt - he was the architect of the system - i.e. the person with overall responsibility and where the buck stops.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
No, he is not "where the buck stops". He has a very large amount of responsibility for the architecture of the system. He isn't depending on role definition) 100% responsible for the implementation.
The following people are responsible
1) The developers 2) The team leads 3) The architect 4) The managers 5) The lawyers 6) The politicians
The cleaning lady is not responsible. Probably.
Any one of the above who lied, fucked up etc deserves a share of the blame. And a share of the punishment. There is enough blame for all to share. There should be enough punishment.
But the order of weight of responsibility is probably: 4), 5), 6), 3), 2), 1) And depending on what 1, 2, and 3 can show they flagged upwards they may not really be responsible at all.
Somewhere in the mix are the support staff too, the helpdesk teams and their managers.
No system of any size was ever implemented without any errors - it's the management of that that is critical.
It is pretty clear that 1,2 & 3 were incompetent. The managers were lying upwards about it. With the truth percolating up and the scandal progress. The evil there was continuing the prosecutions and refusing to fix the system, long after *they knew*. which takes us all the to 5).
When the truth broke through the political level, nothing was done. Why? WTF are politicians for? If oversight is a waste of time, why have it?
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Yes, utterly damning, both of the systems designers and the commissioning managers.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Coupled with the evidence from one of the PO managers close to implementation, who said that the PO repeatedly tried to get information about the design and programming from Fujitsu but Fujitsu relied on the clauses in the PFI contract maintaining their commercial secrecy to avoid telling them anything. When the inquiry considers how Fujitsu managed the project and what they told the customer, drawing from the evidence in phase 2 and probably more from phase 6 (by when it will be hot and sunny outside) should be interesting.
The fact that it's a PFI deal, with the usual attendant clauses favouring the supplier and disadvantaging the client, is perhaps part if the problem.
"Commercial confidentiality'" is one of the mosre disgraceful arguments used to hide information about what is in effect public administration. It angers me every time I hear it in respect of botched PFI deals.
Yet another moon landing project that will never happen. They dont have spacesuits or a landing craft! Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
No. The issue is that NASA never learnt how to build anything on a budget.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
I both agree with, and disagree with, this.
On the space suits, I believe that every few years NASA would start a new space suit project, only for funding to be cut after a couple of years. Bridenstine said something like "We spent more starting projects to make new spacesuits than it would have cost to stick with the first project."
It's mostly not about NASA not learning to build anything to a budget: it's about political interference. NASA are told what to build, and what to spend building it. Hence the stupidity of SLS's second mobile launcher, which no sane organisation would build. But NASA is forced to, at vast cost.
The biggest problem with Aries is not the SLS - which has flown, albeit at vast cost - or the spacesuits. The main problem is SpaceX's lander. They've still got a massive amount of work to do and, worse, technology to develop and prove. That's where the delay'll come in.
The latest news is that there are issues with the launch escape system for Ares III and new heat shield issues. They had to change the heat shield design after the one test of the system so far.
SLS and Orion were supposed to be zero new tech. But that has proven to be wrong.
The space suit problem is only partly political. There was a weird loop, where counter pressure suit tech would win technology conceptions and then the space suit division would announce that they didn't want that. They even went as far as claiming that the astronauts who took part in the counter pressure suits tests in the 60s were... lying about the results! Similarly, full hard shell hard suits were dismissed.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Coupled with the evidence from one of the PO managers close to implementation, who said that the PO repeatedly tried to get information about the design and programming from Fujitsu but Fujitsu relied on the clauses in the PFI contract maintaining their commercial secrecy to avoid telling them anything. When the inquiry considers how Fujitsu managed the project and what they told the customer, drawing from the evidence in phase 2 and probably more from phase 6 (by when it will be hot and sunny outside) should be interesting.
The fact that it's a PFI deal, with the usual attendant clauses favouring the supplier and disadvantaging the client, is perhaps part if the problem.
"Commercial confidentiality'" is one of the mosre disgraceful arguments used to hide information about what is in effect public administration. It angers me every time I hear it in respect of botched PFI deals.
