eek said: show previous quotes And it's especially hard if you've been there a long time - I find it easier to point stuff out because I have enough money to live with the consequences of being asked to clear my desk.
I don't think many people within the organisation were in a position to do that - and that is a problem that is virtually impossible to fix.
"I found it easier the longer I had been there - partly because I had established my credibility and toughness (the first time I called out some serious bad behaviour it did not go down well but I had my boss's backing and just kept going. The individual concerned was later put in front of one of the Parliamentary committees on Banking Misbehaviour and had a very uncomfortable time claiming not to know anything), partly because there was external pressure on the organisation ie a regulator and partly because of the context. It was obvious that banks were cocking a lot up even if many did not want to admit how widespread it was.
The Post Office had no external regulator, Ministers were ineffective, the senior leadership believed IT could never go wrong, their internal staff saw themselves as acting only in the interests of the PO and being judge, jury and prosecutor in your own cause is a recipe for disaster. Plus a large dose of cowardice by lots of people - a very common factor in all these situations. Lots of people will fail to do the right thing because they are scared for their jobs, cannot afford to lose them etc etc. Individually they may not be bad people but the consequence of their inaction is that bad things happen."
It sounds like they’d convinced themselves - with little evidence - that there was a massive theft problem, and the funky new computer system was going to expose the scale of the problem.
When the errors started, they were cheering that they’d found the theft, and everything else flowed from there.
No-one senior ever stood back and asked “Are you completely sure we have got this right?”
It raises questions for the Post Office's auditors too. If they really thought there was all this fraud going on, how come it had not been picked up before? And why did the auditors not notice anything wrong with what Horizon was showing?
I suspect the auditors bit comes down to the sheer scale of the post office - auditing would merely picking up the end figures which would be £x,000 missing at this post office especially as all the transactions seem to be correct and in place? Remember the issue stems from transactions that were placed in the custom written "messaging" system
It really was the case that Horizon cost so much and was written by experts so it can't be wrong.
The potential liabilities for wrongly prosecuting so many people are, of course, enormous.
Less than the £1bn the post office spent on the software though.
£1bn reasons why the software is right and the innocent postmaster guilty as....
Though large enough for any barely competent auditor to take note of, I'd suggest ?
It's worth looking at the issue.
You have a cash balance sheet at a branch that doesn't quite match
And a set of recorded transactions that look 100% complete with no obvious gaps.
Those transactions match in 99.9% of all other branches for that day.
Who do you think is going to take the blame, the computer system that cost £1bn has been fully tested and has recorded 99.9999% of transactions correctly or the post master?
The truth is this was one of those awful instances where the computer system was not 100% perfect (yet seemed to be) and a company who thought they had finally identified a means of catching fraud...
I think it stems back to the intention of the system when it was put it in - was this a reaction to pick up fraud and theft? Was that a big selling point? If so when the resultant cases were identified then those introducing it would have seen no problem.
Everyone knows it doesn't matter. He's hardly the only politician who people will believe said X even if there was no definitive proof and it was denied. No doubt he has benefit from such a tendency in the past about others saying things.
It just doesn't ring true. It doesn't sound like a statement he would have ever made or anyone else for that matter, certainly not using those words.. I'm not a fan of Boris but this sounds nonsense..
What a surprise. I presume she'll be charged this time next year for crimes she'll have committed when locked up in prison.
It reminds me of the step by step erosion of democracy in Hong Kong - it doesn't fool anyone, they don't expect it to fool anyone, so I'm not entirely sure why the ones taking the actions don't just give up the pretence and just admit what they are doing and why.
I guess it is tradition to dance around the truth in such matters.
Requiring your populace to accept such obvious lies is the point.
If the two major parties have lost 6% and lib dems gain 2, wher3 have the other 4 gone?
And no that isnt a gcse maths question.
The other 4 have gone to the pub.
The other 4% are furious ex-tory voters like myself who are incensed that every conservative principle in the book has been abandoned wholesale by the Johnson government over the past year. Voters who would never vote labour or liberal but cannot vote tory right now....
Not to worry. its 4% now, this time next year it will be 14%,
Out of interest, how would your opinion of Boris Johnson change (if at all) if he admitted to having made the "pile the bodies high" comment, in the context of preferring it to another lockdown?
I can't keep up with the woke stuff....the BBC describe Chloe Zhao as the first woman of colour to win best director.
Since when have people from China been described as people of colour? Or am I missing something?
About a year. People of color now means anyone who is the tiniest bit non-white (but not Jews, obvs)
The phrase “of color” has about 2 years of life left, I reckon. After that it will be seen as grossly offensive, and it will follow BAME into the lexical bin
I was genuinely presuming I didn't know something about her background, that she is actually of mixed race or something. I have honestly never heard people from Asia being described as such.
Do the wokies not realise that labelling every non-white person as such sounds very much like "othering" that genuine racists / racist countries practice e.g South Africa back in the day, describing all none 100% white European as the coloureds.
It's rather more to do with the fact that the Oscars have basically ignored anything that wasn't either from the US or the UK for most of their history.
The BBC, struggling as it does to represent the broad span of British culture, is always going to come across as muddled. It's neither woke nor reactionary - just a muddled compromise between the two.
The more notable thing about a director out of China winning the Oscar is that Chinese media has deliberately ignored it, as she is not politically acceptable to them.
No, the phrase ‘of color’ is now applied to virtually all non-whites in the USA, and this ridiculous usage is spreading to the UK. It’s nothing to do with the BBC being ‘muddled’
‘Chloé Zhao on Sunday became the first woman of color, the first Chinese woman and the second woman ever to win the Oscar for directing, capping off an impressive run of honors for her work on the drama “Nomadland.”’
As I said, this patronising and tortured locution will disappear quite soon; see the history of the almost identical expression ‘colored person’, which is now deemed so offensive it can get you fired
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
The problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
Because they are a shower of misogynistic, demented, corrupt and deeply unpleasant fools who use innocent people as tools in their internal battles with total disregard to their welfare or because Boris said something that could have been misinterpreted more than 3 years ago now, take your pick. And if you pick the latter have a good look at yourselves.
It's not an either/or because the level of culpability is a complete mismatch. Johnson was sloppy, and it should haunt him that he was, but it's nonsense to blame anyone but the Iranian regime for Nazanin's ordeal. Same with the debt issue. We do owe them money, I gather, and that's relevant, but it doesn't shift the direct blame for the outrage.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
One of the few good things on it, The Simpsons has been butchered for people not able to cope with TV made for 4:3 aspect ratios.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
Because in the US, it isn't just superheroes and baby Yodas, its a package of Disney+ + Hulu (including live TV channels) + ESPN. That's why they are winning. One package, you get kids, sports, grown up telly and the major traditional channels all in one much cheaper than the alternatives. Oh and they now have the best streaming tech.
