All the fuss about trying to blame the DPP for a miscarriage of justice seems very strange to me. It seems to be based on the idea that the DPP should in effect be conducting a preliminary trial before the case comes to court. Why would anyone think that was the DPP's job?
Perhaps the DPP could reasonably be expected to pick up on anomalously large numbers of disputed cases with a common factor that might point to a systemic problem. But not if the DPP had involvement in only a tiny number of these cases, as was the case here.
The mistake you are making is trying to answer this logically and look at the relative competencies between the PO and the DPP/CPS.
No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that that trying to hang this on the DPP is completely illogical.
Obvious the reason it's happening is the one you give - it's a purely political smear campaign against Starmer.
The problem with the Post Office story is that virtually no-one with any power comes out of it looking good. A couple of journalists and politicians, perhaps. Some of the poor victims as well.
Everyone in power has questions to answer; including the government, and those who were in government. But that also extends to Starmer, and these attempts to try to make him into a victim of this mess ("political smear campaign') carries more than a little whiff.
Starmer has questions to answer.
Rather than answering them his defenders prefer to scream "Partisan!" and then, without any sense of irony, point to Peter Lilley who was last responsible for the scope nearly 30 years ago.
All I’m seeing there in your post is a very partisan witch hunt with you trying to blame someone else.
Few people currently want to go into politics, the odds of finding seriously qualified and suitable people is even less likely. And with posts like yours literally no-one will do it in future, because with social media and a daily witch hunt either of reflect blame or for the lols it’s not worth the grief
I'm finding @Casino_Royale and @isam posts sickening in trying to make political capital out of such a tragedy You should be ashamed of yourselves.
The system is broken where it takes a drama to get action from politicians and it doesn't matter which party they come from. This is endemic. It is the same story for Windrush, Blood contamination, Equitable Life, etc. And there are a whole host of others. As mentioned before I am helping a campaign that is identical in most respects (except people didn't go to prison) to the Post Office, but I don't blame the party in power in this case (2012 - Now) because I know it wouldn't be any different if it were Labour or LD or anyone else and interestingly the MPs that support our campaign come from the Conservatives, Labour, LDs and SNP.
When the system is rotten and people have suffered badly, making political points out of it is pathetic and self defeating. We need to fix the system. That isn't happening currently. We are just fixing the one that got a drama made out of it. It is excellent that is happening, but people's lives are being ruined in all the other cases also.
For the umpteenth time: I'm not trying to make any political capital. I'm simply interested in all those who were involved explaining themselves without favour.
I haven't called for Ed Davey to resign. Neither have I called for Starmer to resign. I have criticised May for awarding Vennells the CBE and I have credited James Arbuthnot.
What I don't agree on is that we simply shouldn't talk about the part Labour played in this just because its politically inconvenient for them.
They have questions to answer too and they need answering. This is a cross party issue and affects us all.
My first reaction? A splat of something on the lens. Probably bird poo
My first reaction?
Here's Leon banging on about "UFOs" again.
You're boring.
Well, you may say that from the safety of your Barratt home near Newent but the US military has filed this as an official “UAP” video - they can’t entirely explain it
And it behoves those of us with sharper, more inquiring minds to point out that it is surely a splat of bird shit on the lens
Unwittingly your suggestion that the US military has filed it as unexplainable and (even) you think it's bird doodoo probably tells us more about all of this than you realise.
I PRESUMED it was bird poo. As did 90% of the people who have viewed it
But then the Great Debunker in Chief, Mick West, has said No, it’s not. And see here
“Here's my analysis of the "jellyfish."
I was wrong. It's not a smudge or any kind of artifact. This is a 3-dimensional object.”
All the fuss about trying to blame the DPP for a miscarriage of justice seems very strange to me. It seems to be based on the idea that the DPP should in effect be conducting a preliminary trial before the case comes to court. Why would anyone think that was the DPP's job?
Perhaps the DPP could reasonably be expected to pick up on anomalously large numbers of disputed cases with a common factor that might point to a systemic problem. But not if the DPP had involvement in only a tiny number of these cases, as was the case here.
12 cases apparently. I mean what's 12 cases in the scheme of things. Margin of error and all that. Families, lives ruined etc but that's fine 12 over a large number is a rounding error. Let's move on.
Obviously the point I'm making is that when numbers are tiny it is practically impossible to pick up statistically significant anomalies from them.
Whereas the actual point (cf Paula Vennells) is that when you are in charge of something you are in charge of something.
Is the CPS responsible if it prosecutes a case in which the police cooked up the evidence? That seems the closest parallel here.
My response: it depends - if the CPS knew of should have known, then yes - i.e. if the evidence presented has clear inconsistencies that should have been picked up. If not and the CPS could not have reasonably known, then no. So for the PO, it depends on timing - anything prosecuted after the problems became widely known stinks; before then the CPS is probably off the hook. The PO, of course, kept prosecuting well after they knew there were issues.
ETA: If the CPS did cock up on Starmer's watch then some responsibility rests with him, but I'm not quite sure what that means in practical terms. Johnson cocked up multiple times in jobs before being PM, but that didn't mean he couldn't be PM.
The main thing I think Farage is trying to do is to disable Sir Keir’s “When I was Director of Public Prosecutions, I used to lock up all the bad guys” White Knight Schtick. Now when he says it, a lot of people will say “Yeah you locked up those innocent postmasters too”
Probably what Boris was trying with the Savile jibe
My first reaction? A splat of something on the lens. Probably bird poo
My first reaction?
Here's Leon banging on about "UFOs" again.
You're boring.
Well, you may say that from the safety of your Barratt home near Newent but the US military has filed this as an official “UAP” video - they can’t entirely explain it
And it behoves those of us with sharper, more inquiring minds to point out that it is surely a splat of bird shit on the lens
Unwittingly your suggestion that the US military has filed it as unexplainable and (even) you think it's bird doodoo probably tells us more about all of this than you realise.
I PRESUMED it was bird poo. As did 90% of the people who have viewed it
But then the Great Debunker in Chief, Mick West, has said No, it’s not. And see here
“Here's my analysis of the "jellyfish."
I was wrong. It's not a smudge or any kind of artifact. This is a 3-dimensional object.”
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
My first reaction? A splat of something on the lens. Probably bird poo
My first reaction?
Here's Leon banging on about "UFOs" again.
You're boring.
Well, you may say that from the safety of your Barratt home near Newent but the US military has filed this as an official “UAP” video - they can’t entirely explain it
And it behoves those of us with sharper, more inquiring minds to point out that it is surely a splat of bird shit on the lens
Unwittingly your suggestion that the US military has filed it as unexplainable and (even) you think it's bird doodoo probably tells us more about all of this than you realise.
I PRESUMED it was bird poo. As did 90% of the people who have viewed it
But then the Great Debunker in Chief, Mick West, has said No, it’s not. And see here
“Here's my analysis of the "jellyfish."
I was wrong. It's not a smudge or any kind of artifact. This is a 3-dimensional object.”
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Does anyone think Ed Davey will resign? I think he may do.
Bound too. All leaders do in the end (officially at least, even those really sacked)
But before some fairly substantial LD gains at the GE and the possibility of being third party again with more PMQs questions etc? I don't see it. Unless he is both a man of principle and also believes he has done wrong.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
Probably what Boris was trying with the Savile jibe
"Jibe"?
What on Earth is happening with you, for fuck sake Boris Johnson accused Keir Starmer of not prosecuting a child rapist when he wasn't even around to prosecute.
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
This witness is taking the position that he did everything professionally and properly, which I suspect will prove later today not to be wise.
He's already started to contradict himself...
There's a quite striking lack of remorse. That has been a common feature amongst the PO Investigators, with a few notable exceptions.
This is the flip side of jobsworthism - "I followed the process. Therefore I was right. Therefore I was morally correct."
This guy seems to be going for the Prison Guard Defence - 'I was only obeying orders.' I doubt he's heard about the Nuremberg trials. He certainly seems unaware that the task of an investigator is investigate, and not just demand money with menaces.
All the fuss about trying to blame the DPP for a miscarriage of justice seems very strange to me. It seems to be based on the idea that the DPP should in effect be conducting a preliminary trial before the case comes to court. Why would anyone think that was the DPP's job?
Perhaps the DPP could reasonably be expected to pick up on anomalously large numbers of disputed cases with a common factor that might point to a systemic problem. But not if the DPP had involvement in only a tiny number of these cases, as was the case here.