That has been thrown about to defend the Teesport scandal. That and "I'll sue you even though what you say is protected by privilege and is 100% fact". Whilst we are talking about wrong gongs, can we ask about "Lord" Houchen?
Right now, the Conservatives have much the biggest problem with sleaze.
But the biggest scandals, those that really hurt the public, like child sexual abuse, the Post Office, infected blood, they run across parties. That shows that there is something endemically wrong in public life.
This conversations leads me onto another thing I don't think gets enough attention: project management.
Project management is difficult. I've done it with (in comparison) tiny projects, and in software it's a weird case of juggling technical requirements, resources, timescales, expectations and, perhaps most importantly, egos. It's not something you can particularly train for; you either have it, or do not.
IMV we really don't give project management enough attention (or praise when a project goes well...) I've worked under a couple of project leads who I would call brilliant project managers, and some who are less brilliant.
In one case, a friend is brilliant technically. When it comes to designing the fundamentals of a certain type of chip, he's outstanding; ditto when chasing down issues. He's really friendly and gets on well with everyone. But he never, ever gives a bollocking, even when a polite bollocking is required. And he was hopeless at managing his bosses' expectations, or other resources.
He should always have remained an architect, and never gone onto project management. To his credit, he realised this and stepped away from his pm role.
I think I was an okay PM, for small projects. I'd have been hopeless with large teams of more than a couple of dozen people.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Coupled with the evidence from one of the PO managers close to implementation, who said that the PO repeatedly tried to get information about the design and programming from Fujitsu but Fujitsu relied on the clauses in the PFI contract maintaining their commercial secrecy to avoid telling them anything. When the inquiry considers how Fujitsu managed the project and what they told the customer, drawing from the evidence in phase 2 and probably more from phase 6 (by when it will be hot and sunny outside) should be interesting.
The fact that it's a PFI deal, with the usual attendant clauses favouring the supplier and disadvantaging the client, is perhaps part if the problem.
"Commercial confidentiality'" is one of the mosre disgraceful arguments used to hide information about what is in effect public administration. It angers me every time I hear it in respect of botched PFI deals.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Coupled with the evidence from one of the PO managers close to implementation, who said that the PO repeatedly tried to get information about the design and programming from Fujitsu but Fujitsu relied on the clauses in the PFI contract maintaining their commercial secrecy to avoid telling them anything. When the inquiry considers how Fujitsu managed the project and what they told the customer, drawing from the evidence in phase 2 and probably more from phase 6 (by when it will be hot and sunny outside) should be interesting.
The case against Fujitsu itself is going to be a tough one because the relationship is contract based, and the customer accepted the service for over two decades without taking remedial action. And of course they provide IT support to quite a bit of Whitehall.
There will also be diplomatic repercussions; the Japanese government applied considerable pressure to get the contract signed in the first place.
I am no fan of his, but I don’t quite follow the attack line against Starmer re: Post Office prosecutions. The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Nigel Farage has very cleverly drawn Starmer into the frame from nowhere. GBNews, Guido, the Express and the Telegraph have doubled down and Starmer is now one of the Prime suspects on the ITVx list of 5 suspects. No Conservative politician is implicated.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
The thing is, that laying down with that particular dog a) gets you populist fleas and b) ensures you share his record of electoral defeat. The failure of the Tories to defuse the populist bomb is why they are looking at an epochal defeat next time.
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
Ugly ?
That is perfectly reasonable. The campaigner is absolutely right. These people have been through hell, some took their own lives and many lost their livelihoods, homes and reputations and the victims desire for redress is ‘ugly’ not the deeds that precipitated this.
🙄
Ugly? As I said before all they are asking is that Paula Vennells is subjected to what she preached.
The idea that holding people to account for their behaviour is "ugly" is straight out of the NU10K playbook.
Set your watches - in a year or 2 times, Vennells will be giving an interview in the glossy magazines. In her lovely country house, probably. All about how hard the scandal was for her. Made her ill even - to the point of having to check into the posh version of the Priory for a stay, maybe. How it was tough to find a 6 figure job, which was suitable for her. But after a great deal of work, and support from her family & friends, she has finally got back on her feet. Remember, she is the real victim here.
