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.
Oh I agree with that. Westminster renovation is another long running saga of wasted money, time and facility almost on a par with HS2.
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.
Exactly. Which is Starmer. He's a Bad'Un.
No, don't tell me the Crown Office aren't the CPS. England doesn't know or care there is a difference. And if there IS a difference it's just another Starmer excuse to deflect away from the fact that he awarded Fulitsu billions in contracts in recent years.
Hopefully Sunak will get the truth out of him at 12.
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.
A PFI deal? Are you sure?
Actually, I think you're right it's not. On checking, it's Horizon that was originally a PFI. deal - but the system was then dumped in the PO under a service contract when Labour scrapped the larger project. Sounds as though the unfavourable terms were carried over.
Similar comments apply, though. It's going to be problematic for government to seek remedies - though government should play hardball, I suspect they won't.
Best bet for redress in the near term is criminal prosecutions.
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*.
Yes, that was me. I think we have a different view on accountability. The DPP role is more or less like a Perm Sec for the purposes of this debate. Like a Perm Sec, I give them some leeway for having to trust their staff and what they get told.
As noted by another poster above, in context I don’t think anything about this will have looked fishy to Starmer or his Department. Part of why it is such a scandal is that the Post Office seems to have withheld relevant facts.
The original sin here was to seek to commercialise and sell off something that isn’t right for that move. Once you decide to do that, you have to manage it at arm’s length and you lose control, but not ultimate responsibility unless or until it’s sold. All avoidable, and all driven by successive political decisions.
That’s the smoking gun for politicians of all stripes going back to New Labour; not any theoretical intervention they might have made against the advice of the Post Office Board.
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.
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.
Fujitsu was surely responsible for much of the evidence, though. And were entirely aware of their role in that.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
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.
Your last para is tricky. The bar for overlooking future bids and “blacklisting” a company from future procurements is very high in the procurement regs. And that’s without considering the Japanese dimension.
Bad managers run away from inconvenient problems. They refuse to engage with the those who identify them. When these problems become worse, they run away more. Then they start digging deep holes for themselves. The PO scandal is a high-profile, and particularly appalling, example of something that happens systematically in far too many British businesses because our manager class is generally awful - poorly selected, badly trained, incorrectly assessed and incentivised. Short-termism is the British disease. And that’s where the PO scandal begins, IMO. Every reaction was about getting through the next week, the next quarter. That was the priority.
"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...)
There are grades. The basic is pretty grim. The high end one is a 5 star country hotel, with mental health care on the room service menu.
"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.
Vennells has already been cancelled, she can't do any work or have any position in public life. But it is too early to jump to the conclusion that she was the actual villain on this occasion. There isn't enough evidence. So what we are seeing is gratuitous public shaming. I think every leader is exposed to essentially the same risk because there are always troubles in any organisation. It poses the question why anyone would become a leader. It is easier to just get in to a position where you can protect yourself and snipe at others. Barristers are the ultimate example of this but they tend to be kept in check by self awareness, cab rank rules, impartiality etc.
I have no idea what was going on with Vennells being a vicar but I don't think it should inevitably be held against her. Maybe the focus on the Horizon disaster is disproportionate, maybe she did other stuff that was positive in the post office. I don't know - but resent the idea that she should be lynched by the mob.
Regarding 'injustices', there are many, many of these. If you look at social workers, they have to make very difficult decisions about putting children in to care or intervention, and often the wrong decisions are made, and sometimes even people die. I don't see this as being a problem with something rotten in public life, it is just a continuous feature of public life, and the structural problem is an inability to manage the information space following the arrival of the internet and social media.
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.
I haven't found @TSE's original comments but I do not think that the PO could have prosecuted the case themselves in Scotland. What would have happened, though, is that the COPFS would have received a briefing note from the PO explaining what the case was and what evidence was available. This happens quite regularly to this day in, for example, HSE prosecutions and, more contentiously, in respect of investigations by the SSPCA.
How critically they would be looked at would vary from Fiscal Office to Fiscal Office depending on time, resources and interest. I think it would be fair to say that fraud is given a pretty low priority in terms of crimes to be prosecuted and almost none of the offices would have the resources to really query the outputs of computer systems signed off by the SPMs.
I personally have never come across such a prosecution in Scotland but there may well have been some.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
Betting post: The bill will accidentally grant effective immunity from prosecution to senior figures. Some legal thing about having prejudiced any possible trials?
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.
I (as complete dunce in this area - although I did do some very basic law training in my first post-grad job, got a diploma from University of Glamorgan and everything ) would also have thought that the PO must take responsibility for losses incurred by their actions after they knew/reasonably should have known that their actions were wrong. So, given it was clear within the PO that there were problems with Horizon, damages from prosecutions past that point rest with the PO?
Say you have a defective tyre - if it causes a crash when it blows out then tyre manufacturer/supplier on the hook. But if it blows out, you stop safely and then, with one tyre clearly broken decide that you'll just pop back on to the M1 anyway then liability for that sutpidity surely rests with you?
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.
I (as complete dunce in this area - although I did do some very basic law training in my first post-grad job, got a diploma from University of Glamorgan and everything ) would also have thought that the PO must take responsibility for losses incurred by their actions after they knew/reasonably should have known that their actions were wrong. So, given it was clear within the PO that there were problems with Horizon, damages from prosecutions past that point rest with the PO?
Say you have a defective tyre - if it causes a crash when it blows out then tyre manufacturer/supplier on the hook. But if it blows out, you stop safely and then, with one tyre clearly broken decide that you'll just pop back on to the M1 anyway then liability for that sutpidity surely rests with you?
Yes, as your course no doubt covered we call this a novus actus interveniens, a break in the law of causation. Fujitsu will undoubtedly claim that the way the PO acted seriously aggravated the losses caused by their errors. And that is true, up to a point. But it will be difficult for them if their staff were perjuring themselves in court confirming everything was fine.
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.
I haven't found @TSE's original comments but I do not think that the PO could have prosecuted the case themselves in Scotland. What would have happened, though, is that the COPFS would have received a briefing note from the PO explaining what the case was and what evidence was available. This happens quite regularly to this day in, for example, HSE prosecutions and, more contentiously, in respect of investigations by the SSPCA.
How critically they would be looked at would vary from Fiscal Office to Fiscal Office depending on time, resources and interest. I think it would be fair to say that fraud is given a pretty low priority in terms of crimes to be prosecuted and almost none of the offices would have the resources to really query the outputs of computer systems signed off by the SPMs.
I personally have never come across such a prosecution in Scotland but there may well have been some.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
Betting post: The bill will accidentally grant effective immunity from prosecution to senior figures. Some legal thing about having prejudiced any possible trials?
I'm about 90% certain on this.
This is why they need to think carefully before doing anything.
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.
Definitely. This process of lying unless or until someone else's lawyers force you to stop is far from confined to the post office. It seems to be endemic in at least the home office. I'm glad to see Labour talking about a Duty of Candour; albeit only to official investigations. Frankly I'd like to see it a bit wider, I don't see that officials should have any right to lie to the public unless there is some immediate danger to life.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
Betting post: The bill will accidentally grant effective immunity from prosecution to senior figures. Some legal thing about having prejudiced any possible trials?
I'm about 90% certain on this.
Why can't different POs co-join an appeal.
The Appeal of PO Smith, PO Jones, Ms Evans, .... & & & & ... v R.
Is that not possible in our legal system. The unreliability of Horizon links the cases.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
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.
If he was actually the Lead Architect on the project, then I’d expect him to have pretty good visibility of QA issues and development paths.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
As a matter of interest, how does this situation compare with (say) the 'Turing Law', and the blanket pardoning of gay men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences? Is it the fact the law hasn't changed; it just failed?
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.
If he was actually the Lead Architect on the project, then I’d expect him to have pretty good visibility of QA issues and development paths.
As an admitted non-lawyer, it looks to me as if the gaps between what it has been evidenced that he will have known, and what his "expert advice" was in court, are already pretty wide.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
Betting post: The bill will accidentally grant effective immunity from prosecution to senior figures. Some legal thing about having prejudiced any possible trials?
I'm about 90% certain on this.
This is why they need to think carefully before doing anything.
Like thinking carefully before doing anything is characteristic of government.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
Good morning
Seems lots of silly comments on blame gaming on this thread and you are correct, but Parliament overuling the courts is just what all mps across the house want as they all feel they need to be seen doing something popular
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
Betting post: The bill will accidentally grant effective immunity from prosecution to senior figures. Some legal thing about having prejudiced any possible trials?
I'm about 90% certain on this.
There has to be a reason for passing an act of Parliament, as surely pardons can be done using the prerogative power.
"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.
Vennells has already been cancelled, she can't do any work or have any position in public life. But it is too early to jump to the conclusion that she was the actual villain on this occasion. There isn't enough evidence. So what we are seeing is gratuitous public shaming. I think every leader is exposed to essentially the same risk because there are always troubles in any organisation. It poses the question why anyone would become a leader. It is easier to just get in to a position where you can protect yourself and snipe at others. Barristers are the ultimate example of this but they tend to be kept in check by self awareness, cab rank rules, impartiality etc.