I can't keep up with the woke stuff....the BBC describe Chloe Zhao as the first woman of colour to win best director.
Since when have people from China been described as people of colour? Or am I missing something?
About a year. People of color now means anyone who is the tiniest bit non-white (but not Jews, obvs)
The phrase “of color” has about 2 years of life left, I reckon. After that it will be seen as grossly offensive, and it will follow BAME into the lexical bin
Don't know why you guys obsess so much about this stuff. It's in your top 3 topics for sure and Francis is forever wittering on about it. And not to pick on him because quite a few others do too.
"So what do we call a mixed race Afro-Tibetan these days? Same as last week? I've totally lost track ... bla bla."
It's really naff. Just let it go and chill. It's not a big deal. And in any case the new game in town - and it's from your side of the fence - is that to talk about race is a sign of racism. So all you need to do is comply with your own mantra.
And yet you get so exercised by this trivial matter when we bring it up. Odd
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
As a weirdo adult fan of superheroes, I resent this comment.
Everyone knows it doesn't matter. He's hardly the only politician who people will believe said X even if there was no definitive proof and it was denied. No doubt he has benefit from such a tendency in the past about others saying things.
It just doesn't ring true. It doesn't sound like a statement he would have ever made or anyone else for that matter, certainly not using those words.. I'm not a fan of Boris but this sounds nonsense..
It totally does ring true (to me, at least), but clear that he was speaking idiomatically rather than literally. It's a classic throwaway comment that no politician can admit to saying, so is reduced to either lying about, or exerting an iron discipline over their speech patterns throughout their career and never making. Johnson was never going to go for the latter.
This is, by the way, an absolute classic example of why it's meaningless that no-one trusts what he says. No-one trusts anything any politician says, because the adversarial nature of politics - and particularly the "gotcha" style of opposition we seem to have ended up with* - practically forces these sorts of stories.
*(Not specifically Labour, by the way, because both US parties are worse and the Tories probably would be almost as bad in opposition as well.)
Ha. Yes, I could give you some similar stories back. I think there's a case for statutory auditing being public sector and controlled by budget and goals not profit motive. A bunch of people who do that and only that and have one objective. Check out the accounts and the key controls. I know the arguments the other way - closeness to the business makes you more astute, public sector leads to sleepy sclerosis, you wouldn't get quality people, corruption is possible - but the upside (removing the conflict of interest and restoring genuine rigour and independence to the audit) is considerable.
Perhaps the best way woud be to remember what an audit is for, who it is for and make it work that way. An audit is for the shareholders (ONLY) to confirm the accounts are not materially misstated. [1]
But because the UK has legislated to make all companies have audits (at least until the year 2000) combined with that report going on public record and the whole point of it has been lost.
Remove the legal requirement for companies to have an audit. Entirely. From Tesco PLC to Tiny corner shop Limited. Then, if the shareholders want an audit make it their responsibility to file at Companies House a request by 51% of shareholders for the audit. That way the auditors, when appointed (though by whom?) know they are genuinely doing the job because a shareholder wants it, not because they are legally required to do it.
Will this work? No idea, but its probably better than the current 'arrangements' where the Big 4 are never out the pages of Accountancy in the Disciplinaries section, but the fine of £100,000 they just shrug off (whilst adding to the bill) and keep doing what they're doing.
[1] Except not really - Caparo Industries v Dickman got rid of that pesky requirement too.
If suspicion of a hostile outside world helped blind German authorities to the fraud at Wirecard, so did a desire to join that world. Global leadership has become an obsession in Germany, and this obsession has lent itself to a particular kind of low-grade scam: one that simulates worldly sophistication for a hometown crowd.
Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius published blockbuster reports about Trump’s America that were full of fabrications and screaming inaccuracies. German academics, politicians, and corporate leaders often claim to have “attended” famous global universities, when in fact they held little more than a library card there. Current European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for example, got in some hot water in 2015 for having claimed she studied at Stanford, when in fact she appears to have sat in on a few classes. Wirecard exploited this mix of interconnectedness and provincialism. It made its “profits” in this no-man’s-land of phony globalization, and the country’s press and regulators seemed unsuited to call the company out on it, because plenty of them make their home in that same zone.
Reminiscent of the vehicle emissions scandal - everyone knew and everyone pretended otherwise.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
My better half told me we had to get it because it had a Winter Soldier series or something.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
Lol if you think there's an essential difference between the Mandalorian and a superhero show.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
Because in the US, it isn't just superheroes and baby Yodas, its a package of Disney+ + Hulu (including live TV channels) + ESPN. That's why they are winning. One package, you get kids, sports, grown up telly and the major traditional channels all in one much cheaper than the alternatives. Oh and they now have the best streaming tech.
I'm not in the US though, so why should I care about ESPN and a pile of American sports? As for the streaming tech, I haven't noticed any difference between that and its competitors. In fact, it's worse for me as unlike Netflix and Prime it isn't integrated into my cable box.
Boris Johnson asked, did you say you would let "bodies pile high in their thousands"? PM: "No, but I think the important thing that people want us to get on and do as a government is to make sure that the lockdowns work, and they have." https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1386645111245885444
The silence from the Boris fanbois on PB this lunchtime is deafening.
Come on chaps, which is it? "Boris will be Boris", or "it's just satire".
Or - a 3rd option - just hardball "man of the world" talk from a tough leader with no time for pussyfooting niceties as he grapples with the biggest crisis in peacetime since the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
I can't keep up with the woke stuff....the BBC describe Chloe Zhao as the first woman of colour to win best director.
Since when have people from China been described as people of colour? Or am I missing something?
About a year. People of color now means anyone who is the tiniest bit non-white (but not Jews, obvs)
The phrase “of color” has about 2 years of life left, I reckon. After that it will be seen as grossly offensive, and it will follow BAME into the lexical bin
I was genuinely presuming I didn't know something about her background, that she is actually of mixed race or something. I have honestly never heard people from Asia being described as such.
Do the wokies not realise that labelling every non-white person as such sounds very much like "othering" that genuine racists / racist countries practice e.g South Africa back in the day, describing all none 100% white European as the coloureds.
It's rather more to do with the fact that the Oscars have basically ignored anything that wasn't either from the US or the UK for most of their history.
The BBC, struggling as it does to represent the broad span of British culture, is always going to come across as muddled. It's neither woke nor reactionary - just a muddled compromise between the two.
The more notable thing about a director out of China winning the Oscar is that Chinese media has deliberately ignored it, as she is not politically acceptable to them.