The good news is all these Starmer smears are in front of the paywall. Bargain!
How is that even a story? What a weird thing to print.
It's quite an interesting story about how cold and uncomfortable the palace of Westminster is. They should just shut it for a couple of years, decamp to the NEC or a big Hilton somewhere, and then come back to a nicely and more efficiently refurbished Westminster. The Starmer derangement syndrome spin is the weird bit.
Right now, the Conservatives have much the biggest problem with sleaze.
But the biggest scandals, those that really hurt the public, like child sexual abuse, the Post Office, infected blood, they run across parties. That shows that there is something endemically wrong in public life.
Alan Bates was dismissed in 2003, when Blair was invading Iraq and the problems started barely three years after New Labour took office.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Coupled with the evidence from one of the PO managers close to implementation, who said that the PO repeatedly tried to get information about the design and programming from Fujitsu but Fujitsu relied on the clauses in the PFI contract maintaining their commercial secrecy to avoid telling them anything. When the inquiry considers how Fujitsu managed the project and what they told the customer, drawing from the evidence in phase 2 and probably more from phase 6 (by when it will be hot and sunny outside) should be interesting.
The case against Fujitsu itself is going to be a tough one because the relationship is contract based, and the customer accepted the service for over two decades without taking remedial action. And of course they provide IT support to quite a bit of Whitehall.
There will also be diplomatic repercussions; the Japanese government applied considerable pressure to get the contract signed in the first place.
It was the PO not Fujitsu which was responsible for the bogus private prosecutions.
Except in Scotland (according to TSE's post down-thread) where, even more unbelievably, it was their equivalent to the police/CPS.
Just awful figures for the Tories. Nothing they do seems to make any difference.
Yeah but that poll was taken was before we learned that Ed Davey designed the Horizon System and SKS personally prosecuted the poor SPMs.
The desperate attempts to smear Sir Ed and Sir Kier have been another low in the whole miserable affair. The teenagers in CCHQ will find it increasingly difficult to get a real job after the next election.
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
Thanks Cicero.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
FWIW, My father, who was a systems analyst and data processing head for various multi nationals in the 60s, 70s and 80s made a fairly acerbic comment: "When you have new anomalous problems when there never have been such problems before and you are installing a new system, then your working assumption must be a fault in the code or in the system, not in the humans".
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
The witness statement of David McDonnell to the enquiry is very, very interesting.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west. c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Coupled with the evidence from one of the PO managers close to implementation, who said that the PO repeatedly tried to get information about the design and programming from Fujitsu but Fujitsu relied on the clauses in the PFI contract maintaining their commercial secrecy to avoid telling them anything. When the inquiry considers how Fujitsu managed the project and what they told the customer, drawing from the evidence in phase 2 and probably more from phase 6 (by when it will be hot and sunny outside) should be interesting.
The case against Fujitsu itself is going to be a tough one because the relationship is contract based, and the customer accepted the service for over two decades without taking remedial action. And of course they provide IT support to quite a bit of Whitehall.
There will also be diplomatic repercussions; the Japanese government applied considerable pressure to get the contract signed in the first place.
I am really struggling to see how any claim against Fujitsu is not time barred already. The PO must have known that they were at fault no later than 2019 when they caved in Bates' court action but in reality they must have known before that.
IANAE on English limitation laws. In Scotland you would have 5 years from the point that you knew ought reasonably to have known that there had been a breach of contract. In England my understanding is that the period is 6 years. We are way past that.
Of course, if Fujitsu ever wants a UK government contract again they may feel pressure not to rely upon this but we are probably talking north of £1bn of losses by the PO by the time this is finished which, even for Fujitsu, is a serious sum.
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
Ugly ?
That is perfectly reasonable. The campaigner is absolutely right. These people have been through hell, some took their own lives and many lost their livelihoods, homes and reputations and the victims desire for redress is ‘ugly’ not the deeds that precipitated this.