I have no idea what was going on with Vennells being a vicar but I don't think it should inevitably be held against her. Maybe the focus on the Horizon disaster is disproportionate, maybe she did other stuff that was positive in the post office. I don't know - but resent the idea that she should be lynched by the mob.
Regarding 'injustices', there are many, many of these. If you look at social workers, they have to make very difficult decisions about putting children in to care or intervention, and often the wrong decisions are made, and sometimes even people die. I don't see this as being a problem with something rotten in public life, it is just a continuous feature of public life, and the structural problem is an inability to manage the information space following the arrival of the internet and social media.
Well said, Darkage.
Vennells certainly shouldn't be lynched by the mob. She is entitled to due process, as we all are. She does have some very awkward questions to answer though. No doubt she is being heavily advised by her lawyers, but if I were here I would definitely go native and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the Inquiry.
Whatever she does, her appearance before it will cetainly be box office.
Gareth Jenkins has been demanding immunity for about 18 months, but the media has only just picked up on it.
"Gareth Jenkins, architect of Post Office scandal, demands immunity The former Fujitsu engineer's testimony about the faulty Horizon IT system was central to convictions"
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
As a matter of interest, how does this situation compare with (say) the 'Turing Law', and the blanket pardoning of gay men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences? Is it the fact the law hasn't changed; it just failed?
Pardoning someone essentially says “you’re guilty but we’ll forgive you unconditionally” whereas overturning a conviction says “you’re not guilty”.
The issue is that questions of guilt and innocence should only be determined by a court. Otherwise you could, theoretically, have Parliament passing acts of attainder against unpopular people. Which are generally considered “a bad thing”.
EDIT - Vennells being a case in point. I’m sure public opinion right now would support our elected reps passing an act of attainder against her. But it would still be wrong.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
Betting post: The bill will accidentally grant effective immunity from prosecution to senior figures. Some legal thing about having prejudiced any possible trials?
I'm about 90% certain on this.
This is why they need to think carefully before doing anything.
Like thinking carefully before doing anything is characteristic of government.
Listening carefully before not doing anything is even more common.
Another point to make that might have longer-term political implications:
The Post Office has lost a massive amount of credibility and approval amongst the public because of this fiasco, at a time when changes in technology make what it (and the Royal Mail) does more challenging. They need all the friends they can get, and they will have lost a load.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
As a matter of interest, how does this situation compare with (say) the 'Turing Law', and the blanket pardoning of gay men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences? Is it the fact the law hasn't changed; it just failed?
Pardoning someone essentially says “you’re guilty but we’ll forgive you unconditionally” whereas overturning a conviction says “you’re not guilty”.
The issue is that questions of guilt and innocence should only be determined by a court. Otherwise you could, theoretically, have Parliament passing acts of attainder against unpopular people. Which are generally considered “a bad thing”.
EDIT - Vennells being a case in point. I’m sure public opinion right now would support our elected reps passing an act of attainder against her. But it would still be wrong.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
As a matter of interest, how does this situation compare with (say) the 'Turing Law', and the blanket pardoning of gay men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences? Is it the fact the law hasn't changed; it just failed?
Turing and others were prosecuted because they were gay. Illegal (shamefully) at the time. The PO staff have been prosecuted for false accounting / theft where the convictions are unsafe as no money was actually stolen / falsely accounted.
We need the convictions to be quashed. We can't over-turn the law as we did with Turing etc - we're not abolishing Theft. Nor should we pardon the convicted. Pardon means they did it and we're forgiving them. They *didn't* do it.
But it isn't for parliament to just overturn court judgements even when courts and juries get it wrong. They can instruct the legal system to address the miscarriage of justice. But MPs just declaring people innocent because its politically expedient...?
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
Good morning
Seems lots of silly comments on blame gaming on this thread and you are correct, but Parliament overuling the courts is just what all mps across the house want as they all feel they need to be seen doing something popular
It's going to be a bad decision taken for a good reason.
The problem (with the status quo) is that court appeals need to be heard individually and it will all take ages and cost a fortune, as well as being stressful and time consuming for those involved. More people will die before they get their pardon.
The problem with what is likely to happen is the risk of a simplistic solution to a complex problem, that might raise issues of its own (such as letting off actually guilty people), that itself might take a while (producing and delivering legislation through all its stages not being notorious for speed), where the precedent of parliament over-riding the courts with legislation goes against our precious judiciary independence (cf. current goings on across the pond), and where it might leave some of the SPMRs dissatisfied that they've been pardoned en masse at the sweep of a pen without their own "days in court" and without anyone having looked at, and dismissed, the (flawed) evidence that led to their personal conviction.
I was under another misapprehension. The Post Office, since 1985 at least, does not have its own 'special powers' to prosecute.
The powers are statutory, but are the same powers any individual or corporate body has to bring a prosecution: The powers fall under Section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985.
Similarly with the RSPCA, while historically it was unusual in having an active role in regularly bringing prosecutions, it has been doing so since 1985 under the same powers that a private individual possesses. The RSPCA has recently voluntarily given up conducting private prosecutions.
"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.
Vennells has already been cancelled, she can't do any work or have any position in public life. But it is too early to jump to the conclusion that she was the actual villain on this occasion. There isn't enough evidence. So what we are seeing is gratuitous public shaming. I think every leader is exposed to essentially the same risk because there are always troubles in any organisation. It poses the question why anyone would become a leader. It is easier to just get in to a position where you can protect yourself and snipe at others. Barristers are the ultimate example of this but they tend to be kept in check by self awareness, cab rank rules, impartiality etc.
I think the big fat pay packets and the way it's a position of power usually seem to be sufficient inducement for people to become leaders of companies and public bodies, despite the possible downsides...
I was under another misapprehension. The Post Office, since 1985 at least, does not have its own 'special powers' to prosecute.
The powers are statutory, but are the same powers any individual or corporate body has to bring a prosecution: The powers fall under Section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985.
Similarly with the RSPCA, while historically it was unusual in having an active role in regularly bringing prosecutions, it has been doing so since 1985 under the same powers that a private individual possesses. The RSPCA has recently voluntarily given up conducting private prosecutions.
Five pages on the history of the Post Office's investigatory and prosecuting powers, for anoraks only:
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
Good morning
Seems lots of silly comments on blame gaming on this thread and you are correct, but Parliament overuling the courts is just what all mps across the house want as they all feel they need to be seen doing something popular
It's going to be a bad decision taken for a good reason.
The problem (with the status quo) is that court appeals need to be heard individually and it will all take ages and cost a fortune, as well as being stressful and time consuming for those involved. More people will die before they get their pardon.
The problem with what is likely to happen is the risk of a simplistic solution to a complex problem, that might raise issues of its own (such as letting off actually guilty people), that itself might take a while (producing and delivering legislation through all its stages not being notorious for speed), where the precedent of parliament over-riding the courts with legislation goes against our precious judiciary independence (cf. current goings on across the pond), and where it might leave some of the SPMRs dissatisfied that they've been pardoned en masse at the sweep of a pen without their own "days in court" and without anyone having looked at, and dismissed, the (flawed) evidence that led to their personal conviction.
It should neither take ages nor cost a fortune once it is established that the basis of evidence on which all were convicted (ie the computer evidence) was unsafe. That need not be separately demonstrated in each case, since it's the same unreliability across all of them.
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.
Oh I agree with that. Westminster renovation is another long running saga of wasted money, time and facility almost on a par with HS2.
They should just sell it to Warner Bros and they can turn it into Westminster World, and all the arcane shite and traditions can stay there with Rees Mogg as a tour guide. Spend the money on a purpose built building in the Midlands, complete with a hotel and offices for the MPs to stay in when not at their constituencies. The country deserves better.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
On topic, even if Haley wins NH (which I think is possible but unlikely), it won't make much difference to the race, part because (as Mike says) Democrats can vote so it will be spun as a spoiler, part because NH is not a great predictor, part because Iowa is likely to see a major Trump win.
Not also sure if this has been mentioned but another poll out in Michigan - 8 point lead for Trump
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
I am sure that many could have done better, as could we all, but I think with them it seems like more a question of capability than conduct. Discovery/disclosure is a vital part of common law litigation. If the other side isn’t disclosing the evidence it should disclose then the best defence lawyer will have problems. As a lawyer the withholding of evidence is the most shocking part of this - professionally anyway.
That’s not to say the defence lawyers in some cases could have done better but there’s no suggestion, as far as I can see, of malpractice on their part.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
The HLS lander contract(s) require demonstrating the pieces on a series of milestones, not a single all up, manned mission.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
A big issue here is the one CF has highlighted - the defence of "the computer isn't reliable" was to a great extent closed off by the change of law made back in the New Labour Era to presume that such evidence was reliable unless the defendant could prove otherwise - at the time significantly motivated by people getting off speeding charges by insisting the Police prove the speed gun's reliability. And without any data to examine the system - the subpostmaster not having access to any and the Post Office usually unwilling to provide any, or very much (since Fujitsu charged them every time they wanted data extracted from the system), mounting what with hindsight was the only true defence was almost impossible.