The mistake you are making is trying to answer this logically and look at the relative competencies between the PO and the DPP/CPS.
No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that that trying to hang this on the DPP is completely illogical.
Obvious the reason it's happening is the one you give - it's a purely political smear campaign against Starmer.
The problem with the Post Office story is that virtually no-one with any power comes out of it looking good. A couple of journalists and politicians, perhaps. Some of the poor victims as well.
Everyone in power has questions to answer; including the government, and those who were in government. But that also extends to Starmer, and these attempts to try to make him into a victim of this mess ("political smear campaign') carries more than a little whiff.
Starmer has questions to answer.
Rather than answering them his defenders prefer to scream "Partisan!" and then, without any sense of irony, point to Peter Lilley who was last responsible for the scope nearly 30 years ago.
All I’m seeing there in your post is a very partisan witch hunt with you trying to blame someone else.
Few people currently want to go into politics, the odds of finding seriously qualified and suitable people is even less likely. And with posts like yours literally no-one will do it in future, because with social media and a daily witch hunt either of reflect blame or for the lols it’s not worth the grief
I'm finding @Casino_Royale and @isam posts sickening in trying to make political capital out of such a tragedy You should be ashamed of yourselves.
The system is broken where it takes a drama to get action from politicians and it doesn't matter which party they come from. This is endemic. It is the same story for Windrush, Blood contamination, Equitable Life, etc. And there are a whole host of others. As mentioned before I am helping a campaign that is identical in most respects (except people didn't go to prison) to the Post Office, but I don't blame the party in power in this case (2012 - Now) because I know it wouldn't be any different if it were Labour or LD or anyone else and interestingly the MPs that support our campaign come from the Conservatives, Labour, LDs and SNP.
When the system is rotten and people have suffered badly, making political points out of it is pathetic and self defeating. We need to fix the system. That isn't happening currently. We are just fixing the one that got a drama made out of it. It is excellent that is happening, but people's lives are being ruined in all the other cases also.
My view is somewhat different: the politicians are at the top. The people at the bottom; the man and women who ran post offices, and their staff, have suffered because of incompetence and lies of others. No-one else; in particular the managers, lawyers, politicians etc have had much penalty for misdeed or mistakes so far.
We cannot fix the system unless the people who make mistakes learn that mistakes can cost *them*, as well as the plebs. We cannot fix the system unless the people who do misdeeds learn those misdeeds can cost *them*.
Starmer was DPP; a fact he takes pride in. The CPS was involved in the mess; not in a major way, but involved nonetheless. How much Starmer was involved, or should have been involved, is an open question, and not the closed one that some on here want. There are questions, whether you like it nor not. As there are for many other politicians.
Ignoring those questions will not fix the system.
I don't disagree with that, but we have to accept that things will go wrong because of incompetence, cover ups, bad luck etc. It will always happen. The issue is the inability oif the small guy (Windrush person deported, blood recipient who gets hiv, postmaster, etc) to be able to get themselves heard.
The establishment has a mentality of initially denying anything here. Civil Servants don't want a problem to solve so deny there is a problem. As the complaints go on the effort in denying a problem just gets bigger than actually solving it (I have been there). Civil Servants draft the letters for ministers to send out (I have seen them in FOI replies). They are always word for word. Ministers change jobs too often and have no concept of the details. Often complaints fall between the remits of Ombudsman and Govts block private members bills to change that remit (Equitable Life is one notable exception). The courts are often not available due to cost or the limitation act.
My quarterly call on here for cabinet ministers to need to have served 3 years either as a junior minister (or shadow) or on a relevant select committee to be eligible to serve. Would give us more interested and knowledgeable ministers and slightly reduce the power of the parties/PMs patronage.
This witness is taking the position that he did everything professionally and properly, which I suspect will prove later today not to be wise.
He's already started to contradict himself...
There's a quite striking lack of remorse. That has been a common feature amongst the PO Investigators, with a few notable exceptions.
This is the flip side of jobsworthism - "I followed the process. Therefore I was right. Therefore I was morally correct."
This guy seems to be going for the Prison Guard Defence - 'I was only obeying orders.' I doubt he's heard about the Nuremberg trials. He certainly seems unaware that the task of an investigator is investigate, and not just demand money with menaces.
I wonder if the lawyer chappie will ask him how he did for performance-related pay, in view of what one of us noted earlier about (some?) investigators getting bonsuses for confessions/guilty verdicts.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
I'm not sure blaming defence counsel is a good strategy.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
I'm not sure blaming defence counsel is a good strategy.
It isn’t, just pointing out so many people that should have helped didn’t and made a bad situation worse.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
I'm not sure blaming defence counsel is a good strategy.
It isn’t, just pointing out so many people that should have helped didn’t and made a bad situation worse.
Do we know how many people took it to a decision and were found not guilty? And did any of their defence question the computer system? Such cases could be interesting to review.
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
Starmer is dull and uninteresting. People would be quite happy with a dull and uninteresting period of time.
Those “Eid Balloons” are on Etsy for sale to Americans, someone with a load of blank balloons and a printer that can print anything.
The release of “Eid Balloons” isn’t a thing at all, anywhere in the Muslim world.
On deeper analysis, they seem to be a particular thing with Muslim communities in the West
"Eid Balloons
At Islamic Party Store we have a great collection of balloons perfect for your Eid party celebration. We have many options to choose from, whether your looking for simple latex Eid Mubarak balloons or a beautiful balloon garland. Say Eid Mubarak to family and friends in the most perfect way with our Eid Mubarak balloons. Not found what you are looking for? How about checking out our other Islamic celebration decorations for Nikkah, Umrah, Aqiqah and so much more"
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
One thing that's interesting is looking at the "best on ..." questions changing over time.
Some things remain consistent (economy, healthcare etc) but questions that would have been obviously asked in the past are not anymore, like "best on unemployment".
The country has much going wrong with it at the moment, and its time for a change in politics, but one thing that is good is there's no shortage of employment opportunities. Anyone who wants a job, can get one, which was not always the case.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
And the prosecution knew it was at fault
“A senior Post Office solicitor was told about dozens of issues with the computer system just days before a pregnant sub-postmistress was convicted, the Post Office Inquiry heard this week.
Rob Wilson, former head of criminal prosecutions, received an email on 8 October 2010 stating that ‘discrepancies’ with the Horizon IT system had been detected at 40 branches. This bug had caused an apparent loss of £20,000 to show up on the system.
Wilson forwarded the email and its contents to two solicitor colleagues, Jarnail Singh and Juliet McFarlane, but did not disclose it to defence solicitors or defendants. All three solicitors have been reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, although any potential disciplinary proceedings against them have been put on hold at the request of the inquiry.“
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
Jake Berry on Trump: "Bring him back!" Jess Phillips: "You don't actually think that." JB: "Economically, Biden has been a disaster." JP: "You really think Trump would be good for the States? You like a bit of insurrection?" JB: "He's not been convicted of anything." 👀~AA
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
And the prosecution knew it was at fault
“A senior Post Office solicitor was told about dozens of issues with the computer system just days before a pregnant sub-postmistress was convicted, the Post Office Inquiry heard this week.
Rob Wilson, former head of criminal prosecutions, received an email on 8 October 2010 stating that ‘discrepancies’ with the Horizon IT system had been detected at 40 branches. This bug had caused an apparent loss of £20,000 to show up on the system.
Wilson forwarded the email and its contents to two solicitor colleagues, Jarnail Singh and Juliet McFarlane, but did not disclose it to defence solicitors or defendants. All three solicitors have been reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, although any potential disciplinary proceedings against them have been put on hold at the request of the inquiry.“
All the fuss about trying to blame the DPP for a miscarriage of justice seems very strange to me. It seems to be based on the idea that the DPP should in effect be conducting a preliminary trial before the case comes to court. Why would anyone think that was the DPP's job?
Perhaps the DPP could reasonably be expected to pick up on anomalously large numbers of disputed cases with a common factor that might point to a systemic problem. But not if the DPP had involvement in only a tiny number of these cases, as was the case here.
The mistake you are making is trying to answer this logically and look at the relative competencies between the PO and the DPP/CPS.
No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that that trying to hang this on the DPP is completely illogical.
Obvious the reason it's happening is the one you give - it's a purely political smear campaign against Starmer.
The problem with the Post Office story is that virtually no-one with any power comes out of it looking good. A couple of journalists and politicians, perhaps. Some of the poor victims as well.