🙄
Ugly? As I said before all they are asking is that Paula Vennells is subjected to what she preached.
The idea that holding people to account for their behaviour is "ugly" is straight out of the NU10K playbook.
Set your watches - in a year or 2 times, Vennells will be giving an interview in the glossy magazines. In her lovely country house, probably. All about how hard the scandal was for her. Made her ill even - to the point of having to check into the posh version of the Priory for a stay, maybe. How it was tough to find a 6 figure job, which was suitable for her. But after a great deal of work, and support from her family & friends, she has finally got back on her feet. Remember, she is the real victim here.
The posh version of the Priory? I thought the Priory was the posh version! Guess I'm never going to make the NU10K
(Maybe the other NU10K - Northern Underclass 10K - is within reach, though...)
Comments
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/analysis-legal-scholar-asserts-u-s-constitution-disqualifies/
Most recent New Hampshire polls per 538:
University of New Hampshire (Jan. 4-8)
Trump 39, Haley 32
Suffolk University (Jan. 3-7)
Trump 46, Haley 26
American Research Group (Dec. 27- Jan. 3)
Trump 37, Haley 33
American Research Group (Dec. 14-20)
Trump 33, Haley 29
Saint Anselm College Survey Center (Dec. 18-19)
Trump 44, Haley 30
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/new-hampshire/
To give him a little credit, he mentioned an Ashfield case in Parliament in 2022 as a backbencher, holding the then Tory Minister to account to some degree - which has not been mentioned by any previous Ashfield MP (searching TheyWorkForYou on the name).
Reported in the local paper:
https://www.chad.co.uk/news/people/sutton-postmasters-destroyed-life-focus-of-commons-debate-3591544
His current attacks are entirely partisan, of course, and there's a high degree of cynicism in this.
The Ashfield PO victim was convicted in 2008.
And Anderson was on the staff of the previous Ashfield MP Gloria de Piero for 5 years ~2014-2019. I am not aware of any work on this issue then, but the same applies to de Piero - who IME has been a good constituency MP.
Otherwise, top marks to the scriptwriter.
Similar point to be made on Davey. The original sin was trying to commercialise and sell of the Post Office. That having been agreed, the relevant Minister of course had to stay at arms length and accept assurances from the appointed management.
That depends on what the role of the DPP is. If it is just a senior prosecutor, then you're correct. However if it's about running the DPP *department*, then you're wrong. If he was running the department, I'd expect him to have a fair overview of what was going on, although not detail on every individual case. And I'd expect him to want to be told about any cases - even small ones - that might prove problematic or complex for the department. If only so he can report these upwards to the attorney general and solicitor general (*)
Wiki makes it appear that it is very much the latter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_Public_Prosecutions_(England_and_Wales)
(*) I think?
Now, is it enough?
Probably not. But a Haley victory in New Hampshire is far from impossible, especially if she performs well in Iowa and manages a credible second place. In which case, a lot of that Christie support is likely to head her way.
Very, very clever, if mischievous and Machiavellian stuff from Farage.The Conservatives owe him big time for this!
But your comment doesn't really respond to mine, does it? What was Starmer's role as DPP? What is valid for him to be criticised for when he performed that role, and what is not valid?
Fact isn't a requirement for Farage to fell a foe,
That's what department heads should do, isn't it? Otherwise what's the point of the role?
(I guess one of PB's legal bods would know much more about the DPP's exact role.)
It does appear that DPP is a job from which it’s very difficult to subsequently enter frontline politics, as for example would be a senior judge. The nature of the job requires an impartiality, that is supposed to remain above party politics.
(Yes, if I were the head of any organisation, I’d sure as hell want to know about anything with potential to be front page news!).
Wasn't Long-Bailey the proper Continuity Corbyn Candidate? Even then, Starmer was messy triangulation; move on from the failings of Corbyn while keeping the good bits or some such guff.
Which gave him cover to keep very little.
In Scotland, where the regular legal system did have a role, the number of prosecutions was minimal and AFAIK only one person was imprisoned.