There's some interesting legal discussion about this specific background matter, here:
Where lawyers did fall down, particularly in the most egregious cases that led to imprisonment, is in not realising the complete absence of any evidence of theft, or of the defendant having unexplained funds or unusually lavish lifestyle. The false accounting convictions are perhaps understandable given all the bad stuff that had gone before (and most were of course guilty pleas), but to be done for theft based not on any proof but because they couldn't prove their innocence is a staggering legal head-over-heels, which surely at least one of our learned friends should have stopped to think about - especially the first senior judge before whom the issue was raised.
It was like being done for murder just because the purported victim has disappeared, without any body, on the basis that "they aren't here therefore you must have killed them".
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.
Oh I agree with that. Westminster renovation is another long running saga of wasted money, time and facility almost on a par with HS2.
It would have been worthwhile building HS2 in its entirety if it had been done about 10 years ago, before costs escalating for various reasons. (Look how successful the Elizabeth Line has been since it opened).
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
As a matter of interest, how does this situation compare with (say) the 'Turing Law', and the blanket pardoning of gay men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences? Is it the fact the law hasn't changed; it just failed?
Turing and others were prosecuted because they were gay. Illegal (shamefully) at the time. The PO staff have been prosecuted for false accounting / theft where the convictions are unsafe as no money was actually stolen / falsely accounted.
We need the convictions to be quashed. We can't over-turn the law as we did with Turing etc - we're not abolishing Theft. Nor should we pardon the convicted. Pardon means they did it and we're forgiving them. They *didn't* do it.
But it isn't for parliament to just overturn court judgements even when courts and juries get it wrong. They can instruct the legal system to address the miscarriage of justice. But MPs just declaring people innocent because its politically expedient...?
Isn't Parliament though supposed to be the highest court in the land?
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.
I haven't found @TSE's original comments but I do not think that the PO could have prosecuted the case themselves in Scotland. What would have happened, though, is that the COPFS would have received a briefing note from the PO explaining what the case was and what evidence was available. This happens quite regularly to this day in, for example, HSE prosecutions and, more contentiously, in respect of investigations by the SSPCA.
How critically they would be looked at would vary from Fiscal Office to Fiscal Office depending on time, resources and interest. I think it would be fair to say that fraud is given a pretty low priority in terms of crimes to be prosecuted and almost none of the offices would have the resources to really query the outputs of computer systems signed off by the SPMs.
I personally have never come across such a prosecution in Scotland but there may well have been some.
"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”."
On topic, even if Haley wins NH (which I think is possible but unlikely), it won't make much difference to the race, part because (as Mike says) Democrats can vote so it will be spun as a spoiler, part because NH is not a great predictor, part because Iowa is likely to see a major Trump win.
Not also sure if this has been mentioned but another poll out in Michigan - 8 point lead for Trump
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
If the legal presumption was that the computer is always right then there wouldn't have been grounds for the DPP to halt a prosecution. The DPP has no capacity to change the law, though a government could, via the Attorney General.
In 1997 rural England saved the Tories from an extinction level event.
Rural voters are more likely to back Labour than the Tories at the next election following a huge swing to the Left in traditionally true blue territory, new polling suggests.
The Conservatives have been warned “a Portillo moment is possible anywhere” as a newly-released survey put Sir Keir Starmer’s party four points ahead in the countryside.
It comes as Labour has vowed to “park our tanks on the Tories’ fields” in a bid to claw back the rural vote, with Steve Reed, the new shadow environment secretary, leading the charge.
The poll, by Labour Together, found that 34 per cent of people in villages or rural areas would back Sir Keir’s party at the next election, compared to 30 per cent who preferred the Conservatives.
It amounts to a 17-point swing to Labour compared with 2019, based on the respondents’ self-reported voting history.
📢Sir Wyn Williams has jointly appointed Dame Sandra Dawson and Dr Katy Steward as Governance Expert Witnesses. Their expert reports will address issues relating to leadership, management and governance.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
Good morning
Seems lots of silly comments on blame gaming on this thread and you are correct, but Parliament overuling the courts is just what all mps across the house want as they all feel they need to be seen doing something popular
It's going to be a bad decision taken for a good reason.
The problem (with the status quo) is that court appeals need to be heard individually and it will all take ages and cost a fortune, as well as being stressful and time consuming for those involved. More people will die before they get their pardon.
The problem with what is likely to happen is the risk of a simplistic solution to a complex problem, that might raise issues of its own (such as letting off actually guilty people), that itself might take a while (producing and delivering legislation through all its stages not being notorious for speed), where the precedent of parliament over-riding the courts with legislation goes against our precious judiciary independence (cf. current goings on across the pond), and where it might leave some of the SPMRs dissatisfied that they've been pardoned en masse at the sweep of a pen without their own "days in court" and without anyone having looked at, and dismissed, the (flawed) evidence that led to their personal conviction.
It should neither take ages nor cost a fortune once it is established that the basis of evidence on which all were convicted (ie the computer evidence) was unsafe. That need not be separately demonstrated in each case, since it's the same unreliability across all of them.
It looks like we are going to get an announcement of a bill today in the Commons granting a pardon to all those convicted by the PO (including, no doubt, some who were actually at it, but there we are). Has a TV series ever had such an impact? I cannot recall one. Well done ITV. Very well done.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
I am a little concerned about this. Parliament should not overrule the courts - a horrible precedent. We need to get a stack of convictions quashed, but that should be done by the courts.
As a matter of interest, how does this situation compare with (say) the 'Turing Law', and the blanket pardoning of gay men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences? Is it the fact the law hasn't changed; it just failed?
Turing and others were prosecuted because they were gay. Illegal (shamefully) at the time. The PO staff have been prosecuted for false accounting / theft where the convictions are unsafe as no money was actually stolen / falsely accounted.
We need the convictions to be quashed. We can't over-turn the law as we did with Turing etc - we're not abolishing Theft. Nor should we pardon the convicted. Pardon means they did it and we're forgiving them. They *didn't* do it.
But it isn't for parliament to just overturn court judgements even when courts and juries get it wrong. They can instruct the legal system to address the miscarriage of justice. But MPs just declaring people innocent because its politically expedient...?
Isn't Parliament though supposed to be the highest court in the land?
Debatable since its jurisdiction in that regard was transferred to the Supreme Court -
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.
Can't read the Times website, but won't some or all of those 14 still be in process? Esp. in view of the timing of the most recent inquiry revelations?
The impression I got from Ydoethur's comments [not that he is liable!] was that quite a few in Scotland werew at the lowest court - sheriff court - and pleading guilty ab initio. Advised by solicitors to do so rather than risk prison, whatever the truth? So the PF/legal system would hardly get a look-in. This will have happened a lot everywhere. As would those simply paying up the money demanded with menaces without even getting to a court, as Ydoethur al;so noted.
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.
One big contributory factor was that back in the days of pen and paper the PO always suspected that many of SPMs were creaming off the profits, but it was hard to prove. When Horizon came along it was a classic case of confirmation bias.
Once the number of prosecutions began to mount however you would have thought common sense would have caused some managers to say 'Hang on....' In a way, I guess that's what yer old man is saying and of course he is right, Cicero.
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
Well, not really. The whole point of the story is that, to the extent there were doubts about the reliability of the system, these were not made known (as they should have been under criminal procedure rules) to defence lawyers.
So they could, and I am sure did, press witnesses on reliability of Post Office systems where the defence was that an error had been made. But those giving evidence in most cases very probably believed there wasn't a real risk of error (I don't think the allegation is that everyone in the Post Office IT department knew there was a problem - the issue is who knew what and when as evidence of flaws stacked up).
I think TV crime dramas give a bit of a misleading view of this at times. Defence teams aren't carrying out a parallel investigation. They are poking holes in material that the prosecution MUST provide, which includes relevant material that does NOT support their case. They might call an expert witness, but really only to say "the prosecution expert witness is being overly bullish here - I see the evidence a bit differently". Defences can't really be blamed where evidence they don't know exists but that should have been provided, simply has not been provided.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
The HLS lander contract(s) require demonstrating the pieces on a series of milestones, not a single all up, manned mission.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
On your last point: as I said above, *one* lunar mission will require either 8 (SpaceX) or 16-20 (NASA) SH/SS launches. Even with SpaceX's alleged economies with SH/SS, losing that many ships is one hell of an expense. Add onto that the many missions that will be required to test and prove refuelling.
I don't understand why you constantly downgrade the difficulties SpaceX face? I'm not saying they can't do it; I'm not saying they won't do it, especially eventually; just that the challenges they face are far greater than those facing SLS/Orion.