No, the phrase ‘of color’ is now applied to virtually all non-whites in the USA, and this ridiculous usage is spreading to the UK. It’s nothing to do with the BBC being ‘muddled’
‘Chloé Zhao on Sunday became the first woman of color, the first Chinese woman and the second woman ever to win the Oscar for directing, capping off an impressive run of honors for her work on the drama “Nomadland.”’
As I said, this patronising and tortured locution will disappear quite soon; see the history of the almost identical expression ‘colored person’, which is now deemed so offensive it can get you fired
I remember Beneditch Cumberbatch getting into all sorts of trouble using it and an outraged mob raining anger on him on Twitter. It’s a term many of my generation would use and without malice and without aiming to cause offence. The term BAME is going the same way.
Weird unforced errors from Boris. He’s ahead in the polls, he’s got a modest economic boom on the way, his vax rollout is world famous, yet he seems rattled. He’s sacked too many good advisors, methinks
If the two major parties have lost 6% and lib dems gain 2, wher3 have the other 4 gone?
And no that isnt a gcse maths question.
The other 4 have gone to the pub.
The other 4% are furious ex-tory voters like myself who are incensed that every conservative principle in the book has been abandoned wholesale by the Johnson government over the past year. Voters who would never vote labour or liberal but cannot vote tory right now....
Not to worry. its 4% now, this time next year it will be 14%,
Out of interest, how would your opinion of Boris Johnson change (if at all) if he admitted to having made the "pile the bodies high" comment, in the context of preferring it to another lockdown?
Not at all.
I have long since parted company with Johnson and the tories on lockdown. Long since, I don't care what Johnson said, or when, or what he does now.
For conservatives of my disposition Ron de Santis is the man. If he doesn't get the 2024 republican nomination he will get very close, but what is certain is that his narrative will have reached a far wider audience by then.
Ha. Yes, I could give you some similar stories back. I think there's a case for statutory auditing being public sector and controlled by budget and goals not profit motive. A bunch of people who do that and only that and have one objective. Check out the accounts and the key controls. I know the arguments the other way - closeness to the business makes you more astute, public sector leads to sleepy sclerosis, you wouldn't get quality people, corruption is possible - but the upside (removing the conflict of interest and restoring genuine rigour and independence to the audit) is considerable.
Perhaps the best way woud be to remember what an audit is for, who it is for and make it work that way. An audit is for the shareholders (ONLY) to confirm the accounts are not materially misstated. [1]
But because the UK has legislated to make all companies have audits (at least until the year 2000) combined with that report going on public record and the whole point of it has been lost.
Remove the legal requirement for companies to have an audit. Entirely. From Tesco PLC to Tiny corner shop Limited. Then, if the shareholders want an audit make it their responsibility to file at Companies House a request by 51% of shareholders for the audit. That way the auditors, when appointed (though by whom?) know they are genuinely doing the job because a shareholder wants it, not because they are legally required to do it.
Will this work? No idea, but its probably better than the current 'arrangements' where the Big 4 are never out the pages of Accountancy in the Disciplinaries section, but the fine of £100,000 they just shrug off (whilst adding to the bill) and keep doing what they're doing.
[1] Except not really - Caparo Industries v Dickman got rid of that pesky requirement too.
Or, have auditors recommended by the firm but formally appointed by and responsible to the Regulator (not sure which regulator, but bear with me...) and force them to charge on timecost rather than fixed fee arrangements?
eek said: show previous quotes And it's especially hard if you've been there a long time - I find it easier to point stuff out because I have enough money to live with the consequences of being asked to clear my desk.
I don't think many people within the organisation were in a position to do that - and that is a problem that is virtually impossible to fix.
"I found it easier the longer I had been there - partly because I had established my credibility and toughness (the first time I called out some serious bad behaviour it did not go down well but I had my boss's backing and just kept going. The individual concerned was later put in front of one of the Parliamentary committees on Banking Misbehaviour and had a very uncomfortable time claiming not to know anything), partly because there was external pressure on the organisation ie a regulator and partly because of the context. It was obvious that banks were cocking a lot up even if many did not want to admit how widespread it was.
The Post Office had no external regulator, Ministers were ineffective, the senior leadership believed IT could never go wrong, their internal staff saw themselves as acting only in the interests of the PO and being judge, jury and prosecutor in your own cause is a recipe for disaster. Plus a large dose of cowardice by lots of people - a very common factor in all these situations. Lots of people will fail to do the right thing because they are scared for their jobs, cannot afford to lose them etc etc. Individually they may not be bad people but the consequence of their inaction is that bad things happen."
It sounds like they’d convinced themselves - with little evidence - that there was a massive theft problem, and the funky new computer system was going to expose the scale of the problem.
When the errors started, they were cheering that they’d found the theft, and everything else flowed from there.
No-one senior ever stood back and asked “Are you completely sure we have got this right?”
It raises questions for the Post Office's auditors too. If they really thought there was all this fraud going on, how come it had not been picked up before? And why did the auditors not notice anything wrong with what Horizon was showing?
I suspect the auditors bit comes down to the sheer scale of the post office - auditing would merely picking up the end figures which would be £x,000 missing at this post office especially as all the transactions seem to be correct and in place? Remember the issue stems from transactions that were placed in the custom written "messaging" system
It really was the case that Horizon cost so much and was written by experts so it can't be wrong.
The potential liabilities for wrongly prosecuting so many people are, of course, enormous.
Less than the £1bn the post office spent on the software though.
£1bn reasons why the software is right and the innocent postmaster guilty as....
Though large enough for any barely competent auditor to take note of, I'd suggest ?
It's worth looking at the issue.
You have a cash balance sheet at a branch that doesn't quite match
And a set of recorded transactions that look 100% complete with no obvious gaps.
Those transactions match in 99.9% of all other branches for that day.
Who do you think is going to take the blame, the computer system that cost £1bn has been fully tested and has recorded 99.9999% of transactions correctly or the post master?
The truth is this was one of those awful instances where the computer system was not 100% perfect (yet seemed to be) and a company who thought they had finally identified a means of catching fraud...
I think it stems back to the intention of the system when it was put it in - was this a reaction to pick up fraud and theft? Was that a big selling point? If so when the resultant cases were identified then those introducing it would have seen no problem.
As I understand it, it was meant to be an accounting system not a fraud detection system. Which makes what subsequently happened worse. The system was simply not fit for purpose, was not tested properly and those implementing it knew there were bugs in it which were more than teething problems but simply covered this up and assumed that what it showed must be as a result of fraud not a crap system. Or worse stated this because it shifted the blame onto others rather than onto those designing a rubbish system.
Yeah, I can’t see this being a major story although blue ticks in the media are all over it. Even to the extent of claiming if Johnson was calling up editors he wasn’t focused on Covid. Which is quite absurd to claim that.