The irony therefore is if Starmer had been involved it's most unlikely there would have been a scandal. His instinct seems, indeed, to have been to not prosecute unless he was absolutely certain of his ground, as shown not just by Savile but also on assisted suicide.
"The idea that the DPP would (or should) have any serious knowledge or involvement in anything but the most complex or high profile cases (and these were not that, at the time) is just silly."
Which is why I started blathering on about what the DPP's role actually entails *generally*.
Haven't you thus just implicated Brown, Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak?
Meanwhile the number of Tory MPs CVs out there is becoming a bit of a joke in the City. The problem is that Spivs and Chancers are already well covered, and the average Tory MP is toxic waste on a letter head.
(On a side note; the RSPCA has also performed some disgraceful private prosecutions in the past; it seems it now hands 'serious' cases over to the CPS: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/28/rspca-plans-to-stop-taking-animal-abusers-to-court-privately Although their website reads as if they still do prosecute: https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/endcruelty/prosecution/howwedecide)
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/tv-licence-prosecutions-discriminate-against-women
I think you may have cracked the case.
As an aside, what is the role of, for example the Attorney Generals? Do they not have any oversight responsibilities? And what of the Prime Minister of the day.
From the outset Ms Cyclefree, IanB2 and other early commentators on the scandal here on PB made it clear that *none* of the main Parties come out of it well, whatever the teenage scribblers and spinners might say.
I trust this message is widely accepted now amongts those with a brain and a pulse.
Two retired IT specialists from the Japanese firm Fujitsu are at the heart of a police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal that saw dozens of postmasters wrongly convicted.
An investigation involving colleagues Gareth Jenkins, 71, and Anne Chambers, 66, was opened after a judge said that defects and bugs in the system that they knew about were “kept secret”.
Last week, it emerged that officers from the Metropolitan Police are also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud around the wrongful conviction of hundreds of branch owner-managers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fujitsu-it-experts-horizon-post-office-scandal-m95wpgdft
The PO will be desperately hoping he doesn't give evidence. They have already contrived twice to delay his appearance before the Inquiry. They can't keep doing it.
This has been going on for two decades; more, in fact. It has been reported on widely for many years even before prosecutions came to a stop. Why was there this inertia *outside* the PO/Fujitsu?
1) The incompetent architects and developers will get it in the neck - after all, they are specialists, not Proper Generalists and can Take The Blame.
2) There will be an attempt to brush away the lies (including perjury) in the management layers above (all the way to the civil servants and politicians) as "Just how managing an organisation works". There will be an announcement that "While there were failings, there is insufficient evidence to prosecute."
3) This won't save all the managers etc - just those above a magic level of deniability.
3) An attempt at trebles all round.
But in reality the only thing an architect can do is tell people if there are problems. If he did that and others said the system had to go live then the buck can be passed elsewhere (hope he has a suitable papertrail) but if he said the system was fine and continued to do so then the buck very much stops with him.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12944847/post-office-boss-paula-vennells-bonuses-pension-return.html
"Campaigner and former sub-postmaster Chris Trousdale said: 'Paula Vennells should be stripped of her wealth, pension and reputation, just like the sub-postmasters were. The execs' bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims' money. It's disgusting that our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells who are now living lives of luxury.'"
The post office situation is unleashing a rather ugly thirst for vengeance.
That's what Conservative loyalists criticising Starmer, Davey and the rest of them don't get, because the prospect is so awful.
It's not about them, it's about you.
My questions are
1) Is this correct? Are there any instances in which the DPP has "gone hunting" for bad private prosecutions, on its own?
2) There are claims that some prosecutions were under the DPP. Is this true? On what basis did this happen? Were the PO lawyers used or DPP lawyers? Were such prosecutions 100% run by the DPP or was it some kind of hybrid?
And Paula Vennells was a vicar who at various times will have stood at pulpit and preached "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - and in this case all these people are seeking is for that example to be followed - the 2 faced ****, ****, ****, **** b**ch.