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
If the legal presumption was that the computer is always right then there wouldn't have been grounds for the DPP to halt a prosecution. The DPP has no capacity to change the law, though a government could, via the Attorney General.
I'm having great difficulty with this legal presumption, mandated as it may have been. Surely there have been enough cases (generally speaking, not the PO) where computer etc evidence has been thrown out for being shown to be unsound.
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?
Good questions, JJ. Not sure what the answers are though.
At the moment, I am optimistic that many of the culprits will get their come-uppance. Not sure that will be the case with the civil servants though. They clearly bear some of the responsibility, but are saved by the mask of anonymity. Not sure how you remedy that.
"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.
Vennells has already been cancelled, she can't do any work or have any position in public life. But it is too early to jump to the conclusion that she was the actual villain on this occasion. There isn't enough evidence. So what we are seeing is gratuitous public shaming. I think every leader is exposed to essentially the same risk because there are always troubles in any organisation. It poses the question why anyone would become a leader. It is easier to just get in to a position where you can protect yourself and snipe at others. Barristers are the ultimate example of this but they tend to be kept in check by self awareness, cab rank rules, impartiality etc.
I have no idea what was going on with Vennells being a vicar but I don't think it should inevitably be held against her. Maybe the focus on the Horizon disaster is disproportionate, maybe she did other stuff that was positive in the post office. I don't know - but resent the idea that she should be lynched by the mob.
Regarding 'injustices', there are many, many of these. If you look at social workers, they have to make very difficult decisions about putting children in to care or intervention, and often the wrong decisions are made, and sometimes even people die. I don't see this as being a problem with something rotten in public life, it is just a continuous feature of public life, and the structural problem is an inability to manage the information space following the arrival of the internet and social media.
Well said, Darkage.
Vennells certainly shouldn't be lynched by the mob. She is entitled to due process, as we all are. She does have some very awkward questions to answer though. No doubt she is being heavily advised by her lawyers, but if I were here I would definitely go native and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the Inquiry.
Whatever she does, her appearance before it will cetainly be box office.
In the drama her character asks/says: "I need you [someone] to tell me that there can be no remote access" or somesuch.
Was that ever answered, either on tv or irl. ie, did anyone ever say to her conclusively, yes or no.
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
Well, not really. The whole point of the story is that, to the extent there were doubts about the reliability of the system, these were not made known (as they should have been under criminal procedure rules) to defence lawyers.
So they could, and I am sure did, press witnesses on reliability of Post Office systems where the defence was that an error had been made. But those giving evidence in most cases very probably believed there wasn't a real risk of error (I don't think the allegation is that everyone in the Post Office IT department knew there was a problem - the issue is who knew what and when as evidence of flaws stacked up).
I think TV crime dramas give a bit of a misleading view of this at times. Defence teams aren't carrying out a parallel investigation. They are poking holes in material that the prosecution MUST provide, which includes relevant material that does NOT support their case. They might call an expert witness, but really only to say "the prosecution expert witness is being overly bullish here - I see the evidence a bit differently". Defences can't really be blamed where evidence they don't know exists but that should have been provided, simply has not been provided.
Thanks to everyone who replied. But my thoughts were more like this: if a defence lawyer sees that a dozen or more previous prosecutions of a very similar nature have all been successful, are they actually going to look for those evidential holes as hard, or might they be more tempted to suggest a guilty plea?
"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.
Vennells has already been cancelled, she can't do any work or have any position in public life. But it is too early to jump to the conclusion that she was the actual villain on this occasion. There isn't enough evidence. So what we are seeing is gratuitous public shaming. I think every leader is exposed to essentially the same risk because there are always troubles in any organisation. It poses the question why anyone would become a leader. It is easier to just get in to a position where you can protect yourself and snipe at others. Barristers are the ultimate example of this but they tend to be kept in check by self awareness, cab rank rules, impartiality etc.
I have no idea what was going on with Vennells being a vicar but I don't think it should inevitably be held against her. Maybe the focus on the Horizon disaster is disproportionate, maybe she did other stuff that was positive in the post office. I don't know - but resent the idea that she should be lynched by the mob.
Regarding 'injustices', there are many, many of these. If you look at social workers, they have to make very difficult decisions about putting children in to care or intervention, and often the wrong decisions are made, and sometimes even people die. I don't see this as being a problem with something rotten in public life, it is just a continuous feature of public life, and the structural problem is an inability to manage the information space following the arrival of the internet and social media.
Well said, Darkage.
Vennells certainly shouldn't be lynched by the mob. She is entitled to due process, as we all are. She does have some very awkward questions to answer though. No doubt she is being heavily advised by her lawyers, but if I were here I would definitely go native and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the Inquiry.
Whatever she does, her appearance before it will cetainly be box office.
In the drama her character asks/says: "I need you [someone] to tell me that there can be no remote access" or somesuch.
Was that ever answered, either on tv or irl. ie, did anyone ever say to her conclusively, yes or no.
The infamous Rod Ismay report said that the system was working fine.
See the inquiry video here at about 1 hour 8 mins.
"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.
True, Darkage, but it is perfectly understandable. Vennells was rewarded for delivering the results Government wanted, but they were grounded on lies and fraud. In principle you would like to think her rewards should be rescinded.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
The HLS lander contract(s) require demonstrating the pieces on a series of milestones, not a single all up, manned mission.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
On your last point: as I said above, *one* lunar mission will require either 8 (SpaceX) or 16-20 (NASA) SH/SS launches. Even with SpaceX's alleged economies with SH/SS, losing that many ships is one hell of an expense. Add onto that the many missions that will be required to test and prove refuelling.
I don't understand why you constantly downgrade the difficulties SpaceX face? I'm not saying they can't do it; I'm not saying they won't do it, especially eventually; just that the challenges they face are far greater than those facing SLS/Orion.
How did the USA manage to overcome all these difficulties in the 60s with no computer technology whatsoever?
On topic, even if Haley wins NH (which I think is possible but unlikely), it won't make much difference to the race, part because (as Mike says) Democrats can vote so it will be spun as a spoiler, part because NH is not a great predictor, part because Iowa is likely to see a major Trump win.
Not also sure if this has been mentioned but another poll out in Michigan - 8 point lead for Trump
Forget Trump for the moment. The early race is about who is the real challenger to Trump: Haley, DeSantis or Ramaswamy.
I think the bigger issue is that if Haley wins NH it opens up the idea that Trump can be beaten in the nomination process. At the moment the received view is that he is unassailable. Hopefully that will change.
In 1997 rural England saved the Tories from an extinction level event.
Rural voters are more likely to back Labour than the Tories at the next election following a huge swing to the Left in traditionally true blue territory, new polling suggests.
The Conservatives have been warned “a Portillo moment is possible anywhere” as a newly-released survey put Sir Keir Starmer’s party four points ahead in the countryside.
It comes as Labour has vowed to “park our tanks on the Tories’ fields” in a bid to claw back the rural vote, with Steve Reed, the new shadow environment secretary, leading the charge.
The poll, by Labour Together, found that 34 per cent of people in villages or rural areas would back Sir Keir’s party at the next election, compared to 30 per cent who preferred the Conservatives.
It amounts to a 17-point swing to Labour compared with 2019, based on the respondents’ self-reported voting history.
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
I don't recall ever hearing Starmer refer to his time as DPP. I looked through the transcript of his big New Year's speech and he didn't mention it.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
The HLS lander contract(s) require demonstrating the pieces on a series of milestones, not a single all up, manned mission.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
On your last point: as I said above, *one* lunar mission will require either 8 (SpaceX) or 16-20 (NASA) SH/SS launches. Even with SpaceX's alleged economies with SH/SS, losing that many ships is one hell of an expense. Add onto that the many missions that will be required to test and prove refuelling.
I don't understand why you constantly downgrade the difficulties SpaceX face? I'm not saying they can't do it; I'm not saying they won't do it, especially eventually; just that the challenges they face are far greater than those facing SLS/Orion.
The problem is developing new technology in a one-shot-this-must-work fashion.
This has consistently been proven to be very, very expensive and risk disaster.
To put it another way - it is quite probable that by the time they get close to a lunar landing, the version numbers for SS will be in the triple digits.
Orion will be carrying people on the second or third one ever made.
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
I don't recall ever hearing Starmer refer to his time as DPP. I looked through the transcript of his big New Year's speech and he didn't mention it.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
The HLS lander contract(s) require demonstrating the pieces on a series of milestones, not a single all up, manned mission.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
On your last point: as I said above, *one* lunar mission will require either 8 (SpaceX) or 16-20 (NASA) SH/SS launches. Even with SpaceX's alleged economies with SH/SS, losing that many ships is one hell of an expense. Add onto that the many missions that will be required to test and prove refuelling.
I don't understand why you constantly downgrade the difficulties SpaceX face? I'm not saying they can't do it; I'm not saying they won't do it, especially eventually; just that the challenges they face are far greater than those facing SLS/Orion.