Everyone in power has questions to answer; including the government, and those who were in government. But that also extends to Starmer, and these attempts to try to make him into a victim of this mess ("political smear campaign') carries more than a little whiff.
Starmer has questions to answer.
Rather than answering them his defenders prefer to scream "Partisan!" and then, without any sense of irony, point to Peter Lilley who was last responsible for the scope nearly 30 years ago.
All I’m seeing there in your post is a very partisan witch hunt with you trying to blame someone else.
Few people currently want to go into politics, the odds of finding seriously qualified and suitable people is even less likely. And with posts like yours literally no-one will do it in future, because with social media and a daily witch hunt either of reflect blame or for the lols it’s not worth the grief
I'm finding @Casino_Royale and @isam posts sickening in trying to make political capital out of such a tragedy You should be ashamed of yourselves.
The system is broken where it takes a drama to get action from politicians and it doesn't matter which party they come from. This is endemic. It is the same story for Windrush, Blood contamination, Equitable Life, etc. And there are a whole host of others. As mentioned before I am helping a campaign that is identical in most respects (except people didn't go to prison) to the Post Office, but I don't blame the party in power in this case (2012 - Now) because I know it wouldn't be any different if it were Labour or LD or anyone else and interestingly the MPs that support our campaign come from the Conservatives, Labour, LDs and SNP.
When the system is rotten and people have suffered badly, making political points out of it is pathetic and self defeating. We need to fix the system. That isn't happening currently. We are just fixing the one that got a drama made out of it. It is excellent that is happening, but people's lives are being ruined in all the other cases also.
My view is somewhat different: the politicians are at the top. The people at the bottom; the man and women who ran post offices, and their staff, have suffered because of incompetence and lies of others. No-one else; in particular the managers, lawyers, politicians etc have had much penalty for misdeed or mistakes so far.
We cannot fix the system unless the people who make mistakes learn that mistakes can cost *them*, as well as the plebs. We cannot fix the system unless the people who do misdeeds learn those misdeeds can cost *them*.
Starmer was DPP; a fact he takes pride in. The CPS was involved in the mess; not in a major way, but involved nonetheless. How much Starmer was involved, or should have been involved, is an open question, and not the closed one that some on here want. There are questions, whether you like it nor not. As there are for many other politicians.
Ignoring those questions will not fix the system.
I don't disagree with that, but we have to accept that things will go wrong because of incompetence, cover ups, bad luck etc. It will always happen. The issue is the inability oif the small guy (Windrush person deported, blood recipient who gets hiv, postmaster, etc) to be able to get themselves heard.
The establishment has a mentality of initially denying anything here. Civil Servants don't want a problem to solve so deny there is a problem. As the complaints go on the effort in denying a problem just gets bigger than actually solving it (I have been there). Civil Servants draft the letters for ministers to send out (I have seen them in FOI replies). They are always word for word. Ministers change jobs too often and have no concept of the details. Often complaints fall between the remits of Ombudsman and Govts block private members bills to change that remit (Equitable Life is one notable exception). The courts are often not available due to cost or the limitation act.
My quarterly call on here for cabinet ministers to need to have served 3 years either as a junior minister (or shadow) or on a relevant select committee to be eligible to serve. Would give us more interested and knowledgeable ministers and slightly reduce the power of the parties/PMs patronage.
Excellent post.
I once had an emails exchange with an ex-minister (I need to be careful here re doxing) who rarely was appointed for their expertise in a particular area. They let rip on their opinion of ministers generally. They didn't last long (there was no chance) because of their frustration and inability to hold their opinions to themselves. They were damning of their fellow ministers for being completely ignorant of their briefs. Once I received an official letter from them (drafted by their civil servants) with a hand written note from them below which (in my words) basically said 'This is bollocks, but it is what I have to send out'. I kept it to myself.
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
Yes, picking the low-hanging fruit is sensible first, you can then build on that to complete the rest later.
Connecting your village makes sense from the way you've described it to be done only after the towns that you're between have been done and that's going to be the case with almost all villages surely?
Going for where you get the most return on your investment first makes sense.
Re: The Post Office Scandal. The initial problem, I believe, is now known to be erroneous 'shortfalls' in many Subpostmaters' accounts arising from some faults in the Horizon computer system or the use of it remotely. And people are rightly asking where did all the money go?
So I'm wondering whether there were also erroneous 'surpluses' in any Subpostmaster's accounts that also arose from whatever faults were in the system. I would have expected there to be some. Why should the errors always act in one direction? Do we know if any surpluses have been reported?
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
Starmer is dull and uninteresting. People would be quite happy with a dull and uninteresting period of time.
Of course he might look that little bit more interesting the day after he's won a landslide majority.
Re: The Post Office Scandal. The initial problem, I believe, is now known to be erroneous 'shortfalls' in many Subpostmaters' accounts arising from some faults in the Horizon computer system or the use if it remotely. And people are rightly asking where did all the money go?
So I'm wondering whether there were also erroneous 'surpluses' in any Subpostmaster's accounts that also arose from whatever faults were in the system. I would have expected there to be some. Why should the erross always act in one direction? Do we know if any surpluses have been reported?
Yes, some people had surpluses. IIRC one postmaster had to close down his post office because of discrepancies, but they didn't charge him when it turned out the problem had changed from one of a deficit to a surplus. Obviously that should have rung bells as to the reliability of the system. (I'll try to find it).
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
Starmer is dull and uninteresting. People would be quite happy with a dull and uninteresting period of time.
Of course he might look that little bit more interesting the day after he's won a landslide majority.
He's also able to appear quite personable in the right format, though not actually charismatic. I think by the end of a campaign people will be saying "He's actually alright." How long that endures in Government is another question, but I expect his approval rating to improve during the GE.
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
My first reaction? A splat of something on the lens. Probably bird poo
My first reaction?
Here's Leon banging on about "UFOs" again.
You're boring.
Well, you may say that from the safety of your Barratt home near Newent but the US military has filed this as an official “UAP” video - they can’t entirely explain it
And it behoves those of us with sharper, more inquiring minds to point out that it is surely a splat of bird shit on the lens
Unwittingly your suggestion that the US military has filed it as unexplainable and (even) you think it's bird doodoo probably tells us more about all of this than you realise.
I PRESUMED it was bird poo. As did 90% of the people who have viewed it
But then the Great Debunker in Chief, Mick West, has said No, it’s not. And see here
“Here's my analysis of the "jellyfish."
I was wrong. It's not a smudge or any kind of artifact. This is a 3-dimensional object.”
Re: The Post Office Scandal. The initial problem, I believe, is now known to be erroneous 'shortfalls' in many Subpostmaters' accounts arising from some faults in the Horizon computer system or the use if it remotely. And people are rightly asking where did all the money go?
So I'm wondering whether there were also erroneous 'surpluses' in any Subpostmaster's accounts that also arose from whatever faults were in the system. I would have expected there to be some. Why should the erross always act in one direction? Do we know if any surpluses have been reported?
Yes, some people had surpluses. IIRC one postmaster had to close down his post office because of discrepancies, but they didn't charge him when it turned out the problem had changed from one of a deficit to a surplus. Obviously that should have rung bells as to the reliability of the system. (I'll try to find it).
It may be indelicate to suggest this, given how appallingly treated so many Postmasters have been by this scandal. But it's therefore not inconceivable that a significant number of surpluses have happened but gone unreported.
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
I'm not sure blaming defence counsel is a good strategy.
It isn’t, just pointing out so many people that should have helped didn’t and made a bad situation worse.
Do we know how many people took it to a decision and were found not guilty? And did any of their defence question the computer system? Such cases could be interesting to review.
We don't even know exactly how many SPMs were taken to court. This is one of the problems. If the cases were heard in a Magistrates Court rather than Crown or High Court then these are apparently not 'Courts of record' so no record of the proceedings is necessarily kept beyond the basics of the charge, verdict and sentence. And as it stands there does not appear to be a unified record of how many SPMs pled or were found guilty at Magistrates Courts.
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
I am quite predisposed towards Badenoch but that has defientely been thrown into doubt by both her behaviour to date and her current silence as far as the Post Office case is concerned.
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
Starmer is dull and uninteresting. People would be quite happy with a dull and uninteresting period of time.
Of course he might look that little bit more interesting the day after he's won a landslide majority.
I know from my adventures on the parish council how important it has to have an appealing spouse to compensate for one's shortcomings as a candidate and as a human being. What's Mrs Starmer like? She's shortly going to be FLOTUK and we know fuck all about her. Mrs Sunak isn't exactly a tick in the plus column being a sour faced billionaire harridan with an aversion to tax.