I suspect a fair amount of both, but if he lied in court then he’s likely to be in a lot of trouble.
Angela Constance, the justice secretary, confirmed that emergency legislation will also be looked at as part of an effort to undo action carried out by the Crown Office north of the border.
More than 700 Post Office managers from across the UK were convicted after the faulty Horizon accounting software, made by Fujitsu, made it look like money was missing from branches.
Unlike in England, the Post Office does not have the ability to prosecute privately in Scotland with the powers instead lying with the Crown Office, which estimates that about 100 cases have been affected by the scandal.
The Crown Office claimed that the number of cases in Scotland were “lower than in England and Wales due to … policy decisions made in response to awareness of the Horizon system issues, and the fact that all cases in Scotland were prosecuted by the procurator fiscal under the application of Scots criminal law”.
So far, only 16 people in Scotland have come forward to have a conviction examined, only two of which have been overturned. Another four are currently appealing their convictions to the High Court of Justiciary Appeal Court, with decisions expected next month.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/post-office-scandal-pardon-scheme-for-wrongful-convictions-xwdmkqz2x
A magnificent black swan moment or a risk?
The following people are responsible
1) The developers
2) The team leads
3) The architect
4) The managers
5) The lawyers
6) The politicians
The cleaning lady is not responsible. Probably.
Any one of the above who lied, fucked up etc deserves a share of the blame. And a share of the punishment. There is enough blame for all to share. There should be enough punishment.
DaveyStarmer pile-on, it only works if people decide to blindly swallow what they are being fed and don't think.The reason why the latest poll has the Tories 26 points behind is that a decisive break away from being gaslit back to thinking was made by the public during the Lizaster. So Farage and GBeebies et al can push their various lines, but the public aren't as stupid as they think they are.
Their big error is simple - no Tory fall guy. Horizon starts in 1996 and only really breaks onto the public consciousness in recent years. The spin is that bad things only happened in the few years when Davey was Minister and Starmer was DPP. No other times, so no other people responsible.
This is pitiful even for GBeebies "news", and the one thing the ITV program showed to public outrage is this went on for *decades*.
So, where is the Tory scapegoat? Had they sacrificed one of their own pawns to then demand the heads of the Lab/LD kings then maybe. Instead, the only resignation being demanded is
DaveyStarmer. Which the public can see straight through.Meanwhile, Rishi awarded billions upon billions to Fujitsu *after* much of the scandal was known. Perhaps that was also Starmer's fault.
Its amazing that in the 1960s using just pens and papers for design they could develop this equipment, yet with all the modern technology that exists, it can't.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67928687
https://youtu.be/BPIXu2NNRs8?si=0ey-44h_juRs_Rym
But when did the unwisdom of a course of action stop Rishi following it?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1853536/post-office-kier-starmer-jimmy-savile-comment
(Though Davey did spend quite a lot of time looking at mutualisation.)
It just looks respectable because it has a gothic masthead and serif headlines.
And, in one sense, he was, since in a court case between the Post Office and one of its subpostmasters, he was coming in as someone well aquainted with the software system to evidence its performance and capability, based on his knowledge and expertise.
But, in another critical sense, he wasn't, for - as CF and other lawyers will know better than me - being an "expert witness" comes with a list of expectations, two of which are that they are independent from the case, and that they are obliged to disclose any evidence both for and against their concusions.
From the evidence so far, the inquiry is likely to conclude that Jenkins went into court to evidence that the system was mostly hunky-dory, when he knew the rather different reality. So the inquiry, and subsequently the Police, will be considering whether he's been a very naughty boy indeed. Of course, he will have been asked, or more probably told, both by his employer Fujitsu and the customer Post Office, to go and reassure the court as to the system's robustness. Which might offer some mitigation if he's willing to point a finger at whoever provided such direction, if they did. But as an expert witness (or indeed any sort of witness) he won't be able to escape from his personal responsibility to give accurate evidence in court.
That is perfectly reasonable. The campaigner is absolutely right. These people have been through hell, some took their own lives and many lost their livelihoods, homes and reputations and the victims desire for redress is ‘ugly’ not the deeds that precipitated this.