How did the USA manage to overcome all these difficulties in the 60s with no computer technology whatsoever?
By spending 2.5% of US GDP on the project.
The Apollo program was told: this has to succeed & the budget is whatever it takes. Therefore, when making technical design choices, choose the proven & known to work system that costs 20x the unproven replacement every time.
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
Well, not really. The whole point of the story is that, to the extent there were doubts about the reliability of the system, these were not made known (as they should have been under criminal procedure rules) to defence lawyers.
So they could, and I am sure did, press witnesses on reliability of Post Office systems where the defence was that an error had been made. But those giving evidence in most cases very probably believed there wasn't a real risk of error (I don't think the allegation is that everyone in the Post Office IT department knew there was a problem - the issue is who knew what and when as evidence of flaws stacked up).
I think TV crime dramas give a bit of a misleading view of this at times. Defence teams aren't carrying out a parallel investigation. They are poking holes in material that the prosecution MUST provide, which includes relevant material that does NOT support their case. They might call an expert witness, but really only to say "the prosecution expert witness is being overly bullish here - I see the evidence a bit differently". Defences can't really be blamed where evidence they don't know exists but that should have been provided, simply has not been provided.
Yes, although in the (small minority) cases of alleged theft, you'd think questions like "where's the money?" and "where's the evidence that my client ever had the money?" and "why would my client take £30,000 when he/she knows that the subpostmaster has to make their losses good?" or "how did my client ever manage to steal such a huge amount of cash from their SPSO without their returns - i.e. the cash they actually sent back - not being hugely anomalous in relation to their past accounts?"....
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
The HLS lander contract(s) require demonstrating the pieces on a series of milestones, not a single all up, manned mission.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
On your last point: as I said above, *one* lunar mission will require either 8 (SpaceX) or 16-20 (NASA) SH/SS launches. Even with SpaceX's alleged economies with SH/SS, losing that many ships is one hell of an expense. Add onto that the many missions that will be required to test and prove refuelling.
I don't understand why you constantly downgrade the difficulties SpaceX face? I'm not saying they can't do it; I'm not saying they won't do it, especially eventually; just that the challenges they face are far greater than those facing SLS/Orion.
How did the USA manage to overcome all these difficulties in the 60s with no computer technology whatsoever?
They did have computers. In fact, some computer technology was enhanced because of the Apollo program.
The answer to your question is that they threw money at the problem; about 2.5% of GDP over a decade. NASA's current budget, for everything they do, not just Artemis, is 0.3-0.4% of GDP.
And what is being proposed is a much more complex mission than Apollo - and hopefully one that will be much longer-lasting.
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
I don't recall ever hearing Starmer refer to his time as DPP. I looked through the transcript of his big New Year's speech and he didn't mention it.
Oh well if he didn’t use it in that one speech, I take it all back
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
I don't recall ever hearing Starmer refer to his time as DPP. I looked through the transcript of his big New Year's speech and he didn't mention it.
Almost a weekly occurrence on PMQs.
OK. I looked through Hansard at the most recent PMQs. Starmer did not mention being DPP.
"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.
True, Darkage, but it is perfectly understandable. Vennells was rewarded for delivering the results Government wanted, but they were grounded on lies and fraud. In principle you would like to think her rewards should be rescinded.
In practice, I think it ain't possible,
Playing Devil’s advocate slightly but do we know what the targets were for Vennells as boss? If her bonus was based on pure financial performance than it’s potentially arguable whether all financial outperformance for which her bonus was calculated came from the proceeds of the scandal. It could be (and I obviously don’t know or have the figures) that all of it did, half of it did or a small percentage did in which case can she legally have her bonuses completely clawed back if it can be shown that the scandal would still have left her outperforming if it hadn’t happened.
Her bonus could also have been factored on other indicators such as improvements in delivery times or scale, staff efficiencies or other factors.
Again I’m not trying to defend her for no reason but maybe the clamour to claw back her bonuses needs to be more nuanced?
In 1997 rural England saved the Tories from an extinction level event.
Rural voters are more likely to back Labour than the Tories at the next election following a huge swing to the Left in traditionally true blue territory, new polling suggests.
The Conservatives have been warned “a Portillo moment is possible anywhere” as a newly-released survey put Sir Keir Starmer’s party four points ahead in the countryside.
It comes as Labour has vowed to “park our tanks on the Tories’ fields” in a bid to claw back the rural vote, with Steve Reed, the new shadow environment secretary, leading the charge.
The poll, by Labour Together, found that 34 per cent of people in villages or rural areas would back Sir Keir’s party at the next election, compared to 30 per cent who preferred the Conservatives.
It amounts to a 17-point swing to Labour compared with 2019, based on the respondents’ self-reported voting history.
What caused this? The Truss's disastrous trade deal with Australia?
I'm going to stereotype rural voters now and wonder if it's that they recoiled at the uncouthness of Boris and the recklessness of Truss, and haven't recovered support since. The stereotypical rural voter doesn't like rapid change, thinks people need to know and be comfortable with their station in life, values honesty and loyalty and that people should keep their promises.
This swing is one reason I think the Lib Dems could outperform expectations in their old West Country stomping grounds this year, while slightly disappointing hopes in the Blue Wall where tax cuts will bring back the Tory faithful.
Labour encroaching on rural seats does rather make the LD-Labour tactical vote position a bit more complicated though, as Mid Beds demonstrated.
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
I don't recall ever hearing Starmer refer to his time as DPP. I looked through the transcript of his big New Year's speech and he didn't mention it.
Almost a weekly occurrence on PMQs.
OK. I looked through Hansard at the most recent PMQs. Starmer did not mention being DPP.
One PMQs.
Look through the past 100 and let me know the stats.
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
I am sure that many could have done better, as could we all, but I think with them it seems like more a question of capability than conduct. Discovery/disclosure is a vital part of common law litigation. If the other side isn’t disclosing the evidence it should disclose then the best defence lawyer will have problems. As a lawyer the withholding of evidence is the most shocking part of this - professionally anyway.
That’s not to say the defence lawyers in some cases could have done better but there’s no suggestion, as far as I can see, of malpractice on their part.
Any defence faced two near insurmountable hurdles.
One was funding - PO resources were effectively unlimited; those available to a defendant (even assuming they qualified for legal aid, which many wouldn't) were strictly limited. The second was the burden of proof. Cyclefree was banged on about this repeatedly, but it bears another repetition.
‘In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the courts will presume that mechanical instruments were in order at the material time.’ The Law Commission considered that the words ‘mechanical instruments’ would extend (by default) to include computers.
The law is changed
Section 69 of PACE 1984 was repealed by the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. The result was that the law makes the presumption that the Law Commission identified and recommended...
In situations like those of the PO defendants, the burden of proof in defending a criminal case is effectively reversed. You're guilty unless you can prove the evidence against you is false. As we've seen, even the PO wasn't able to get such evidence from Fujitsu, and they were the customer. The chances of a defendant doing so were close to nil.
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
I don't recall ever hearing Starmer refer to his time as DPP. I looked through the transcript of his big New Year's speech and he didn't mention it.
Almost a weekly occurrence on PMQs.
OK. I looked through Hansard at the most recent PMQs. Starmer did not mention being DPP.
One PMQs.
Look through the past 100 and let me know the stats.
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
Well, not really. The whole point of the story is that, to the extent there were doubts about the reliability of the system, these were not made known (as they should have been under criminal procedure rules) to defence lawyers.
So they could, and I am sure did, press witnesses on reliability of Post Office systems where the defence was that an error had been made. But those giving evidence in most cases very probably believed there wasn't a real risk of error (I don't think the allegation is that everyone in the Post Office IT department knew there was a problem - the issue is who knew what and when as evidence of flaws stacked up).
I think TV crime dramas give a bit of a misleading view of this at times. Defence teams aren't carrying out a parallel investigation. They are poking holes in material that the prosecution MUST provide, which includes relevant material that does NOT support their case. They might call an expert witness, but really only to say "the prosecution expert witness is being overly bullish here - I see the evidence a bit differently". Defences can't really be blamed where evidence they don't know exists but that should have been provided, simply has not been provided.
Yes, there's a systemic problem that each court proceeding only considers a specific case, and if ONE person claims that the computer is wrong then in the absence of evidence to back that up the court isn't likely to believe them (any this is also true if one person writes to a Minister - in fairness I don't think Ed Davey can reasonably have been expected to leap into action on a single case). What is needed is someone keeping an eye out for unusual patterns of incidents following a change in software, and the blame for not doing that does rest with the Post Office, surely?
Do defence lawyers in these cases have some blame to share, or were the Post Office's lies such that no credible defence could be given?
Well, not really. The whole point of the story is that, to the extent there were doubts about the reliability of the system, these were not made known (as they should have been under criminal procedure rules) to defence lawyers.
So they could, and I am sure did, press witnesses on reliability of Post Office systems where the defence was that an error had been made. But those giving evidence in most cases very probably believed there wasn't a real risk of error (I don't think the allegation is that everyone in the Post Office IT department knew there was a problem - the issue is who knew what and when as evidence of flaws stacked up).