A total of 46 percent of respondents to the CBS News-YouGov poll who identified as Republican said the Hennepin County jury reached the "wrong verdict." Only 10 percent of Democrats said the same thing.
Among all respondents, 75 percent said the jury reached the right verdict, while 25 percent said it did not....
Sort of depends what they asked / meant by wrong verdict. He was charged with 3 different things, I don't think the more sane legal minds thought all 3 counts were a slam dunk.
The judge originally threw out murder in the 3rd degree charge because he felt it didn't fit the criteria but the prosecution argued it should be in there off the back of another cop killing case.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
Lol if you think there's an essential difference between the Mandalorian and a superhero show.
There probably isn't. I watched a couple of Mandalorian episodes because I was recommended it and thought it well-crafted. The rest of the offerings left me completely cold. So I have a free subscription that's almost entirely unused – yet almost daily on PB I'm told how great it is.
I hope AZ sue them right back. From Handelsblatt to Macron, they have killed thousands and now they don’t even want the fecking jabs. My god
So, we're suing you for not delivering something we don't want. If I was an EU citizen I would be asking if I could sue the EU commission for corporate manslaughter.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
As a weirdo adult fan of superheroes, I resent this comment.
In fairness, there's lots of superhero stuff on Netflix too – although it doesn't dominate a la Disney+.
I can't keep up with the woke stuff....the BBC describe Chloe Zhao as the first woman of colour to win best director.
Since when have people from China been described as people of colour? Or am I missing something?
About a year. People of color now means anyone who is the tiniest bit non-white (but not Jews, obvs)
The phrase “of color” has about 2 years of life left, I reckon. After that it will be seen as grossly offensive, and it will follow BAME into the lexical bin
I was genuinely presuming I didn't know something about her background, that she is actually of mixed race or something. I have honestly never heard people from Asia being described as such.
Do the wokies not realise that labelling every non-white person as such sounds very much like "othering" that genuine racists / racist countries practice e.g South Africa back in the day, describing all none 100% white European as the coloureds.
It's rather more to do with the fact that the Oscars have basically ignored anything that wasn't either from the US or the UK for most of their history.
The BBC, struggling as it does to represent the broad span of British culture, is always going to come across as muddled. It's neither woke nor reactionary - just a muddled compromise between the two.
The more notable thing about a director out of China winning the Oscar is that Chinese media has deliberately ignored it, as she is not politically acceptable to them.
No, the phrase ‘of color’ is now applied to virtually all non-whites in the USA, and this ridiculous usage is spreading to the UK. It’s nothing to do with the BBC being ‘muddled’
‘Chloé Zhao on Sunday became the first woman of color, the first Chinese woman and the second woman ever to win the Oscar for directing, capping off an impressive run of honors for her work on the drama “Nomadland.”’
As I said, this patronising and tortured locution will disappear quite soon; see the history of the almost identical expression ‘colored person’, which is now deemed so offensive it can get you fired
I remember Beneditch Cumberbatch getting into all sorts of trouble using it and an outraged mob raining anger on him on Twitter. It’s a term many of my generation would use and without malice and without aiming to cause offence. The term BAME is going the same way.
A friend of mine - absent minded liberal type - recently and accidentally used the phrase ‘coloured person’ rather than ‘person of colour’ in a professional Zoom call. He froze immediately, well aware that if it got picked up his career was over. His trade is super woke and full of cancellations, and he had rivals on the Zoom call.
No one noticed. He’s fine.
But how absurd that we have reached this stage of paranoia. Like Victorians shrouding piano legs in case they seem arousing
Michael Gove will answer an urgent question in the House of Commons at 3:30pm on the ministerial code. I'm told he'll robustly defend the PM and reinforce No10's stance the "bodies piled high" quote is a "lie". No wiggle-room, so it's now all down to whether there's audio. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1386654526447443970
Weird unforced errors from Boris. He’s ahead in the polls, he’s got a modest economic boom on the way, his vax rollout is world famous, yet he seems rattled. He’s sacked too many good advisors, methinks
As previously suggested, a Dom would have advised against going up against Dom
Sounds like someone has set a trap for him. There's going to be a recording, isnt there?
Cummings has already said he has recordings.
The Peston tweet makes the point that "Cummings is the Rat" statements by number 10 are plain wrong - Cummings wasn't his source. So with the PM personally briefing newspaper editors to say it was Cummings it is no wonder Dom is on the warpath.
As Marc Almond said, the sweet revenge of a lover SPAD spurned
Michael Gove will answer an urgent question in the House of Commons at 3:30pm on the ministerial code. I'm told he'll robustly defend the PM and reinforce No10's stance the "bodies piled high" quote is a "lie". No wiggle-room, so it's now all down to whether there's audio. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1386654526447443970
It will be interesting to see exactly how Gove says it - because if Cummings is involved there probably is audio...
Michael Gove will answer an urgent question in the House of Commons at 3:30pm on the ministerial code. I'm told he'll robustly defend the PM and reinforce No10's stance the "bodies piled high" quote is a "lie". No wiggle-room, so it's now all down to whether there's audio. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1386654526447443970
We all know that "breaking the ministerial code" doesn't matter anymore, so who cares?
Weird unforced errors from Boris. He’s ahead in the polls, he’s got a modest economic boom on the way, his vax rollout is world famous, yet he seems rattled. He’s sacked too many good advisors, methinks
It’s astonishing to see. Totally unforced errors. It’s like there is an implosion at the heart of govt. He will lose against Cummings easily.
Given that the bodies have indeed been piled up by the thousand in order to keep international travel going I don't see the surprise.
Restrictions and lack of them come with both benefits and costs.
Perhaps the media frothers, most/all of whom have been obsessing about being allowed to go on foreign holidays, would like to say how many thousands of dead they're willing to accept to have international travel.
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
Lol if you think there's an essential difference between the Mandalorian and a superhero show.
There probably isn't. I watched a couple of Mandalorian episodes because I was recommended it and thought it well-crafted. The rest of the offerings left me completely cold. So I have a free subscription that's almost entirely unused – yet almost daily on PB I'm told how great it is.
It isn't.
We've got Netflix and iplayer (and the other domestic free catchup, in principle, if we ever find anything on there). That's it. And we've got a massive backlog of recommended shows that we haven't got round to watching. How do people find the time?
I'd be willing to pay for a fairly universal film streaming service - say pretty much everything the same time it's available on DVD, but otherwise Netflix/iplayer is more than enough.
We've got two young children and we do also read books, so I guess that eats into our TV viewing capacity, but still...