My first reaction? A splat of something on the lens. Probably bird poo
My first reaction?
Here's Leon banging on about "UFOs" again.
You're boring.
Well, you may say that from the safety of your Barratt home near Newent but the US military has filed this as an official “UAP” video - they can’t entirely explain it
And it behoves those of us with sharper, more inquiring minds to point out that it is surely a splat of bird shit on the lens
Unwittingly your suggestion that the US military has filed it as unexplainable and (even) you think it's bird doodoo probably tells us more about all of this than you realise.
I PRESUMED it was bird poo. As did 90% of the people who have viewed it
But then the Great Debunker in Chief, Mick West, has said No, it’s not. And see here
“Here's my analysis of the "jellyfish."
I was wrong. It's not a smudge or any kind of artifact. This is a 3-dimensional object.”
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
And the prosecution knew it was at fault
“A senior Post Office solicitor was told about dozens of issues with the computer system just days before a pregnant sub-postmistress was convicted, the Post Office Inquiry heard this week.
Rob Wilson, former head of criminal prosecutions, received an email on 8 October 2010 stating that ‘discrepancies’ with the Horizon IT system had been detected at 40 branches. This bug had caused an apparent loss of £20,000 to show up on the system.
Wilson forwarded the email and its contents to two solicitor colleagues, Jarnail Singh and Juliet McFarlane, but did not disclose it to defence solicitors or defendants. All three solicitors have been reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, although any potential disciplinary proceedings against them have been put on hold at the request of the inquiry.“
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
She is another victim of that evil stard Starmer. Justice for the Tory Ministers! And their husbands!
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
I'm not sure blaming defence counsel is a good strategy.
It isn’t, just pointing out so many people that should have helped didn’t and made a bad situation worse.
Do we know how many people took it to a decision and were found not guilty? And did any of their defence question the computer system? Such cases could be interesting to review.
We don't even know exactly how many SPMs were taken to court. This is one of the problems. If the cases were heard in a Magistrates Court rather than Crown or High Court then these are apparently not 'Courts of record' so no record of the proceedings is necessarily kept beyond the basics of the charge, verdict and sentence. And as it stands there does not appear to be a unified record of how many SPMs pled or were found guilty at Magistrates Courts.
The PO itself seems to have been particularly dismal at record keeping.
An MP asked yesterday for the total figure for 'shortfalls' recovered by the PO and presumably transferred to profits over the years. They don't know. Someone will find out.
Since the case for returning those monies is overwhelming you would think it would be a starred item in the accounts, not to mention the auditor's report.
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
Interesting question.
I suspect that being the minister during the inquiry means you have to say nothing unless spoken to by the Chair, so as not to prejudice the proceedings. As opposed to being the minister when the problems were actually happening, when it might have been pertinent to say something.
(That might just be my own bias though, as I quite like Mrs Badenoch).
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
I am quite predisposed towards Badenoch but that has defientely been thrown into doubt by both her behaviour to date and her current silence as far as the Post Office case is concerned.
As I have said before as someone who has a quasi-judicial role in this I suspect Badenoch is being told to be quiet by her officials. But it is frankly a bit bizarre that she does not seem to be in the loop on the proposed bill. I don't think she can afford to be silent about this.
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
I am quite predisposed towards Badenoch but that has defientely been thrown into doubt by both her behaviour to date and her current silence as far as the Post Office case is concerned.
She gets mixed reviews in my book, Richard. Her PO performance is not one of her better ones, but maybe she will yet surprise on the upside.
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
Yes, picking the low-hanging fruit is sensible first, you can then build on that to complete the rest later.
Connecting your village makes sense from the way you've described it to be done only after the towns that you're between have been done and that's going to be the case with almost all villages surely?
Going for where you get the most return on your investment first makes sense.
Its the Pareto Principle in action.
Yes its sensible but my point is their promises are clearly unrealistic. And many of these towns already had fibre connection. The Openreach programme was specifically to target those parts of the country that were not yet connected and where the commercial imperative would never be sufficient. Hence all that public money. The towns (including both referenced in my posting) already have full fibre from other commercial operators and have had for several years.
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Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
Starmer is dull and uninteresting. People would be quite happy with a dull and uninteresting period of time.
Of course he might look that little bit more interesting the day after he's won a landslide majority.
He's also able to appear quite personable in the right format, though not actually charismatic. I think by the end of a campaign people will be saying "He's actually alright." How long that endures in Government is another question, but I expect his approval rating to improve during the GE.
Yes his core mission pre-election is to not prevent floating voters doing what they want to do - give the Cons a kicking. Then post-election, he could be a good PM or he could disappoint. The evidence isn't there for either view so we'll just have to see.
I'm optimistic but that's just my choice. It suits me to feel that way. I'm Labour. Likewise the odd assortment of people (tribal tories, the nativist leaver right, sulking Corbynites) choosing to feel he'll be rubbish. That suits them. Pointless arguing about it.
4 local by-elections today. We have Lab defences in Brighton and Tendring, Con defence in Dorset, and Lib Dem defence in Salford. Could be difficult for Cons; they have no candidate in Salford and their candidate in Dorset is already deemed ineligible.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
And the prosecution knew it was at fault
“A senior Post Office solicitor was told about dozens of issues with the computer system just days before a pregnant sub-postmistress was convicted, the Post Office Inquiry heard this week.
Rob Wilson, former head of criminal prosecutions, received an email on 8 October 2010 stating that ‘discrepancies’ with the Horizon IT system had been detected at 40 branches. This bug had caused an apparent loss of £20,000 to show up on the system.
Wilson forwarded the email and its contents to two solicitor colleagues, Jarnail Singh and Juliet McFarlane, but did not disclose it to defence solicitors or defendants. All three solicitors have been reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, although any potential disciplinary proceedings against them have been put on hold at the request of the inquiry.“
But did these Post Office lawyers tell Starmer or the CPS?
Not everything is about Sir Keir, give it a rest!
Pretty astonishing that they were trying people when they knew the system was to blame rather than just thinking it was infallible
well the first comment in this thread ended 'If this is the case Starmer should be safe' which you replied to with 'The Seema Misra case was CPS'
It's gotta be a joke when you of all people tell me 'Not everything is about Sir Keir, give it a rest!', especially as I have probably made less than half a dozen comments about Starmer in my life, whereas you seem to make dozens every day.
But seriously, I don't know if Starmer's record as DPP is good, bad or indifferent, but trying to pin the PO scandal on him seems a massive stretch. There must be other things the CPS did or didn't do while he was DPP where there is a much stronger case against him.
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
I am quite predisposed towards Badenoch but that has defientely been thrown into doubt by both her behaviour to date and her current silence as far as the Post Office case is concerned.
She gets mixed reviews in my book, Richard. Her PO performance is not one of her better ones, but maybe she will yet surprise on the upside.
Second class minister to be frank. Yet to put her stamp on the job and doesn't push the envelope. Doesn't deliver. Let's face it, on this issue she should have gone postal.
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
Yes, picking the low-hanging fruit is sensible first, you can then build on that to complete the rest later.
Connecting your village makes sense from the way you've described it to be done only after the towns that you're between have been done and that's going to be the case with almost all villages surely?
Going for where you get the most return on your investment first makes sense.
Its the Pareto Principle in action.
Yes its sensible but my point is their promises are clearly unrealistic. And many of these towns already had fibre connection. The Openreach programme was specifically to target those parts of the country that were not yet connected and where the commercial imperative would never be sufficient. Hence all that public money. The towns (including both referenced in my posting) already have full fibre from other commercial operators and have had for several years.
Seems perfectly realistic - when the subsidy money runs out and they haven't connected up the deep rural bits, they go back to the future government and complain about "IT inflation" and how they need more money.
All the fuss about trying to blame the DPP for a miscarriage of justice seems very strange to me. It seems to be based on the idea that the DPP should in effect be conducting a preliminary trial before the case comes to court. Why would anyone think that was the DPP's job?
Perhaps the DPP could reasonably be expected to pick up on anomalously large numbers of disputed cases with a common factor that might point to a systemic problem. But not if the DPP had involvement in only a tiny number of these cases, as was the case here.
12 cases apparently. I mean what's 12 cases in the scheme of things. Margin of error and all that. Families, lives ruined etc but that's fine 12 over a large number is a rounding error. Let's move on.