I think TV crime dramas give a bit of a misleading view of this at times. Defence teams aren't carrying out a parallel investigation. They are poking holes in material that the prosecution MUST provide, which includes relevant material that does NOT support their case. They might call an expert witness, but really only to say "the prosecution expert witness is being overly bullish here - I see the evidence a bit differently". Defences can't really be blamed where evidence they don't know exists but that should have been provided, simply has not been provided.
Thanks to everyone who replied. But my thoughts were more like this: if a defence lawyer sees that a dozen or more previous prosecutions of a very similar nature have all been successful, are they actually going to look for those evidential holes as hard, or might they be more tempted to suggest a guilty plea?
That seems like human nature...
Suggesting a guilty plea is not at all unreasonable advice to a client who claims they are the victim of an error. If, in several previous cases, people have been convicted and received tough sentences on IT evidence, the defence lawyer is saying, "Look, I'll argue the case to the best of my ability but there is a significant risk you'll be found guilty. The trial will be stressful for you and your family, and you'll get a lighter penalty if you plead guilty as you've no previous convictions etc".
That's hardly the defence being lazy - that's solid, practical advice at the time. Indeed, not just at the time - it's advice that probably did save people from a prison sentence and stress in addition to that they had already suffered. The fact evidence emerged later that would have exhonerated them years later isn't really relevant.
If the client's response was "I refuse to plead guilty when I'm not", then I am reasonably confident that defence teams would have run the case as best they could. Maybe there are defence lawyers who slacken off because they feel it's an uphill climb to get a not guilty outcome. But there's no real evidence that's the case here, or indeed in the many other cases where the prosecution evidence looks superficially quite strong.
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.
Yes, they're performing some small changes to SLS/Orion, given what they learnt. That was expected.
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit. *) Get SS to land. *) Get SH to land. *) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to: *) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to: *) Test and perfect refuelling a lander. *) Test a landing on the Moon. *) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous. *) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
For Orion, alone -
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong? - The LAS is being reworked - The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown. - The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix. - etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
Yes, and those are challenges. But they are orders of magnitude less than the list I gave above.
On the life support, I just remember what DK Brown said about the British nuclear sub program. He reckoned the life-support was more work than the actual nuclear propulsion development.
An this one will have to work first time.
Yes, but the same is true of SpaceX's lunar lander as well. And the same with SS's heat shield as well (which is of a very different type to Dragon).
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
The HLS lander contract(s) require demonstrating the pieces on a series of milestones, not a single all up, manned mission.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
On your last point: as I said above, *one* lunar mission will require either 8 (SpaceX) or 16-20 (NASA) SH/SS launches. Even with SpaceX's alleged economies with SH/SS, losing that many ships is one hell of an expense. Add onto that the many missions that will be required to test and prove refuelling.
I don't understand why you constantly downgrade the difficulties SpaceX face? I'm not saying they can't do it; I'm not saying they won't do it, especially eventually; just that the challenges they face are far greater than those facing SLS/Orion.
How did the USA manage to overcome all these difficulties in the 60s with no computer technology whatsoever?
They did have computers. In fact, some computer technology was enhanced because of the Apollo program.
The answer to your question is that they threw money at the problem; about 2.5% of GDP over a decade. NASA's current budget, for everything they do, not just Artemis, is 0.3-0.4% of GDP.
And what is being proposed is a much more complex mission than Apollo - and hopefully one that will be much longer-lasting.
That's slightly misleading it's 0.3% of a much bigger pie. US GDP is, even in real terms multiples of that of US GDP in 1969.
In 1997 rural England saved the Tories from an extinction level event.
Rural voters are more likely to back Labour than the Tories at the next election following a huge swing to the Left in traditionally true blue territory, new polling suggests.
The Conservatives have been warned “a Portillo moment is possible anywhere” as a newly-released survey put Sir Keir Starmer’s party four points ahead in the countryside.
It comes as Labour has vowed to “park our tanks on the Tories’ fields” in a bid to claw back the rural vote, with Steve Reed, the new shadow environment secretary, leading the charge.
The poll, by Labour Together, found that 34 per cent of people in villages or rural areas would back Sir Keir’s party at the next election, compared to 30 per cent who preferred the Conservatives.
It amounts to a 17-point swing to Labour compared with 2019, based on the respondents’ self-reported voting history.
Many rural England seats will become three-way marginals, I think.
But this will be concentrated in the south-east and some of the south-west. I think the Midlands and North rural seats will be a little better for the Conservatives because the demographics are different.
In 1997 rural England saved the Tories from an extinction level event.
Rural voters are more likely to back Labour than the Tories at the next election following a huge swing to the Left in traditionally true blue territory, new polling suggests.
The Conservatives have been warned “a Portillo moment is possible anywhere” as a newly-released survey put Sir Keir Starmer’s party four points ahead in the countryside.
It comes as Labour has vowed to “park our tanks on the Tories’ fields” in a bid to claw back the rural vote, with Steve Reed, the new shadow environment secretary, leading the charge.
The poll, by Labour Together, found that 34 per cent of people in villages or rural areas would back Sir Keir’s party at the next election, compared to 30 per cent who preferred the Conservatives.
It amounts to a 17-point swing to Labour compared with 2019, based on the respondents’ self-reported voting history.
What caused this? The Truss's disastrous trade deal with Australia?
I'm going to stereotype rural voters now and wonder if it's that they recoiled at the uncouthness of Boris and the recklessness of Truss, and haven't recovered support since. The stereotypical rural voter doesn't like rapid change, thinks people need to know and be comfortable with their station in life, values honesty and loyalty and that people should keep their promises.
This swing is one reason I think the Lib Dems could outperform expectations in their old West Country stomping grounds this year, while slightly disappointing hopes in the Blue Wall where tax cuts will bring back the Tory faithful.
Labour encroaching on rural seats does rather make the LD-Labour tactical vote position a bit more complicated though, as Mid Beds demonstrated.
There is no such thing as a "rural" or "urban" voter in the sense that there are many at all issues which uniquely affect either group. Both sets shop at Tesco or Sainsbury. One set will have farm vehicles clogging up the lanes sometimes, while the other will have to handle LTNs.
There are of course socio-economic demographics but even in, say, Chipping Norton, there are as many C2 &DEs, indeed more than AB & C1s.
"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.
True, Darkage, but it is perfectly understandable. Vennells was rewarded for delivering the results Government wanted, but they were grounded on lies and fraud. In principle you would like to think her rewards should be rescinded.
In practice, I think it ain't possible,
Playing Devil’s advocate slightly but do we know what the targets were for Vennells as boss? If her bonus was based on pure financial performance than it’s potentially arguable whether all financial outperformance for which her bonus was calculated came from the proceeds of the scandal. It could be (and I obviously don’t know or have the figures) that all of it did, half of it did or a small percentage did in which case can she legally have her bonuses completely clawed back if it can be shown that the scandal would still have left her outperforming if it hadn’t happened.
Her bonus could also have been factored on other indicators such as improvements in delivery times or scale, staff efficiencies or other factors.
Again I’m not trying to defend her for no reason but maybe the clamour to claw back her bonuses needs to be more nuanced?
In practice I think it's impossible, nuanced or otherwise.
Amongst her rewards were the gong and a position in the Cabinet office. Both date from 2019. I think when the hoohah over Davy and SKS dies down a bit, we say see a more forensic examination of who was responsible for these. That would be worth knowing, but nobody is owning up at the moment.
The gong has of course gone back now, but nothing yet about her salary/pension from the Cabinet Office.
In 1997 rural England saved the Tories from an extinction level event.
Rural voters are more likely to back Labour than the Tories at the next election following a huge swing to the Left in traditionally true blue territory, new polling suggests.
The Conservatives have been warned “a Portillo moment is possible anywhere” as a newly-released survey put Sir Keir Starmer’s party four points ahead in the countryside.
It comes as Labour has vowed to “park our tanks on the Tories’ fields” in a bid to claw back the rural vote, with Steve Reed, the new shadow environment secretary, leading the charge.
The poll, by Labour Together, found that 34 per cent of people in villages or rural areas would back Sir Keir’s party at the next election, compared to 30 per cent who preferred the Conservatives.
It amounts to a 17-point swing to Labour compared with 2019, based on the respondents’ self-reported voting history.
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 (*)
Starmer uses his time as DPP to appear as a Sheriff riding into town getting rid of the bad guys. He constantly refers to it, like Uncle Albert’s ‘During the war’ from Only Fools & Horses, so it’s going to invite scrutiny from his enemies. He also demands that his opponents take full responsibility for anything that goes on under their watch, so it’s only fair he be held to the same standard
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
I don't recall ever hearing Starmer refer to his time as DPP. I looked through the transcript of his big New Year's speech and he didn't mention it.
Almost a weekly occurrence on PMQs.