Netflix still rules the streaming universe. As of the end of March, it had 207.6 million total paying subscribers, with about 67 million in the United States, the company noted in an earnings report on Tuesday. But its main competitors — Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV+, as well as the old-guard streamers Amazon Prime Video and Hulu — have cut into Netflix's share of viewers' attention... according to the data firm Parrot Analytics, which has developed a metric to rate not only the number of viewers for given shows, but their likelihood of attracting subscribers to a streaming service.
There problem with Disney+ is that it's, er, a bit rubbish. Unless you are a weirdo Adult Fan of Superheros, there's the Mandalorian and that's about it. I have it because it's currently free to me but I'd never pay for it.
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
One of the few good things on it, The Simpsons has been butchered for people not able to cope with TV made for 4:3 aspect ratios.
I believe you can now pick whether you want butchered or original aspect ratios nowadays.
Boris Johnson asked, did you say you would let "bodies pile high in their thousands"? PM: "No, but I think the important thing that people want us to get on and do as a government is to make sure that the lockdowns work, and they have." https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1386645111245885444
The silence from the Boris fanbois on PB this lunchtime is deafening.
Come on chaps, which is it? "Boris will be Boris", or "it's just satire".
Or - a 3rd option - just hardball "man of the world" talk from a tough leader with no time for pussyfooting niceties as he grapples with the biggest crisis in peacetime since the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
I can see an outing for that.
A fair point.
Or, he has been too busy (I have seen it for myself on nightly TV news) inventing vaccines in his lab coat and driving forklift trucks in his hi viz coat to have had the time to make such callously casual statements.
What a surprise. I presume she'll be charged this time next year for crimes she'll have committed when locked up in prison.
It reminds me of the step by step erosion of democracy in Hong Kong - it doesn't fool anyone, they don't expect it to fool anyone, so I'm not entirely sure why the ones taking the actions don't just give up the pretence and just admit what they are doing and why.
I guess it is tradition to dance around the truth in such matters.
I suppose, even in a complete dictatorship, you've got to pretend there is a veneer of democratic accountability. Avoiding Godwin, I believe the Soviet Union show trials always have the victims 'confess' to all sorts of outrageous lies, and admitted to doing things they couldn't possibility have done.
The state has to have a 'reason', even though everyone knows the real reason is 'because we want to'.
Michael Gove will answer an urgent question in the House of Commons at 3:30pm on the ministerial code. I'm told he'll robustly defend the PM and reinforce No10's stance the "bodies piled high" quote is a "lie". No wiggle-room, so it's now all down to whether there's audio. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1386654526447443970
What's interesting is that a genuine conservative like De Santis would never have made a comment like that, simply because he didn't swallow the SAGE narrative on the efficacy of lockdown whole.
And every day the bodies are not piling up in Florida and Texas is a good day for his narrative.
Weird unforced errors from Boris. He’s ahead in the polls, he’s got a modest economic boom on the way, his vax rollout is world famous, yet he seems rattled. He’s sacked too many good advisors, methinks
It’s astonishing to see. Totally unforced errors. It’s like there is an implosion at the heart of govt. He will lose against Cummings easily.
Yes very possibly. Boris has now denied the ‘bodies’ remark, flatly. If there is proof that he DID say it - and it would have to be convincing video or audio - then he’s surely finished as PM
I can't keep up with the woke stuff....the BBC describe Chloe Zhao as the first woman of colour to win best director.
Since when have people from China been described as people of colour? Or am I missing something?
About a year. People of color now means anyone who is the tiniest bit non-white (but not Jews, obvs)
The phrase “of color” has about 2 years of life left, I reckon. After that it will be seen as grossly offensive, and it will follow BAME into the lexical bin
I was genuinely presuming I didn't know something about her background, that she is actually of mixed race or something. I have honestly never heard people from Asia being described as such.
Do the wokies not realise that labelling every non-white person as such sounds very much like "othering" that genuine racists / racist countries practice e.g South Africa back in the day, describing all none 100% white European as the coloureds.
It's rather more to do with the fact that the Oscars have basically ignored anything that wasn't either from the US or the UK for most of their history.
The BBC, struggling as it does to represent the broad span of British culture, is always going to come across as muddled. It's neither woke nor reactionary - just a muddled compromise between the two.
The more notable thing about a director out of China winning the Oscar is that Chinese media has deliberately ignored it, as she is not politically acceptable to them.
No, the phrase ‘of color’ is now applied to virtually all non-whites in the USA, and this ridiculous usage is spreading to the UK. It’s nothing to do with the BBC being ‘muddled’
‘Chloé Zhao on Sunday became the first woman of color, the first Chinese woman and the second woman ever to win the Oscar for directing, capping off an impressive run of honors for her work on the drama “Nomadland.”’
As I said, this patronising and tortured locution will disappear quite soon; see the history of the almost identical expression ‘colored person’, which is now deemed so offensive it can get you fired
I remember Beneditch Cumberbatch getting into all sorts of trouble using it and an outraged mob raining anger on him on Twitter. It’s a term many of my generation would use and without malice and without aiming to cause offence. The term BAME is going the same way.
A friend of mine - absent minded liberal type - recently and accidentally used the phrase ‘coloured person’ rather than ‘person of colour’ in a professional Zoom call. He froze immediately, well aware that if it got picked up his career was over. His trade is super woke and full of cancellations, and he had rivals on the Zoom call.
No one noticed. He’s fine.
But how absurd that we have reached this stage of paranoia. Like Victorians shrouding piano legs in case they seem arousing
I bet your friend was mortified and if he lost his career for a poor choice of word how would that help anyone ? It’s not like he’s the next tommy Robinson After all. It seems it’s now no longer about being a bigot it’s more than just that.
"John Lewis furniture nightmare", as well as being first on the outermost stage at Reading, is politically far worse. Millions of Tory voters think they've achieved when they can afford John Lewis. The PM thinks it is horrendously oiky.
Boris has now denied the ‘bodies’ remark, flatly. If there is proof that he DID say it - and it would have to be convincing video or audio - then he’s surely finished as PM
Why?
It would not be the first time he has lied on camera
Some people haven't been happy about me describing the government policy as "kill your granny for Christmas". They don't like it because its true. It was the policy. And now we will all get to hear it.
Boris Johnson gets away with being such a colossal liar because he is able to waffle around the lie and say that isn't what he was trying to say and nobody is interested. The problem on this one is that the Dail Heil have it as today's page 1 lead (as I said they would) and with the massive long legs this story now has they aren't going to let up.
Hard for people to just dismiss this as remoaner sour grapes etc when he is demonstrated to have been caught red handed.
The truth is this was one of those awful instances where the computer system was not 100% perfect (yet seemed to be) and a company who thought they had finally identified a means of catching fraud...
They were prosecuting on average of one postmaster per week for years based purely on Horizon evidence. That number should have set alarm bells ringing for PO management.