Obviously the point I'm making is that when numbers are tiny it is practically impossible to pick up statistically significant anomalies from them.
Whereas the actual point (cf Paula Vennells) is that when you are in charge of something you are in charge of something.
Is the CPS responsible if it prosecutes a case in which the police cooked up the evidence? That seems the closest parallel here.
My response: it depends - if the CPS knew of should have known, then yes - i.e. if the evidence presented has clear inconsistencies that should have been picked up. If not and the CPS could not have reasonably known, then no. So for the PO, it depends on timing - anything prosecuted after the problems became widely known stinks; before then the CPS is probably off the hook. The PO, of course, kept prosecuting well after they knew there were issues.
ETA: If the CPS did cock up on Starmer's watch then some responsibility rests with him, but I'm not quite sure what that means in practical terms. Johnson cocked up multiple times in jobs before being PM, but that didn't mean he couldn't be PM.
Well, there were a lot of people jumping up and down saying Johnson's track record of cocking up in multiple jobs before being PM meant he SHOULDN'T be PM.
The worst miscarriage of justice in our life times partly happened on Starmer's watch as DPP. That goes into the scales of whether he should be PM. Along with sitting in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet for years, whilst anti-semitism ran rife in the Labour Party. He has a poor track record of either not noticing or closing his eyes to awkward stuff.
0.5% of prosecutions were made by people working under Starmer. 99.5% of prosecutions were made by people working under various Post Office Ministers, Business Secretaries and PM's.
I wonder what could be possibly be the reason for this Starmer fixation? Given the seriousness of the issue it would be pretty poor if Tories were merely trying to hijack the most important miscarriage of justice in British history for (doomed) partisan political gain. Perverse even.
Hardly perverse to want to forensically examine the credentials of the Man Who Would Be PM.
Those who want to shut down this examination seem to be as willing to close their eyes to tricky questions. But then, perhaps that is why they are so invested the man himself.
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
I am quite predisposed towards Badenoch but that has defientely been thrown into doubt by both her behaviour to date and her current silence as far as the Post Office case is concerned.
She gets mixed reviews in my book, Richard. Her PO performance is not one of her better ones, but maybe she will yet surprise on the upside.
Second class minister to be frank. Yet to put her stamp on the job and doesn't push the envelope. Doesn't deliver. Let's face it, on this issue she should have gone postal.
Since the ministers aren't responsible for the prosecutions, the managers at the PO aren't responsible for anything they did, Fujitsu isn't responsible for the software they delivered....
All SPMs have all responsibility, legal and otherwise, removed for the money that passes through their post offices. If some of it shows up at the PO, fine. If they walk out the door with cash in a bag marked "Swag", that's also good.
To the Post Office - Fuck You, If You Can't Take Your Own Joke.
I know from my adventures on the parish council how important it has to have an appealing spouse to compensate for one's shortcomings as a candidate and as a human being. What's Mrs Starmer like? She's shortly going to be FLOTUK and we know fuck all about her. Mrs Sunak isn't exactly a tick in the plus column being a sour faced billionaire harridan with an aversion to tax.
Personally I think that spouses should be off limits, unless the politician positively insists on putting them forward (hopefully with their consent). But FWIW I've met Mrs Sunak and I thought she was nice, with a pleasant smile and an engaging manner.
All the fuss about trying to blame the DPP for a miscarriage of justice seems very strange to me. It seems to be based on the idea that the DPP should in effect be conducting a preliminary trial before the case comes to court. Why would anyone think that was the DPP's job?
Perhaps the DPP could reasonably be expected to pick up on anomalously large numbers of disputed cases with a common factor that might point to a systemic problem. But not if the DPP had involvement in only a tiny number of these cases, as was the case here.
12 cases apparently. I mean what's 12 cases in the scheme of things. Margin of error and all that. Families, lives ruined etc but that's fine 12 over a large number is a rounding error. Let's move on.
Obviously the point I'm making is that when numbers are tiny it is practically impossible to pick up statistically significant anomalies from them.
Whereas the actual point (cf Paula Vennells) is that when you are in charge of something you are in charge of something.
Is the CPS responsible if it prosecutes a case in which the police cooked up the evidence? That seems the closest parallel here.
My response: it depends - if the CPS knew of should have known, then yes - i.e. if the evidence presented has clear inconsistencies that should have been picked up. If not and the CPS could not have reasonably known, then no. So for the PO, it depends on timing - anything prosecuted after the problems became widely known stinks; before then the CPS is probably off the hook. The PO, of course, kept prosecuting well after they knew there were issues.
ETA: If the CPS did cock up on Starmer's watch then some responsibility rests with him, but I'm not quite sure what that means in practical terms. Johnson cocked up multiple times in jobs before being PM, but that didn't mean he couldn't be PM.
Well, there were a lot of people jumping up and down saying Johnson's track record of cocking up in multiple jobs before being PM meant he SHOULDN'T be PM.
The worst miscarriage of justice in our life times partly happened on Starmer's watch as DPP. That goes into the scales of whether he should be PM. Along with sitting in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet for years, whilst anti-semitism ran rife in the Labour Party. He has a poor track record of either not noticing or closing his eyes to awkward stuff.
0.5% of prosecutions were made by people working under Starmer. 99.5% of prosecutions were made by people working under various Post Office Ministers, Business Secretaries and PM's.
I wonder what could be possibly be the reason for this Starmer fixation? Given the seriousness of the issue it would be pretty poor if Tories were merely trying to hijack the most important miscarriage of justice in British history for (doomed) partisan political gain. Perverse even.
Hardly perverse to want to forensically examine the credentials of the Man Who Would Be PM.
Those who want to shut down this examination seem to be as willing to close their eyes to tricky questions. But then, perhaps that is why they are so invested the man himself.
No-one is particularly positively invested in Starmer bar himself. Nerdy middle aged pb posters who don't typically vote Labour but will this time are not attending mass events singing Oh Keir Starmer.
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results. And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
Starmer is dull and uninteresting. People would be quite happy with a dull and uninteresting period of time.
Of course he might look that little bit more interesting the day after he's won a landslide majority.
I know from my adventures on the parish council how important it has to have an appealing spouse to compensate for one's shortcomings as a candidate and as a human being. What's Mrs Starmer like? She's shortly going to be FLOTUK and we know fuck all about her. Mrs Sunak isn't exactly a tick in the plus column being a sour faced billionaire harridan with an aversion to tax.
An asset, I'd say, from my limited knowledge. Visually fine, good cv, maybe as a couple they're a bit North London but I'm nitpicking.
My guess is that they are a recent invention by Muslim communities in the West - maybe America? But if @Dura_Ace is right it sounds like they have now reached the Muslim world proper
I know from my adventures on the parish council how important it has to have an appealing spouse to compensate for one's shortcomings as a candidate and as a human being. What's Mrs Starmer like? She's shortly going to be FLOTUK and we know fuck all about her. Mrs Sunak isn't exactly a tick in the plus column being a sour faced billionaire harridan with an aversion to tax.
Personally I think that spouses should be off limits, unless the politician positively insists on putting them forward (hopefully with their consent). But FWIW I've met Mrs Sunak and I thought she was nice, with a pleasant smile and an engaging manner.
I would have got absolutely nowhere in the parish council election without Mrs DA's charisma, baking skills and Bollywood smile.
Those “Eid Balloons” are on Etsy for sale to Americans, someone with a load of blank balloons and a printer that can print anything.
The release of “Eid Balloons” isn’t a thing at all, anywhere in the Muslim world.
You know it is perfectly permissible to say "yeah, OK, I got that wrong"
No one will think less of you. Indeed, possibly the opposite
Mate, I’m a Muslim and until today I’d never heard about Eid Balloons.
I don't understand the endless absolutism. Its perfectly sane and very likely that some places and cultures have different things to other places and cultures.
Unless of course "Muslim" is a single descriptor and every muslim globally is exactly the same as every other muslim...
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
Yes, picking the low-hanging fruit is sensible first, you can then build on that to complete the rest later.
Connecting your village makes sense from the way you've described it to be done only after the towns that you're between have been done and that's going to be the case with almost all villages surely?
Going for where you get the most return on your investment first makes sense.
Its the Pareto Principle in action.
Yes its sensible but my point is their promises are clearly unrealistic. And many of these towns already had fibre connection. The Openreach programme was specifically to target those parts of the country that were not yet connected and where the commercial imperative would never be sufficient. Hence all that public money. The towns (including both referenced in my posting) already have full fibre from other commercial operators and have had for several years.