He definitely mentions it, though that doesn't mean there is any actual merit in the current attempted smears.
But what's remarkable in the coverage of the last week or so is how the Conservative government, in untrammelled power and not lifting a finger on this since 2015, have managed to escape any criticism at all. Truly an achievement of Houdiniesque proportions.
A sensible order of culpability based on the facts we've now all seen would go:
1. Post Office 2. Fujitsu 3. Tory ministers in the last 3 or 4 years since the miscarriage of justice became obvious 4. Lib Dem coalition ministers who ignored warnings 5. The courts, which too easily accepted computer evidence
With PO and Fujitsu surely taking 80%+ of the blame because it was their mess.
Starmer as DPP doesn't even make it into the top 10.
Comments
No, don't tell me the Crown Office aren't the CPS. England doesn't know or care there is a difference. And if there IS a difference it's just another Starmer excuse to deflect away from the fact that he awarded Fulitsu billions in contracts in recent years.
Hopefully Sunak will get the truth out of him at 12.
On checking, it's Horizon that was originally a PFI. deal - but the system was then dumped in the PO under a service contract when Labour scrapped the larger project.
Sounds as though the unfavourable terms were carried over.
Similar comments apply, though. It's going to be problematic for government to seek remedies - though government should play hardball, I suspect they won't.
Best bet for redress in the near term is criminal prosecutions.
As noted by another poster above, in context I don’t think anything about this will have looked fishy to Starmer or his Department. Part of why it is such a scandal is that the Post Office seems to have withheld relevant facts.
The original sin here was to seek to commercialise and sell off something that isn’t right for that move. Once you decide to do that, you have to manage it at arm’s length and you lose control, but not ultimate responsibility unless or until it’s sold. All avoidable, and all driven by successive political decisions.
That’s the smoking gun for politicians of all stripes going back to New Labour; not any theoretical intervention they might have made against the advice of the Post Office Board.
Edit, possibly the program about young homelessness, Cathy come home, but that was really before even my time.
Postmaster General: In addition to being a postmaster, I am a general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8M9LF7Gz4E
The first 3 episodes are great fun but then it horribly and suddenly declines in every way - from dialogue to plot to SFX. Terrible
I wonder if it got caught in the Hollywood strikes. Anyway: don’t bother
I have no idea what was going on with Vennells being a vicar but I don't think it should inevitably be held against her. Maybe the focus on the Horizon disaster is disproportionate, maybe she did other stuff that was positive in the post office. I don't know - but resent the idea that she should be lynched by the mob.
Regarding 'injustices', there are many, many of these. If you look at social workers, they have to make very difficult decisions about putting children in to care or intervention, and often the wrong decisions are made, and sometimes even people die. I don't see this as being a problem with something rotten in public life, it is just a continuous feature of public life, and the structural problem is an inability to manage the information space following the arrival of the internet and social media.
How critically they would be looked at would vary from Fiscal Office to Fiscal Office depending on time, resources and interest. I think it would be fair to say that fraud is given a pretty low priority in terms of crimes to be prosecuted and almost none of the offices would have the resources to really query the outputs of computer systems signed off by the SPMs.
I personally have never come across such a prosecution in Scotland but there may well have been some.
I'm about 90% certain on this.
🚨FIRST Westminster Voting Intention of 2024
📈19pt Labour lead - largest since Oct '23.
🌹Lab 45 (+2)
🌳Con 26 (-1)
🔶LD 10 (=)
➡️Reform 8 (-1)
🌍Green 5 (+2)
🎗️SNP 3 (=)
⬜️Other 4 (-1)
2,268 UK adults, 5-7 January
(chg 15-17 December)
Square One FTW...
Say you have a defective tyre - if it causes a crash when it blows out then tyre manufacturer/supplier on the hook. But if it blows out, you stop safely and then, with one tyre clearly broken decide that you'll just pop back on to the M1 anyway then liability for that sutpidity surely rests with you?
Exclusive
Voters prioritise spending on better public services over tax cuts by more than two to one
New polling from Global Counsel suggests Labour has the advantage on the key political and economic dividing lines for the general election
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1745010804884164847?s=20
But SLS worked pretty much perfectly first time out of the box. It sent the three-quarters-boilerplate Orion capsule around the Moon.
So let's look at what SpaceX need to do, at a broad-brush level:
*) Get SS into orbit.
*) Get SS to land.
*) Get SH to land.
*) Get good enough reliability on SH/SS in order to:
*) Launch often enough to get up to 20 (SpaceX say 8, NASA say 16-20) rockets into space in a short timescale, to:
*) Test and perfect refuelling a lander.
*) Test a landing on the Moon.
*) Test launch from the Moon and Earth-orbit rendezvous.
*) All the above enough to man-rate the Lunar lander (not SH/SS)
That's a massive workload, including some things that have never been attempted before, even at a small scale. There's a chance that SpaceX get all of that done in the next couple of years; I'd bet against it.
The Appeal of PO Smith, PO Jones, Ms Evans, .... & & & & ... v R.
Is that not possible in our legal system. The unreliability of Horizon links the cases.
Seems lots of silly comments on blame gaming on this thread and you are correct, but Parliament overuling the courts is just what all mps across the house want as they all feel they need to be seen doing something popular
Vennells certainly shouldn't be lynched by the mob. She is entitled to due process, as we all are. She does have some very awkward questions to answer though. No doubt she is being heavily advised by her lawyers, but if I were here I would definitely go native and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the Inquiry.
Whatever she does, her appearance before it will cetainly be box office.
"Gareth Jenkins, architect of Post Office scandal, demands immunity
The former Fujitsu engineer's testimony about the faulty Horizon IT system was central to convictions"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/09/horizon-expert-gareth-jenkins-post-office-inquiry-immunity/
- The heat shield for the next one will be all new. The original design didn't work properly. So it may get its test on the first manned flight. What could go wrong?
- The LAS is being reworked
- The life support system is in final testing now. It has never been flown.
- The navigation system is new. The one flown on the previous test was a temporary fix.
- etc
There are major changes between each Orion capsule - all the way to the end of the current production line. This is the problem with having such a hardware poor program - the production models are the test models.
For SLS itself - the upper stage comedy.....
The issue is that questions of guilt and innocence should only be determined by a court. Otherwise you could, theoretically, have Parliament passing acts of attainder against unpopular people. Which are generally considered “a bad thing”.
EDIT - Vennells being a case in point. I’m sure public opinion right now would support our elected reps passing an act of attainder against her. But it would still be wrong.
The Post Office has lost a massive amount of credibility and approval amongst the public because of this fiasco, at a time when changes in technology make what it (and the Royal Mail) does more challenging. They need all the friends they can get, and they will have lost a load.
The PO staff have been prosecuted for false accounting / theft where the convictions are unsafe as no money was actually stolen / falsely accounted.
We need the convictions to be quashed. We can't over-turn the law as we did with Turing etc - we're not abolishing Theft. Nor should we pardon the convicted. Pardon means they did it and we're forgiving them. They *didn't* do it.
But it isn't for parliament to just overturn court judgements even when courts and juries get it wrong. They can instruct the legal system to address the miscarriage of justice. But MPs just declaring people innocent because its politically expedient...?
The problem (with the status quo) is that court appeals need to be heard individually and it will all take ages and cost a fortune, as well as being stressful and time consuming for those involved. More people will die before they get their pardon.
The problem with what is likely to happen is the risk of a simplistic solution to a complex problem, that might raise issues of its own (such as letting off actually guilty people), that itself might take a while (producing and delivering legislation through all its stages not being notorious for speed), where the precedent of parliament over-riding the courts with legislation goes against our precious judiciary independence (cf. current goings on across the pond), and where it might leave some of the SPMRs dissatisfied that they've been pardoned en masse at the sweep of a pen without their own "days in court" and without anyone having looked at, and dismissed, the (flawed) evidence that led to their personal conviction.
The Post Office, since 1985 at least, does not have its own 'special powers' to prosecute.
The powers are statutory, but are the same powers any individual or corporate body has to bring a prosecution:
The powers fall under Section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985.
Similarly with the RSPCA, while historically it was unusual in having an active role in regularly bringing prosecutions, it has been doing so since 1985 under the same powers that a private individual possesses.
The RSPCA has recently voluntarily given up conducting private prosecutions.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/post_office_investigation_branch_2/response/73875/attach/4/Brief History of Security in Royal Mail.pdf
An this one will have to work first time.
That need not be separately demonstrated in each case, since it's the same unreliability across all of them.
Government could block the Post Office from challenging appeals (a significant source of delay), and allow appeals en masse.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/08/ministers-clear-names-victims-post-office-horizon-accounting-it-scandal
SpaceX have a series of mahoosive hurdles to straddle before they can send a man down to the lunar surface. For me, the SLS's technical issues pale into relative insignifcance.