That the vast majority of these people were long-serving postmasters of good standing with nothing at all in their past to suggest they were of a criminal bent, and there was no evidence of them actually possessing or having spent the 'stolen' money, should have have made those bells deafening. At the very least the PO should have commissioned an independent audit of the Horizon code base to check for any possible bugs that could cause missing transactions or incorrect balances.
But it seems Paula Vennells is one of those tech illiterate people who always believes the computer is right, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence that it isn't. And the PO's IT department was either too incompetent or too weak to force a change in position.
Hopefully this case with change some minds about the moronic "computer says it's true so it must be" attitude. But probably not.
I like the old Muslim saying as a guide for how to handle these situations; "trust Allah, but tie up your camel". Believe the computer, but always have a way of validating what it's telling you is correct. Just in case.
Michael Gove will answer an urgent question in the House of Commons at 3:30pm on the ministerial code. I'm told he'll robustly defend the PM and reinforce No10's stance the "bodies piled high" quote is a "lie". No wiggle-room, so it's now all down to whether there's audio. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1386654526447443970
Govey might want to check with Dom before he makes that statement. He doesn't want to be called back to the house to apologise does he? Or does he?
Tbh you'd have thought a vaccine rollout would be quite hard to stuff up - the basic question - Do you want people to not die from Covid ? Err yes.
is quite a simple one.
Now you can have a bit of nuance if things are going well, AZ and J&J not being recommended for pregnant women and under 30s being one of those subtle shifts the UK has made; but both Japan and the EU seem to have failed the basic exam.
Most of the 11 million AstraZeneca vaccines ordered by the Netherlands to fight the coronavirus will go unused, the head of the Dutch public health institute’s vaccination department has said.
Telegraph live blog
For the love of God, Jesus, Mary and the wee donkey.
It was "Jesus Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey". Best line of the show!
I love the way in which the show has become a parody of itself, yet manages somehow to stay a fairly compelling drama.
I first watched Line of Duty about a month ago, and do very much enjoy it, though without criticism it does seem like it developed 'Star Wars Prequel Syndrome', wherein everything must be made to connect with each other, however contrived.
Let's play my favourite game: if Keir Starmer had said "let the bodies pile" high, how many PB Tories would be out in force?
All of them
Honestly, it'd be the most interesting thing he's ever said, so my opinion of him would probably go up a bit.
Edit: A better game would be what happens if Corbyn had said it, because then you are absolutely right that I would have blown a gasket in my response.
"John Lewis furniture nightmare", as well as being first on the outermost stage at Reading, is politically far worse. Millions of Tory voters think they've achieved when they can afford John Lewis. The PM thinks it is horrendously oiky.
Boris is a pretty weird person in some ways, in how he comments on things. Who writes someone is a 'girly swot' on an official paper, even as a casual notation?
Boris has now denied the ‘bodies’ remark, flatly. If there is proof that he DID say it - and it would have to be convincing video or audio - then he’s surely finished as PM
Why?
It would not be the first time he has lied on camera
A total lie which is then absolutely proved to be a lie, in this context, would be a resigning matter. It’s so clear. On the one hand you’ve got the PM saying ‘this remark never passed my lips’ and on the other hand, oops, here is a video of him saying it? About thousands of dead Britons?!
However he’s probably confident that no one recorded it, so it’s just “he said she said”, and he will survive
The truth is this was one of those awful instances where the computer system was not 100% perfect (yet seemed to be) and a company who thought they had finally identified a means of catching fraud...
They were prosecuting on average of one postmaster per week for years based purely on Horizon evidence. That number should have set alarm bells ringing for PO management.
That the vast majority of these people were long-serving postmasters of good standing with nothing at all in their past to suggest they were of a criminal bent, and there was no evidence of them actually possessing or having spent the 'stolen' money, should have have made those bells deafening. At the very least the PO should have commissioned an independent audit of the Horizon code base to check for any possible bugs that could cause missing transactions or incorrect balances.
But it seems Paula Vennells is one of those tech illiterate people who always believes the computer is right, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence that it isn't. And the PO's IT department was either too incompetent or too weak to force a change in position.
Hopefully this case with change some minds about the moronic "computer says it's true so it must be" attitude. But probably not.
I like the old Muslim saying as a guide for how to handle these situations; "trust Allah, but tie up your camel". Believe the computer, but always have a way of validating what it's telling you is correct. Just in case.
IT is completely outsourced though - so I suspect there was no one in a position to say this makes zero sense because admitting there was a screw up wasn't in their employer's (ICL/Fujitsu) interest.
Weird unforced errors from Boris. He’s ahead in the polls, he’s got a modest economic boom on the way, his vax rollout is world famous, yet he seems rattled. He’s sacked too many good advisors, methinks
It’s astonishing to see. Totally unforced errors. It’s like there is an implosion at the heart of govt. He will lose against Cummings easily.
Yes very possibly. Boris has now denied the ‘bodies’ remark, flatly. If there is proof that he DID say it - and it would have to be convincing video or audio - then he’s surely finished as PM
Of course it won't finish him. Is this your first taste of the Johnson experience?
The shagging and lying won't hurt him because the shit munchers of the red wall do plenty of both themselves. It'll be financial fuckery like the flat that finishes him because the RW types don't have money and hate people who do.
Weird unforced errors from Boris. He’s ahead in the polls, he’s got a modest economic boom on the way, his vax rollout is world famous, yet he seems rattled. He’s sacked too many good advisors, methinks
It’s astonishing to see. Totally unforced errors. It’s like there is an implosion at the heart of govt. He will lose against Cummings easily.
Yes very possibly. Boris has now denied the ‘bodies’ remark, flatly. If there is proof that he DID say it - and it would have to be convincing video or audio - then he’s surely finished as PM
Of course it won't finish him. Is this your first taste of the Johnson experience?
The shagging and lying won't hurt him because the shit munchers of the red wall do plenty of both themselves. It'll be financial fuckery like the flat that finishes him because the RW types don't have money and hate people who do.
No. He’s in real trouble now. This is the first time I’ve thought that since he had that post covid wobble
Weird unforced errors from Boris. He’s ahead in the polls, he’s got a modest economic boom on the way, his vax rollout is world famous, yet he seems rattled. He’s sacked too many good advisors, methinks
It’s astonishing to see. Totally unforced errors. It’s like there is an implosion at the heart of govt. He will lose against Cummings easily.
Yes very possibly. Boris has now denied the ‘bodies’ remark, flatly. If there is proof that he DID say it - and it would have to be convincing video or audio - then he’s surely finished as PM
Yes, it makes his position completely untenable. I think many Tories would be happy to see the back of him too.
"John Lewis furniture nightmare", as well as being first on the outermost stage at Reading, is politically far worse. Millions of Tory voters think they've achieved when they can afford John Lewis. The PM thinks it is horrendously oiky.