Since Openreach provide the backhaul of almost all commercial operators, I'm curious which other commercial operators you are referring to and what percentage of those towns they actually reached?
For instance I know from personal experience that firms like Virgin which had started a fiber rollout in many towns then largely abandoned it, perhaps in part as everyone else was waiting for Openreach, and wouldn't even hook up new builds even in towns where they were already "present".
A new build I lived in 14 years ago was in a town that Virgin advertised they were operating in but when we enquired about getting a connection they told us that our property being new was not eligible and they had no intention of connecting it. My new build we moved into 13 months ago had Openreach installed as part of construction before we even moved into the property.
Openreach when making connections in towns aren't just reaching some parts of those towns, they're doing it far more comprehensive and new properties are getting added to Openreach too, so it makes sense for Openreach to go everywhere since that is the backhaul almost everyone is using - and since lots of properties in towns others are at are just as much part of a desert otherwise as your village is. If you want fiber it doesn't help you that a home two streets over has it if you can't get it.
Those “Eid Balloons” are on Etsy for sale to Americans, someone with a load of blank balloons and a printer that can print anything.
The release of “Eid Balloons” isn’t a thing at all, anywhere in the Muslim world.
You know it is perfectly permissible to say "yeah, OK, I got that wrong"
No one will think less of you. Indeed, possibly the opposite
Mate, I’m a Muslim and until today I’d never heard about Eid Balloons.
I don't understand the endless absolutism. Its perfectly sane and very likely that some places and cultures have different things to other places and cultures.
Unless of course "Muslim" is a single descriptor and every muslim globally is exactly the same as every other muslim...
You are not going to win many pb arguments with that wishy washy centrist approach. Use CAPITALS and pick a SIDE and NEVER change.....
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
What is the cost per km of laying fibre along A Roads ? I tried looking for some figures for the UK, but couldn't find anything.
(As an aside, I've never understood why we don't lay multipurpose conduit when constructing roads, so we don't have to regularly dig them up.)
Those “Eid Balloons” are on Etsy for sale to Americans, someone with a load of blank balloons and a printer that can print anything.
The release of “Eid Balloons” isn’t a thing at all, anywhere in the Muslim world.
You know it is perfectly permissible to say "yeah, OK, I got that wrong"
No one will think less of you. Indeed, possibly the opposite
Mate, I’m a Muslim and until today I’d never heard about Eid Balloons.
I don't understand the endless absolutism. Its perfectly sane and very likely that some places and cultures have different things to other places and cultures.
Unless of course "Muslim" is a single descriptor and every muslim globally is exactly the same as every other muslim...
Well all Muslims are homogeneous as evidenced by me being a devout Muslim.
I notice that, in the flurry of government announcements after the Horizon documentary, there has been little worry about pre-empting the findings of the ongoing inquiry.
Perhaps that's an excuse which should be retired more widely. Clearly it has some value, but it's become rote.
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
Yes, picking the low-hanging fruit is sensible first, you can then build on that to complete the rest later.
Connecting your village makes sense from the way you've described it to be done only after the towns that you're between have been done and that's going to be the case with almost all villages surely?
Going for where you get the most return on your investment first makes sense.
Its the Pareto Principle in action.
Yes its sensible but my point is their promises are clearly unrealistic. And many of these towns already had fibre connection. The Openreach programme was specifically to target those parts of the country that were not yet connected and where the commercial imperative would never be sufficient. Hence all that public money. The towns (including both referenced in my posting) already have full fibre from other commercial operators and have had for several years.
Since Openreach provide the backhaul of almost all commercial operators, I'm curious which other commercial operators you are referring to and what percentage of those towns they actually reached?
For instance I know from personal experience that firms like Virgin which had started a fiber rollout in many towns then largely abandoned it, perhaps in part as everyone else was waiting for Openreach, and wouldn't even hook up new builds even in towns where they were already "present".
A new build I lived in 14 years ago was in a town that Virgin advertised they were operating in but when we enquired about getting a connection they told us that our property being new was not eligible and they had no intention of connecting it. My new build we moved into 13 months ago had Openreach installed as part of construction before we even moved into the property.
Openreach when making connections in towns aren't just reaching some parts of those towns, they're doing it far more comprehensive and new properties are getting added to Openreach too, so it makes sense for Openreach to go everywhere since that is the backhaul almost everyone is using - and since lots of properties in towns others are at are just as much part of a desert otherwise as your village is. If you want fiber it doesn't help you that a home two streets over has it if you can't get it.
The fibre provider is Netomnia, who are apparently competely separate from Openreach and Virgin and provide their own fibre networks. At least according to their own blurb.
Jake Berry on Trump: "Bring him back!" Jess Phillips: "You don't actually think that." JB: "Economically, Biden has been a disaster." JP: "You really think Trump would be good for the States? You like a bit of insurrection?" JB: "He's not been convicted of anything." 👀~AA
Does anyone think Ed Davey will resign? I think he may do.
The LibDems on here will howl me down as a Tory stooge, but looked at as objectively as I can, I think he is in some real difficulty.
We are in an election year. This issue has come from nowhere (who thought Davey was in any difficulty 2 weeks ago?) and the issue causing him a problem is likely to have a serious impact on the political weather through to the election. Now, partly that may feed into an anti-government sentiment ("everything is broken!"). But it will focus down on individuals too.
As much as anybody knows anything about Davey, it is now first and foremost that "he has questions to answer over the PO fiasco". So he was lied to. But was he too incurious? Too gullible? Both big faults in a party leader.
The LibDem message going into the election is woefully thin, but such as it is depends on being "better than the Tories". A harder sell with Davey at the helm. He is also boxed in. He has to go quickly - or not at all. He can't say "I will step down after the election". Partly because that gives a good reason not to vote for him anyway. The last thing the LibDems need is to lose their leader at two elections in a row. But his voters have already thrown him out in 2015. Their love is not deep. A candidature against him by a wronged SPM is likely to attract the very voters the LibDems rely on.
The LibDems here will be better placed than me to know if Daisy (or another) is ready to step up as leader. But at least she has the benefit of not being "pale, male and stale" (although neither was Jo Swinson). But at least on the issue of the SPM's, she is at least a clean pair of hands and the Party can move on to more easily making the case "better than the Tories".
Jake Berry on Trump: "Bring him back!" Jess Phillips: "You don't actually think that." JB: "Economically, Biden has been a disaster." JP: "You really think Trump would be good for the States? You like a bit of insurrection?" JB: "He's not been convicted of anything." 👀~AA
💥 These switchers have left the Tories "for good", furious at lack of delivery of promises in 14 years of govt
💥 Rishi Sunak has gone from a breath of fresh air a year ago to "typical politician who never answers a question", "out of touch", "spineless", and "false"
💥 Sunak's new year election visits have been noticed - and have gone down like a cup of cold sick ("oily", "staged", PM "full of himself")
💥 Tax cuts viewed as a "sweetener" just to get votes
💥 Keir Starmer seen as "weak", "spineless", "unchallenging", "boring" and - above all else - as having "no plan". They are voting Labour *despite* Keir Starmer rather than because of him. Lack of plan/square one attack by Sunak was the only clip that went down well
💥 The person who got the best reception - and is a threat to both parties - is Nigel Farage, seen as "relatable", "strong", shown to be "in touch" by time in the jungle. All bar one said they would vote for Nigel Farage if they had the chance
💥 Tory win would leave people "gutted", Labour win a mix of "worried" and "hopeful". Hard to argue that - as the polling of direct switchers shows - these voters are coming back to the Conservatives any time soon
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
That would presumably include the current Minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has been spactacularly silent on the Scandal so far.
Interesting question.
I suspect that being the minister during the inquiry means you have to say nothing unless spoken to by the Chair, so as not to prejudice the proceedings. As opposed to being the minister when the problems were actually happening, when it might have been pertinent to say something.
(That might just be my own bias though, as I quite like Mrs Badenoch).
How does that excuse work, given the events of the last couple of days ?
The fibre provider is Netomnia, who are apparently competely separate from Openreach and Virgin and provide their own fibre networks. At least according to their own blurb.
They are separate but will use Openreach's ducting, poles etc where applicable through open access (another one of Ofcom's good measures).
It seems to me that the DPP is attacked for prosecuting people and attacked for not prosecuting people. Can't win, eh?
