British Post Office Scandal

Post by 123pie123 » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 2:44 PM UTC

red_admiral wrote: post #101

mjburgess wrote: post #30

To clarify how this happened: in the UK anyone can bring a private prosecution where they effectively act as the prosecutor . This is usually used by charities who take on laws to prosecute (eg., crimes against animals). Here the post office used the law to prosecute its own staff in alleged crimes against the post office . So they were both the prosecutor and the victim. This gave them overwhelming incentives not to…

I'm mostly with you on that one, but private prosecutors still have to get the case past a judge (and often a jury too), and convince them beyond reasonable doubt. In this particular case that clearly wasn't a sufficient safeguard, but in general, private prosecutions have their place.

Post by bestouff » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

Post by neilwilson » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

TechnicalVault wrote: post #80

abigail95 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does an appeal require government support? There's no way reasonable doubt remains, what is the legal barrier that an appeal court is trying to deal with? > But these would be largely symbolic acts because the government can't, at the stroke of a pen, quash a conviction This is untrue. Judges may not like it but I don't really care. The parliament is legally soverign and the courts are subservient to interpret an…

Indeed, the quirk of the Westminster system is that parliament can indeed legislate whatever it likes. Parliament can pass a law that the colour orange is now legally the new black. There is however one detail, what is passed must be internally consistent with other legislation otherwise it will fall at Judicial Review. For example if you want to pass legislation that contravenes the UK's Human Rights Act, you need t…

Post by leoedin » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #65

pipes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ian hislop mentioned yesterday that computer weekly ran it in 2009. He implied private eye picked it up after that. I've been reading about probably once every two years in the guardian. The thing that is so upsetting about all of this is that it's been pretty much ignored by government since 2009, the post office systematically lied and covered this up while knowing it was destroying innocent people. And the only re…

The cover-up is at least as dangerous as the original incompetence. It was a heavy-handed, conscious, legally aggressive cover-up. The people responsible knew exactly what was happening, and they were more than happy for the blame to fall on innocent sub-postmasters. Horizon cost £2.4bn and was apparently developed by a team of eight, three of whom were described by the team lead as "incompetent." Fujitsu also screwe…

Post by hermitcrab » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 3:19 PM UTC

drumhead wrote: post #40

mjburgess wrote: post #19

In middle of this it's obscene how the media neglects to mention who did most of the actual investigative journalism: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/ -- for years on end, whilst the issue was ignored by the rest of the press. They all now jump in on it and elide the years of work put in by the PE. This is a common tactic in media outlets, esp. here, for the major sources to try to "own" issues with nearly zero work pu…

I learnt about the story from Private Eye, they'd been following it for years, there were other sources as well though, but none of them were the national press or the BBC or ITV. This story wasnt glamourous for them and they only swooped in when well after the court cases when it looked like there would be political dimension. Its sad that proper investigative journalism is only found in the smaller publications the…