John Lewis furniture isn't that great and very expensive for what it is.
Boris has now denied the ‘bodies’ remark, flatly. If there is proof that he DID say it - and it would have to be convincing video or audio - then he’s surely finished as PM
Why?
It would not be the first time he has lied on camera
A total lie which is then absolutely proved to be a lie, in this context, would be a resigning matter. It’s so clear. On the one hand you’ve got the PM saying ‘this remark never passed my lips’ and on the other hand, oops, here is a video of him saying it? About thousands of dead Britons?!
However he’s probably confident that no one recorded it, so it’s just “he said she said”, and he will survive
Why would he need to resign? None of them feel the need to resign. Like all great political endings he will be resigned as Thatcher was.
"John Lewis furniture nightmare", as well as being first on the outermost stage at Reading, is politically far worse. Millions of Tory voters think they've achieved when they can afford John Lewis. The PM thinks it is horrendously oiky.
Boris is a pretty weird person in some ways, in how he comments on things. Who writes someone is a 'girly swot' on an official paper, even as a casual notation?
Calling the project to urgently build ventilators "Operation Last Gasp" being a prime example.
Let's play my favourite game: if Keir Starmer had said "let the bodies pile" high, how many PB Tories would be out in force?
All of them
CHB, do you seriously think - seriously - that Johnson said "let the bodies pile high" in the context of multiples of Covid deaths. Seriously?
Can you not imagine it said by Johnson as a casual throw away remark, with no malice aforethought? I can.
Now that the fat useless sack of jizz is out there denying it a significant number of people are going to think he did say it. To an extent, it doesn't really matter if he said it or not now.
Boris Johnson asked, did you say you would let "bodies pile high in their thousands"? PM: "No, but I think the important thing that people want us to get on and do as a government is to make sure that the lockdowns work, and they have." https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1386645111245885444
The silence from the Boris fanbois on PB this lunchtime is deafening.
Come on chaps, which is it? "Boris will be Boris", or "it's just satire".
It is possible that he said it. We know that he is good at selecting colourful phrases. If he did it is likely that it has been stripped of context.
We all know that the choice to restrict liberty in the face of a public health challenge is a difficult one. It is good that the PM is very reluctant to do so.
I believe he triggered the lockdown as soon as he believed the preponderance of evidence supported that decision. He may have got it wrong.
But it’s your view on that decision and not on any particular phrase that matters.
eek said: show previous quotes And it's especially hard if you've been there a long time - I find it easier to point stuff out because I have enough money to live with the consequences of being asked to clear my desk.
I don't think many people within the organisation were in a position to do that - and that is a problem that is virtually impossible to fix.
"I found it easier the longer I had been there - partly because I had established my credibility and toughness (the first time I called out some serious bad behaviour it did not go down well but I had my boss's backing and just kept going. The individual concerned was later put in front of one of the Parliamentary committees on Banking Misbehaviour and had a very uncomfortable time claiming not to know anything), partly because there was external pressure on the organisation ie a regulator and partly because of the context. It was obvious that banks were cocking a lot up even if many did not want to admit how widespread it was.
The Post Office had no external regulator, Ministers were ineffective, the senior leadership believed IT could never go wrong, their internal staff saw themselves as acting only in the interests of the PO and being judge, jury and prosecutor in your own cause is a recipe for disaster. Plus a large dose of cowardice by lots of people - a very common factor in all these situations. Lots of people will fail to do the right thing because they are scared for their jobs, cannot afford to lose them etc etc. Individually they may not be bad people but the consequence of their inaction is that bad things happen."
What I don’t understand is why the auditors didn’t pick up on it
- Horizon says income but no cash - Subpostmasters say income and cash - Bank account says cash
?? Am I missing something ?
Bull point, and very important in two ways. Firstly is it just basic accounting and auditing that the various sources of claims and information match. The internal books and the bank accounts and whatever. It is rubbish to say that this is fine with an outfit with a turnover of £20k but somehow can't be done with the PO's trillions of turnover. It is of the essence of accountability for other people's money.
Secondly when some person like a sub PM is to be prosecuted and potentially imprisoned the absolute particularities of that particular case must be examined by expert witnesses on both sides to the highest standards of auditing and more. As a matter of mere logic this cannot have happened in these cases. There was in fact a reasonable doubt (and actually much more). This should have been discovered with relative ease once you search for both the hard facts and examine the records.
A total lie which is then absolutely proved to be a lie, in this context, would be a resigning matter.
Again, why?
It would not be the first time, and he is still in post.
Why is this lie so much worse than all of the rest in his career?
You know he's an habitual liar, and still voted for him.
It's not me he would lose, it's large chunks of Middle Britain. The words are pretty toxic
He knows this, which is why he has denied it, I guess. But of course the denial ups the ante, further. Turning this into a potential resignation issue if he is shown to be lying.
Personally, I can well believe he said it, and I'm not that bothered. A moment of anger. Meh
Comments
‘Chloé Zhao on Sunday became the first woman of color, the first Chinese woman and the second woman ever to win the Oscar for directing, capping off an impressive run of honors for her work on the drama “Nomadland.”’
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1386487455545761792?s=21
‘Chloé Zhao accepts the Academy Award for Best Director. She is the first woman of color to do so.’
https://twitter.com/newyorker/status/1386489612248485888?s=21
As I said, this patronising and tortured locution will disappear quite soon; see the history of the almost identical expression ‘colored person’, which is now deemed so offensive it can get you fired
Not at all clear while it receives such adulation on here.
He said it.
This is, by the way, an absolute classic example of why it's meaningless that no-one trusts what he says. No-one trusts anything any politician says, because the adversarial nature of politics - and particularly the "gotcha" style of opposition we seem to have ended up with* - practically forces these sorts of stories.
*(Not specifically Labour, by the way, because both US parties are worse and the Tories probably would be almost as bad in opposition as well.)
An audit is for the shareholders (ONLY) to confirm the accounts are not materially misstated. [1]
But because the UK has legislated to make all companies have audits (at least until the year 2000) combined with that report going on public record and the whole point of it has been lost.
Remove the legal requirement for companies to have an audit. Entirely. From Tesco PLC to Tiny corner shop Limited. Then, if the shareholders want an audit make it their responsibility to file at Companies House a request by 51% of shareholders for the audit. That way the auditors, when appointed (though by whom?) know they are genuinely doing the job because a shareholder wants it, not because they are legally required to do it.
Will this work? No idea, but its probably better than the current 'arrangements' where the Big 4 are never out the pages of Accountancy in the Disciplinaries section, but the fine of £100,000 they just shrug off (whilst adding to the bill) and keep doing what they're doing.