On a completely unrelated note, I have had much to say over the years about the epic disaster that is BT Group but Openreach's FTTP rollout has been extraordinary, surely one of the fastest in history of any country, which is a real credit to their engineering teams and also to Ofcom who provided a good regulatory environment finally that encouraged/forced them to do it. It is a shame it took so long but I have nothing but good things to say about both organisations now.
To put this into context, Openreach currently cover 60,000 premises a week with their rollout and will hit another 1 million premises covered in total in just Q1 this year, another new record. These rates surpass countries like Germany, Spain and France.
At the moment they are well on track to hit their aim of 25 million premises covered by 2026 and they have now said they will continue building "after", which suggests to me that they will eventually cover everyone with a mix of private and public subsidy. And for once I think I am supportive of them getting most of it as they seem to be doing the best job.
And yet their record on connecting the countryside to FTTP - which is the real issue that has existed for years - is pretty abysmal. I am not talking just about remote properties but relatively large villages.
Their forward plans show they will not reach most of the countryside outside the major towns until at least the end of 2026. And even then it looks like they will miss much of that target.
These billions will tun out to be a vast unnecessary cost anyway, totally overtaken by satellite systems such as Starlink. Just give the last 10% a Starlink kit and subsidised monthly fee.
Fibre is always better, if it can be done for a reasonable cost.
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
Yep. Which is not the case with most of the areas that are still waiting (and will be waiting for many years I suspect) for connection. Our village is 2000 people equi-distant between two towns about 10 miles to each along an A Road. This is not really anywhere near remote. The same goes for the vast majority of places listed on the Openreach plans.
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
What is the cost per km of laying fibre along A Roads ? I tried looking for some figures for the UK, but couldn't find anything.
(As an aside, I've never understood why we don't lay multipurpose conduit when constructing roads, so we don't have to regularly dig them up.)
This is the system used widely in the Netherlands. They have conduits along the roads which all services have to be laid in. Mind you we have some specific rules in the UK (which may apply elsewhere as well, I don't know) about depth of burial of services, insulation, isolation and other controls. I do wonder how compatible they would be with the Dutch system of covered conduits running along the sides of roads in towns. I do think we should at least try though.
I notice that, in the flurry of government announcements after the Horizon documentary, there has been little worry about pre-empting the findings of the ongoing inquiry.
Perhaps that's an excuse which should be retired more widely. Clearly it has some value, but it's become rote.
I understand that some lawyers are complaining, not that the law will override the courts, but that overturning the convictions will besmirch the good names of the lawyers involved.
Further, that the reason this route is being chosen, is that the PO was digging its heals in, to the point of threatening legal action against the government for all other avenues. Passing a law in parliament to bin the convictions can't be overturned by the courts - the Supreme Court has closed the door to most challenges to the limits of parliamentary power.
Does anyone think Ed Davey will resign? I think he may do.
The LibDems on here will howl me down as a Tory stooge, but looked at as objectively as I can, I think he is in some real difficulty.
We are in an election year. This issue has come from nowhere (who thought Davey was in any difficulty 2 weeks ago?) and the issue causing him a problem is likely to have a serious impact on the political weather through to the election. Now, partly that may feed into an anti-government sentiment ("everything is broken!"). But it will focus down on individuals too.
As much as anybody knows anything about Davey, it is now first and foremost that "he has questions to answer over the PO fiasco". So he was lied to. But was he too incurious? Too gullible? Both big faults in a party leader.
The LibDem message going into the election is woefully thin, but such as it is depends on being "better than the Tories". A harder sell with Davey at the helm. He is also boxed in. He has to go quickly - or not at all. He can't say "I will step down after the election". Partly because that gives a good reason not to vote for him anyway. The last thing the LibDems need is to lose their leader at two elections in a row. But his voters have already thrown him out in 2015. Their love is not deep. A candidature against him by a wronged SPM is likely to attract the very voters the LibDems rely on.
The LibDems here will be better placed than me to know if Daisy (or another) is ready to step up as leader. But at least she has the benefit of not being "pale, male and stale" (although neither was Jo Swinson). But at least on the issue of the SPM's, she is at least a clean pair of hands and the Party can move on to more easily making the case "better than the Tories".
What I want to know is who authorised the remuneration package scale allowing Paula Vennells to earn almost £5m (if this has been reported correctly). Taxpayer-funded.
Comments
https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/article/view/2217/2151
I haven't called for Ed Davey to resign. Neither have I called for Starmer to resign. I have criticised May for awarding Vennells the CBE and I have credited James Arbuthnot.
What I don't agree on is that we simply shouldn't talk about the part Labour played in this just because its politically inconvenient for them.
They have questions to answer too and they need answering. This is a cross party issue and affects us all.
Probably what Boris was trying with the Savile jibe
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/post-office-solicitor-knew-of-it-flaw-before-criminal-trial-inquiry-hears/5118219.article
OneWeb is exactly for the last few percent where this is not true - they sell backhaul. The idea is that (say) you set up a 5G phone mast, with the connection to the rest of the planet via OneWeb satellites. So, suddenly a remote Scottish island (say) has high(ish) speed internet.
But before some fairly substantial LD gains at the GE and the possibility of being third party again with more PMQs questions etc? I don't see it. Unless he is both a man of principle and also believes he has done wrong.
It must also be noted that the first firm of solicitors appointed to defend Seema Misra, as well as the barrister, were wholly unaware of the complexities of the Horizon system, and did not appear to have even considered that the Horizon system might have been at fault.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3AI_Q5jk_M
What on Earth is happening with you, for fuck sake Boris Johnson accused Keir Starmer of not prosecuting a child rapist when he wasn't even around to prosecute.
Get a grip.
Lots of talk recently about 92 and 97, so let's compare the Ipsos fundamentals from now with just before either of those campaigns.
The situation for the Tories today is worse on many factors than in 97, let alone 92. Leaders an exception, but not because Sunak is popular.
On voting intent the number of Tories going out and voting means a 1997 style defeat looks like a good results.
And remember that Labour voting intent is not based on SKS’s approval status so i really don’t know why some people are attacking SKS it’s not going to stop Labour voters going out and voting
The release of “Eid Balloons” isn’t a thing at all, anywhere in the Muslim world.
"Eid Balloons
At Islamic Party Store we have a great collection of balloons perfect for your Eid party celebration. We have many options to choose from, whether your looking for simple latex Eid Mubarak balloons or a beautiful balloon garland. Say Eid Mubarak to family and friends in the most perfect way with our Eid Mubarak balloons. Not found what you are looking for? How about checking out our other Islamic celebration decorations for Nikkah, Umrah, Aqiqah and so much more"
https://islamicpartystore.com/collections/eid-balloons?gclid=Cj0KCQiAwP6sBhDAARIsAPfK_wbsuSX9XwJoezG_uWVrQxQCeMA3TjKjzL-kuVVplApEy2j1KEljqPIaAi2uEALw_wcB
https://www.amazon.com/eid-mubarak-balloons/s?k=eid+mubarak+balloons
https://emaan.com.au/products/ramadan-eid-decorations-balloons
If they were to say that fibre is simply too expensive for most of the country outside the towns and cities then so be it. I can accept that argument. But they are paying vast sums of money to Openreach to connect us all up and they seem to be picking all the low hanging fruit whilst leaving the vast majority of places outside the towns to the very end of their forecast period. Does anyone seriously believe that is realistic?
Some things remain consistent (economy, healthcare etc) but questions that would have been obviously asked in the past are not anymore, like "best on unemployment".
The country has much going wrong with it at the moment, and its time for a change in politics, but one thing that is good is there's no shortage of employment opportunities. Anyone who wants a job, can get one, which was not always the case.
And the prosecution knew it was at fault
“A senior Post Office solicitor was told about dozens of issues with the computer system just days before a pregnant sub-postmistress was convicted, the Post Office Inquiry heard this week.
Rob Wilson, former head of criminal prosecutions, received an email on 8 October 2010 stating that ‘discrepancies’ with the Horizon IT system had been detected at 40 branches. This bug had caused an apparent loss of £20,000 to show up on the system.
Wilson forwarded the email and its contents to two solicitor colleagues, Jarnail Singh and Juliet McFarlane, but did not disclose it to defence solicitors or defendants. All three solicitors have been reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, although any potential disciplinary proceedings against them have been put on hold at the request of the inquiry.“
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/post-office-solicitor-knew-of-it-flaw-before-criminal-trial-inquiry-hears/5118219.article
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/10/postmistress-election-challenge-ed-davey-post-office-scanda/
Will Con and Lab stand down and let the PO candidate have a free run, or will that lead to every business minister for the last two decades open to challenge in the same way?