🙄
The fact that UK management has so few STEM graduates reinforces the problem, since no one has the insight to argue with, in this case, Fujitsu. So in defending Fujitsu, not really knowing that they had been incompetent, the GPO management made an almighty mistake. By continuing to defend themselves when that misjudgement was made clear is why a TV programme got made to fully expose the scandal.
Fundamentally, as others have noted, the lack of understanding of science lies at the root of this scandal. I am prepared to believe that at first even the Post Office Management did not have a malignant intent, but the "tangled web" that they wove in denying that there was a systemic problem, when there clearly was, mutated into a poisonous refusal to accept the truth. That led to a whole culture of lies, to the post masters, to the government, and even to themselves. Once can argue that politicians should have challenged the Post Office earlier, and some, like James Arbuthnott, were prepared to do this. However I do not blame those like Ed Davey who asked the right questions, but were lied to.
Right at the start, it was "Waste everything but the" on Apollo. The political support for Apollo was as development funds for the American South. LBJ used the firehouse of NASA money to buy votes for all kinds of things.
So the system was set in stone - NASA projects are used a subsidies to the winners in a political game of poker.
The problem is not technology - it is project structure and management has defeated the attempts to do anything. Hence SLS is a warmed up Shuttle technology and the Orion capsule is a retread of Apollo.
The Altair lander (cancelled) would have cost $40 billion to develop. That was the initial estimate, not the expanded reality that would have occurred.
The reason it was cancelled was that in the pork slicing game, not enough money was going through NASA. So they could only pay for SLS (the rocket) and Orion (the capsule. Even that required farming the service module for Orion out to Europe.
This why, under Obama, the mission was to an asteroid - with a rocket and capsule, you need a destination which doesn't need a lander.
The space suit thing is somewhat similar - but even more fucked up by internal politics in the NASA space suit division. Who have, in effect, blocked new space suits.
In the case of the lander, the current plan is to use the giant rocket that SpaceX is building - which means that the tiny Orion capsule will rendezvous in Lunar orbit with a spaceship the size of a large building. farcical is not the word....
Space suits are under way but will be late. SpaceX are working on their own - they are progressing to an EVA capable suit (tethered) this year. And probably won't stop there.
"b. There were no development standards or methodology, coding practices, peer reviews, unit testing standards, design specifications in place. In fact this team was like the wild west.
c. Several of the development team were not capable of producing professional code."
Not only in the continuing acceptance of the PO conducting its own prosecutions - but also in maintaining the rules if evidence which reverse the burden of proof in respect of computer evidence.
That second point, as Cyclefree has repeatedly noted, is likely to carry on causing miscarriages of justice long after the PO cases are finally sorted out.
You also miss out the testers are would be equally to blame if not more so and the BAs who would have written the stories that the code and test scripts were based on.
Now in theory the team leads may have some responsibility but again I would put them into the doing an impossible job, while outside their depth and scared witless pot as well
Somewhere in the mix are the support staff too, the helpdesk teams and their managers.
No system of any size was ever implemented without any errors - it's the management of that that is critical.
Continuing that level of expenditure was never viable.
SpaceX are doing things at an affordable, sustainable rate. Which takes longer, but means that when its done, then it can be done repeatedly on an ongoing basis.
There is far more future with the way SpaceX operate than the Senate Launch System.
There was an estimate of a 20% failure rate, which wasn't far off. (A1 caught fire and A13 was an incredibly luck escape).
We wouldn't accept either of those these days.
(ETA: Besides, apart from PR, why send humans? Robots can do pretty much anything better, safer and cheaper.)
Whereas the senior POCL folk are answering for the first time, and the evidence is a collection of board minutes and internal memos and emails and the recollection of colleagues, and the cleverer ones will of course pitch their evidence as far as they think credible toward the "I expressed lots of concerns but wasn't really listened to", with the very senior ones relying on denying or downplaying whatever can be evidenced that they were told, and not remembering that they ever were.