Not also sure if this has been mentioned but another poll out in Michigan - 8 point lead for Trump
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/michigan/trump-vs-biden
It seems the CPS did prosecute 50 odd post masters, so let’s see; maybe it was before his time or below his pay grade
That’s not to say the defence lawyers in some cases could have done better but there’s no suggestion, as far as I can see, of malpractice on their part.
EDIT: the SS heat shield is not required. If required, the tankers, like the lander, will be expendable.
There's some interesting legal discussion about this specific background matter, here:
https://barristermagazine.com/evidence-from-computers-the-unreliable-legal-presumption-that-without-more-it-can-be-relied-upon/
Where lawyers did fall down, particularly in the most egregious cases that led to imprisonment, is in not realising the complete absence of any evidence of theft, or of the defendant having unexplained funds or unusually lavish lifestyle. The false accounting convictions are perhaps understandable given all the bad stuff that had gone before (and most were of course guilty pleas), but to be done for theft based not on any proof but because they couldn't prove their innocence is a staggering legal head-over-heels, which surely at least one of our learned friends should have stopped to think about - especially the first senior judge before whom the issue was raised.
It was like being done for murder just because the purported victim has disappeared, without any body, on the basis that "they aren't here therefore you must have killed them".
"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”."
Rural voters are more likely to back Labour than the Tories at the next election following a huge swing to the Left in traditionally true blue territory, new polling suggests.
The Conservatives have been warned “a Portillo moment is possible anywhere” as a newly-released survey put Sir Keir Starmer’s party four points ahead in the countryside.
It comes as Labour has vowed to “park our tanks on the Tories’ fields” in a bid to claw back the rural vote, with Steve Reed, the new shadow environment secretary, leading the charge.
The poll, by Labour Together, found that 34 per cent of people in villages or rural areas would back Sir Keir’s party at the next election, compared to 30 per cent who preferred the Conservatives.
It amounts to a 17-point swing to Labour compared with 2019, based on the respondents’ self-reported voting history.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/10/rural-voters-more-likely-back-labour-than-tories-poll/
@PostOffInquiry
📢Sir Wyn Williams has jointly appointed Dame Sandra Dawson and Dr Katy Steward as Governance Expert Witnesses. Their expert reports will address issues relating to leadership, management and governance.
👉 Read more: https://postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/news/horizon-it-inquiry-jointly-appoints-dame-sandra-dawson-and-dr-katy-steward-governance-expert"
https://twitter.com/PostOffInquiry/status/1744667167444910309
But lawyers are experts in finding reasons why the quick and easy needs replacing with the lengthy, complicated and expensive.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/4/section/40
The impression I got from Ydoethur's comments [not that he is liable!] was that quite a few in Scotland werew at the lowest court - sheriff court - and pleading guilty ab initio. Advised by solicitors to do so rather than risk prison, whatever the truth? So the PF/legal system would hardly get a look-in. This will have happened a lot everywhere. As would those simply paying up the money demanded with menaces without even getting to a court, as Ydoethur al;so noted.
One big contributory factor was that back in the days of pen and paper the PO always suspected that many of SPMs were creaming off the profits, but it was hard to prove. When Horizon came along it was a classic case of confirmation bias.
Once the number of prosecutions began to mount however you would have thought common sense would have caused some managers to say 'Hang on....' In a way, I guess that's what yer old man is saying and of course he is right, Cicero.
So they could, and I am sure did, press witnesses on reliability of Post Office systems where the defence was that an error had been made. But those giving evidence in most cases very probably believed there wasn't a real risk of error (I don't think the allegation is that everyone in the Post Office IT department knew there was a problem - the issue is who knew what and when as evidence of flaws stacked up).
I think TV crime dramas give a bit of a misleading view of this at times. Defence teams aren't carrying out a parallel investigation. They are poking holes in material that the prosecution MUST provide, which includes relevant material that does NOT support their case. They might call an expert witness, but really only to say "the prosecution expert witness is being overly bullish here - I see the evidence a bit differently". Defences can't really be blamed where evidence they don't know exists but that should have been provided, simply has not been provided.
I don't understand why you constantly downgrade the difficulties SpaceX face? I'm not saying they can't do it; I'm not saying they won't do it, especially eventually; just that the challenges they face are far greater than those facing SLS/Orion.
At the moment, I am optimistic that many of the culprits will get their come-uppance. Not sure that will be the case with the civil servants though. They clearly bear some of the responsibility, but are saved by the mask of anonymity. Not sure how you remedy that.
Was that ever answered, either on tv or irl. ie, did anyone ever say to her conclusively, yes or no.
That seems like human nature...
See the inquiry video here at about 1 hour 8 mins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkdFLLojhVQ
In practice, I think it ain't possible,
This has consistently been proven to be very, very expensive and risk disaster.
To put it another way - it is quite probable that by the time they get close to a lunar landing, the version numbers for SS will be in the triple digits.
Orion will be carrying people on the second or third one ever made.
The Apollo program was told: this has to succeed & the budget is whatever it takes. Therefore, when making technical design choices, choose the proven & known to work system that costs 20x the unproven replacement every time.
...would have been worth asking?
The answer to your question is that they threw money at the problem; about 2.5% of GDP over a decade. NASA's current budget, for everything they do, not just Artemis, is 0.3-0.4% of GDP.
And what is being proposed is a much more complex mission than Apollo - and hopefully one that will be much longer-lasting.
Her bonus could also have been factored on other indicators such as improvements in delivery times or scale, staff efficiencies or other factors.
Again I’m not trying to defend her for no reason but maybe the clamour to claw back her bonuses needs to be more nuanced?
This swing is one reason I think the Lib Dems could outperform expectations in their old West Country stomping grounds this year, while slightly disappointing hopes in the Blue Wall where tax cuts will bring back the Tory faithful.
Labour encroaching on rural seats does rather make the LD-Labour tactical vote position a bit more complicated though, as Mid Beds demonstrated.
Look through the past 100 and let me know the stats.
One was funding - PO resources were effectively unlimited; those available to a defendant (even assuming they qualified for legal aid, which many wouldn't) were strictly limited.
The second was the burden of proof. Cyclefree was banged on about this repeatedly, but it bears another repetition.
https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2022/06/30/the-legal-rule-that-computers-are-presumed-to-be-operating-correctly-unforeseen-and-unjust-consequences/
...In 1997, the Law Commission published a paper Evidence in Criminal Proceedings: Hearsay and Related Topics. Computer evidence was considered in Part XIII. Reviewing the problems faced by prosecutors, the Law Commission considered the law to be unsatisfactory and expressed its view that PACE 1984 s69 served ‘no useful purpose’. It proposed that s69 should be repealed (and not replaced) with the effect that:
‘In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the courts will presume that mechanical instruments were in order at the material time.’
The Law Commission considered that the words ‘mechanical instruments’ would extend (by default) to include computers.
The law is changed
Section 69 of PACE 1984 was repealed by the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. The result was that the law makes the presumption that the Law Commission identified and recommended...
In situations like those of the PO defendants, the burden of proof in defending a criminal case is effectively reversed. You're guilty unless you can prove the evidence against you is false.
As we've seen, even the PO wasn't able to get such evidence from Fujitsu, and they were the customer. The chances of a defendant doing so were close to nil.
You're the one making the claim. Substantiate it.
That's hardly the defence being lazy - that's solid, practical advice at the time. Indeed, not just at the time - it's advice that probably did save people from a prison sentence and stress in addition to that they had already suffered. The fact evidence emerged later that would have exhonerated them years later isn't really relevant.
If the client's response was "I refuse to plead guilty when I'm not", then I am reasonably confident that defence teams would have run the case as best they could. Maybe there are defence lawyers who slacken off because they feel it's an uphill climb to get a not guilty outcome. But there's no real evidence that's the case here, or indeed in the many other cases where the prosecution evidence looks superficially quite strong.
But this will be concentrated in the south-east and some of the south-west. I think the Midlands and North rural seats will be a little better for the Conservatives because the demographics are different.
There are of course socio-economic demographics but even in, say, Chipping Norton, there are as many C2 &DEs, indeed more than AB & C1s.
Amongst her rewards were the gong and a position in the Cabinet office. Both date from 2019. I think when the hoohah over Davy and SKS dies down a bit, we say see a more forensic examination of who was responsible for these. That would be worth knowing, but nobody is owning up at the moment.
The gong has of course gone back now, but nothing yet about her salary/pension from the Cabinet Office.
But what's remarkable in the coverage of the last week or so is how the Conservative government, in untrammelled power and not lifting a finger on this since 2015, have managed to escape any criticism at all. Truly an achievement of Houdiniesque proportions.
A sensible order of culpability based on the facts we've now all seen would go:
1. Post Office
2. Fujitsu
3. Tory ministers in the last 3 or 4 years since the miscarriage of justice became obvious
4. Lib Dem coalition ministers who ignored warnings
5. The courts, which too easily accepted computer evidence
With PO and Fujitsu surely taking 80%+ of the blame because it was their mess.
Starmer as DPP doesn't even make it into the top 10.