[1] Except not really - Caparo Industries v Dickman got rid of that pesky requirement too.
‘The EU is taking @AstraZeneca to court over vaccine delivery’
https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1386652284084498432?s=21
I hope AZ sue them right back. From Handelsblatt to Macron, they have killed thousands and now they don’t even want the fecking jabs. My god
Ditto Deutsche Bank.
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1386652150793703427?s=20
It's pretty rubbish TBH.
I can see an outing for that.
I have long since parted company with Johnson and the tories on lockdown. Long since, I don't care what Johnson said, or when, or what he does now.
For conservatives of my disposition Ron de Santis is the man. If he doesn't get the 2024 republican nomination he will get very close, but what is certain is that his narrative will have reached a far wider audience by then.
Football fans are fervent supporters of one side.
They therefore admire the 'my side right or wrong' attitude of politicians.
It isn't.
Not that I'm surprised but why deny it?
It's the sort of thing the PM says.
In fairness, there's lots of superhero stuff on Netflix too – although it doesn't dominate a la Disney+.
No one noticed. He’s fine.
But how absurd that we have reached this stage of paranoia. Like Victorians shrouding piano legs in case they seem arousing
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1386654526447443970
I love using "focus group" as a verb.
The Peston tweet makes the point that "Cummings is the Rat" statements by number 10 are plain wrong - Cummings wasn't his source. So with the PM personally briefing newspaper editors to say it was Cummings it is no wonder Dom is on the warpath.
As Marc Almond said, the sweet revenge of a
loverSPAD spurnedRestrictions and lack of them come with both benefits and costs.
Perhaps the media frothers, most/all of whom have been obsessing about being allowed to go on foreign holidays, would like to say how many thousands of dead they're willing to accept to have international travel.
https://www.euronews.com/2021/04/26/eu-begins-legal-action-against-aztrazeneca-over-breach-of-contract?fromBreakingNews=1
https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1386602738117718017
I'd be willing to pay for a fairly universal film streaming service - say pretty much everything the same time it's available on DVD, but otherwise Netflix/iplayer is more than enough.
We've got two young children and we do also read books, so I guess that eats into our TV viewing capacity, but still...
Or, he has been too busy (I have seen it for myself on nightly TV news) inventing vaccines in his lab coat and driving forklift trucks in his hi viz coat to have had the time to make such callously casual statements.
The state has to have a 'reason', even though everyone knows the real reason is 'because we want to'.
What's interesting is that a genuine conservative like De Santis would never have made a comment like that, simply because he didn't swallow the SAGE narrative on the efficacy of lockdown whole.
And every day the bodies are not piling up in Florida and Texas is a good day for his narrative.
I bet your friend was mortified and if he lost his career for a poor choice of word how would that help anyone ? It’s not like he’s the next tommy Robinson After all. It seems it’s now no longer about being a bigot it’s more than just that.
Millions of Tory voters think they've achieved when they can afford John Lewis.
The PM thinks it is horrendously oiky.
All of them
It would not be the first time he has lied on camera
Boris Johnson gets away with being such a colossal liar because he is able to waffle around the lie and say that isn't what he was trying to say and nobody is interested. The problem on this one is that the Dail Heil have it as today's page 1 lead (as I said they would) and with the massive long legs this story now has they aren't going to let up.
Hard for people to just dismiss this as remoaner sour grapes etc when he is demonstrated to have been caught red handed.
The EU probably think they don't need anything else.
Which given their level of competency means those 3rd jabs we are due to be asked to take in the autumn will be essential due to a new variant.
That the vast majority of these people were long-serving postmasters of good standing with nothing at all in their past to suggest they were of a criminal bent, and there was no evidence of them actually possessing or having spent the 'stolen' money, should have have made those bells deafening. At the very least the PO should have commissioned an independent audit of the Horizon code base to check for any possible bugs that could cause missing transactions or incorrect balances.
But it seems Paula Vennells is one of those tech illiterate people who always believes the computer is right, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence that it isn't. And the PO's IT department was either too incompetent or too weak to force a change in position.
Hopefully this case with change some minds about the moronic "computer says it's true so it must be" attitude. But probably not.
I like the old Muslim saying as a guide for how to handle these situations; "trust Allah, but tie up your camel". Believe the computer, but always have a way of validating what it's telling you is correct. Just in case.
- Do you want people to not die from Covid ? Err yes.
is quite a simple one.
Now you can have a bit of nuance if things are going well, AZ and J&J not being recommended for pregnant women and under 30s being one of those subtle shifts the UK has made; but both Japan and the EU seem to have failed the basic exam.
Edit: A better game would be what happens if Corbyn had said it, because then you are absolutely right that I would have blown a gasket in my response.
However he’s probably confident that no one recorded it, so it’s just “he said she said”, and he will survive
Most of the 11 million AstraZeneca vaccines due to reach the Netherlands in the coming weeks will go unused, a top health official has revealed.
@NicolaSturgeon responds to comments reportedly made by Boris Johnson “no more ****ing lockdowns - let the bodies pile high in their thousands”
No.10 describes the report as “just another lie” https://twitter.com/Political_AlanS/status/1386641614693601281/video/1
The shagging and lying won't hurt him because the shit munchers of the red wall do plenty of both themselves. It'll be financial fuckery like the flat that finishes him because the RW types don't have money and hate people who do.
He will likely survive but hmm....
It would not be the first time, and he is still in post.
Why is this lie so much worse than all of the rest in his career?
You know he's an habitual liar, and still voted for him.
Yes, it makes his position completely untenable. I think many Tories would be happy to see the back of him too.
I wonder how quickly he would redecorate the flat...
Gove, with a dagger in the back, in the Commons
We all know that the choice to restrict liberty in the face of a public health challenge is a difficult one. It is good that the PM is very reluctant to do so.
I believe he triggered the lockdown as soon as he believed the preponderance of evidence supported that decision. He may have got it wrong.
But it’s your view on that decision and not on any particular phrase that matters.
The only question is whether it'd be next to the last puncture wound (when Gove destroyed the PM's first attempt to get the job) or in a new location.
Secondly when some person like a sub PM is to be prosecuted and potentially imprisoned the absolute particularities of that particular case must be examined by expert witnesses on both sides to the highest standards of auditing and more. As a matter of mere logic this cannot have happened in these cases. There was in fact a reasonable doubt (and actually much more). This should have been discovered with relative ease once you search for both the hard facts and examine the records.
He knows this, which is why he has denied it, I guess. But of course the denial ups the ante, further. Turning this into a potential resignation issue if he is shown to be lying.
Personally, I can well believe he said it, and I'm not that bothered. A moment of anger. Meh
The fanbois don't like to talk about that.
BoZo is an all conquering hero who has won every contest in history...