Given the funding for Lunar landing going to SpaceX, it seems quite probable that either that or the follow up will be a landing.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DearMoon_project
The Post Office has statutory powers to conduct its own prosecutions. That is very much a matter for government.
So they built a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket. Which could, in many ways, have been built any time after 1957, or so. The blocks to that architecture were political and cultural.
On the space suits, I believe that every few years NASA would start a new space suit project, only for funding to be cut after a couple of years. Bridenstine said something like "We spent more starting projects to make new spacesuits than it would have cost to stick with the first project."
It's mostly not about NASA not learning to build anything to a budget: it's about political interference. NASA are told what to build, and what to spend building it. Hence the stupidity of SLS's second mobile launcher, which no sane organisation would build. But NASA is forced to, at vast cost.
The biggest problem with Aries is not the SLS - which has flown, albeit at vast cost - or the spacesuits. The main problem is SpaceX's lander. They've still got a massive amount of work to do and, worse, technology to develop and prove. That's where the delay'll come in.
When the truth broke through the political level, nothing was done. Why? WTF are politicians for? If oversight is a waste of time, why have it?
"Commercial confidentiality'" is one of the mosre disgraceful arguments used to hide information about what is in effect public administration.
It angers me every time I hear it in respect of botched PFI deals.
SLS and Orion were supposed to be zero new tech. But that has proven to be wrong.
The space suit problem is only partly political. There was a weird loop, where counter pressure suit tech would win technology conceptions and then the space suit division would announce that they didn't want that. They even went as far as claiming that the astronauts who took part in the counter pressure suits tests in the 60s were... lying about the results! Similarly, full hard shell hard suits were dismissed.
But the biggest scandals, those that really hurt the public, like child sexual abuse, the Post Office, infected blood, they run across parties. That shows that there is something endemically wrong in public life.
Project management is difficult. I've done it with (in comparison) tiny projects, and in software it's a weird case of juggling technical requirements, resources, timescales, expectations and, perhaps most importantly, egos. It's not something you can particularly train for; you either have it, or do not.
IMV we really don't give project management enough attention (or praise when a project goes well...) I've worked under a couple of project leads who I would call brilliant project managers, and some who are less brilliant.
In one case, a friend is brilliant technically. When it comes to designing the fundamentals of a certain type of chip, he's outstanding; ditto when chasing down issues. He's really friendly and gets on well with everyone. But he never, ever gives a bollocking, even when a polite bollocking is required. And he was hopeless at managing his bosses' expectations, or other resources.
He should always have remained an architect, and never gone onto project management. To his credit, he realised this and stepped away from his pm role.
I think I was an okay PM, for small projects. I'd have been hopeless with large teams of more than a couple of dozen people.
It really is a skill that goes unheralded.
And of course they provide IT support to quite a bit of Whitehall.
There will also be diplomatic repercussions; the Japanese government applied considerable pressure to get the contract signed in the first place.
Set your watches - in a year or 2 times, Vennells will be giving an interview in the glossy magazines. In her lovely country house, probably. All about how hard the scandal was for her. Made her ill even - to the point of having to check into the posh version of the Priory for a stay, maybe. How it was tough to find a 6 figure job, which was suitable for her. But after a great deal of work, and support from her family & friends, she has finally got back on her feet. Remember, she is the real victim here.
Without money, there is no freedom
By Rachel O'Dwyer"
https://unherd.com/2024/01/why-women-still-rely-on-richer-men/
So, it tars everyone.
Except in Scotland (according to TSE's post down-thread) where, even more unbelievably, it was their equivalent to the police/CPS.
IANAE on English limitation laws. In Scotland you would have 5 years from the point that you knew ought reasonably to have known that there had been a breach of contract. In England my understanding is that the period is 6 years. We are way past that.
Of course, if Fujitsu ever wants a UK government contract again they may feel pressure not to rely upon this but we are probably talking north of £1bn of losses by the PO by the time this is finished which, even for Fujitsu, is a serious sum.
(Maybe the other NU10K - Northern Underclass 10K - is within reach, though...)