Jess Phillips: "You don't actually think that."
JB: "Economically, Biden has been a disaster."
JP: "You really think Trump would be good for the States? You like a bit of insurrection?"
JB: "He's not been convicted of anything." 👀~AA
https://x.com/BestForBritain/status/1745201240265441336
The Tory Party. 2024.
I once had an emails exchange with an ex-minister (I need to be careful here re doxing) who rarely was appointed for their expertise in a particular area. They let rip on their opinion of ministers generally. They didn't last long (there was no chance) because of their frustration and inability to hold their opinions to themselves. They were damning of their fellow ministers for being completely ignorant of their briefs. Once I received an official letter from them (drafted by their civil servants) with a hand written note from them below which (in my words) basically said 'This is bollocks, but it is what I have to send out'. I kept it to myself.
Connecting your village makes sense from the way you've described it to be done only after the towns that you're between have been done and that's going to be the case with almost all villages surely?
Going for where you get the most return on your investment first makes sense.
Its the Pareto Principle in action.
So I'm wondering whether there were also erroneous 'surpluses' in any Subpostmaster's accounts that also arose from whatever faults were in the system. I would have expected there to be some. Why should the errors always act in one direction? Do we know if any surpluses have been reported?
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466406/Post-Office-fixes-technical-problem-causing-accounting-errors-in-Horizon
"There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
The 99 red balloons go by"
@katyballs
On the first day back after Christmas, Tory MPs were invited for welcome drinks in the Prime Minister’s parliamentary office.
Rishi Sunak was not there. Instead, his Chief Whip hosted - describing the party as one big family…
Pretty astonishing that they were trying people when they knew the system was to blame rather than just thinking it was infallible
An MP asked yesterday for the total figure for 'shortfalls' recovered by the PO and presumably transferred to profits over the years. They don't know. Someone will find out.
Since the case for returning those monies is overwhelming you would think it would be a starred item in the accounts, not to mention the auditor's report.
I suspect that being the minister during the inquiry means you have to say nothing unless spoken to by the Chair, so as not to prejudice the proceedings. As opposed to being the minister when the problems were actually happening, when it might have been pertinent to say something.
(That might just be my own bias though, as I quite like Mrs Badenoch).
I'm optimistic but that's just my choice. It suits me to feel that way. I'm Labour. Likewise the odd assortment of people (tribal tories, the nativist leaver right, sulking Corbynites) choosing to feel he'll be rubbish. That suits them. Pointless arguing about it.
It's gotta be a joke when you of all people tell me 'Not everything is about Sir Keir, give it a rest!', especially as I have probably made less than half a dozen comments about Starmer in my life, whereas you seem to make dozens every day.
But seriously, I don't know if Starmer's record as DPP is good, bad or indifferent, but trying to pin the PO scandal on him seems a massive stretch. There must be other things the CPS did or didn't do while he was DPP where there is a much stronger case against him.
What's wrong with that plan?
Those who want to shut down this examination seem to be as willing to close their eyes to tricky questions. But then, perhaps that is why they are so invested the man himself.
No one will think less of you. Indeed, possibly the opposite
Since the ministers aren't responsible for the prosecutions, the managers at the PO aren't responsible for anything they did, Fujitsu isn't responsible for the software they delivered....
All SPMs have all responsibility, legal and otherwise, removed for the money that passes through their post offices. If some of it shows up at the PO, fine. If they walk out the door with cash in a bag marked "Swag", that's also good.
To the Post Office - Fuck You, If You Can't Take Your Own Joke.
https://abyati.sa/en/eid-balloons-white-10-pieces/p1135284033
https://www.salamoccasions.com/products/eid-balloons-gold-10-pack
https://www.muslimah-collection.com/products/eid-decoration-balloons-set
My guess is that they are a recent invention by Muslim communities in the West - maybe America? But if @Dura_Ace is right it sounds like they have now reached the Muslim world proper
Unless of course "Muslim" is a single descriptor and every muslim globally is exactly the same as every other muslim...
For instance I know from personal experience that firms like Virgin which had started a fiber rollout in many towns then largely abandoned it, perhaps in part as everyone else was waiting for Openreach, and wouldn't even hook up new builds even in towns where they were already "present".
A new build I lived in 14 years ago was in a town that Virgin advertised they were operating in but when we enquired about getting a connection they told us that our property being new was not eligible and they had no intention of connecting it. My new build we moved into 13 months ago had Openreach installed as part of construction before we even moved into the property.
Openreach when making connections in towns aren't just reaching some parts of those towns, they're doing it far more comprehensive and new properties are getting added to Openreach too, so it makes sense for Openreach to go everywhere since that is the backhaul almost everyone is using - and since lots of properties in towns others are at are just as much part of a desert otherwise as your village is. If you want fiber it doesn't help you that a home two streets over has it if you can't get it.
Almost feel sorry for the current witness. Awful timing as we enter the white Bronco stage of the scandal.
I tried looking for some figures for the UK, but couldn't find anything.
(As an aside, I've never understood why we don't lay multipurpose conduit when constructing roads, so we don't have to regularly dig them up.)
If I am provably or obviously wrong, I am always happy to admit it. Anything else seems completely pointless, in a site dedicated to debate
Evidence A: :Liz Truss did not, it turns out, "surprise on the upside". Soz boz
Evidence B: Despite my enthusiasm, what3words has not taken the world by storm (tho it remains a brilliant if quirky idea). Apols!
Perhaps that's an excuse which should be retired more widely. Clearly it has some value, but it's become rote.
The economy is one of the administration's strongest points.
We are in an election year. This issue has come from nowhere (who thought Davey was in any difficulty 2 weeks ago?) and the issue causing him a problem is likely to have a serious impact on the political weather through to the election. Now, partly that may feed into an anti-government sentiment ("everything is broken!"). But it will focus down on individuals too.
As much as anybody knows anything about Davey, it is now first and foremost that "he has questions to answer over the PO fiasco". So he was lied to. But was he too incurious? Too gullible? Both big faults in a party leader.
The LibDem message going into the election is woefully thin, but such as it is depends on being "better than the Tories". A harder sell with Davey at the helm. He is also boxed in. He has to go quickly - or not at all. He can't say "I will step down after the election". Partly because that gives a good reason not to vote for him anyway. The last thing the LibDems need is to lose their leader at two elections in a row. But his voters have already thrown him out in 2015. Their love is not deep. A candidature against him by a wronged SPM is likely to attract the very voters the LibDems rely on.
The LibDems here will be better placed than me to know if Daisy (or another) is ready to step up as leader. But at least she has the benefit of not being "pale, male and stale" (although neither was Jo Swinson). But at least on the issue of the SPM's, she is at least a clean pair of hands and the Party can move on to more easily making the case "better than the Tories".
1: Democracy
2: The constitution
3: The economy
4: Foreign policy
The administrations weakest points:
1: Biden sometimes speaks weird.
2: Ummm
3: Errr
💥 These switchers have left the Tories "for good", furious at lack of delivery of promises in 14 years of govt
💥 Rishi Sunak has gone from a breath of fresh air a year ago to "typical politician who never answers a question", "out of touch", "spineless", and "false"
💥 Sunak's new year election visits have been noticed - and have gone down like a cup of cold sick ("oily", "staged", PM "full of himself")
💥 Tax cuts viewed as a "sweetener" just to get votes
💥 Keir Starmer seen as "weak", "spineless", "unchallenging", "boring" and - above all else - as having "no plan". They are voting Labour *despite* Keir Starmer rather than because of him. Lack of plan/square one attack by Sunak was the only clip that went down well
💥 The person who got the best reception - and is a threat to both parties - is Nigel Farage, seen as "relatable", "strong", shown to be "in touch" by time in the jungle. All bar one said they would vote for Nigel Farage if they had the chance
💥 Tory win would leave people "gutted", Labour win a mix of "worried" and "hopeful". Hard to argue that - as the polling of direct switchers shows - these voters are coming back to the Conservatives any time soon
https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1745332335757668755
It's going to be a landslide, for the first time that is my central prediction.
And the idea of a single mast providing coverage doesn't work well for those hidden away in the Devon valleys.
Further, that the reason this route is being chosen, is that the PO was digging its heals in, to the point of threatening legal action against the government for all other avenues. Passing a law in parliament to bin the convictions can't be overturned by the courts - the Supreme Court has closed the door to most challenges to the limits of parliamentary power.