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At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

nytimes.com

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Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#31

Post by butlersean »

XCabbage wrote: post #6

[flagged]

to commit an act usually means that its intentional and illegal. suicide is often neither. hence the passive tone.

compare and contrast: - he committed suicide - he was a victim of suicide - he died by suicide

each implies different levels of legality and passivity, and therefore control, and responsibility.

in this particular case the passive voice is extra important because to any reasonable person the post office management / fujitsu / uk gov are the responsible parties.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#32

Post by Tostino »

ellisv wrote: post #15
Horffupolde wrote: post #9

Suicide is a verb and result by itself. Would the author also say “he died by murder”?

They are simplify avoiding using the word "committed" using a well accepted alternative because of the connotation with criminal behavior. But no they would say "died by homicide" not "died by murder".

Maybe "were driven to suicide by..." to properly describe the situation?

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#33

Post by thoroughburro »

cjs_ac wrote: post #25
Horffupolde wrote: post #9

Suicide is a verb and result by itself. Would the author also say “he died by murder”?

This trend for commenting on news articles with nothing to say but a complaint about the wording of the headline is tedious. The right to free speech does not impose a responsibility to say something about everything you see.

Your argument is that the wording of headlines is so meaningless as to always be beneath comment? Seems silly.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#34

Post by cedws »

The failing is as much with the court as it is with Fujitsu. Why did they blindly accept Horizon’s data as evidence? What if the computer said the Queen stole all the money and ran off to Barbados, would they have thrown her in jail? Why was the output of a black box, which may as well have been a notebook Fujitsu could have written anything they wanted into, treated as gospel?

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#35

Post by myrmidon »

XCabbage wrote: post #6

[flagged]

I don' much like this euphemism either, but there is at least one favorable aspect in my view: "Died by suicide" reads less accusatory to me, and I believe that is actually a good thing here.

Too much focus is put on retroactively heaping blame on involved persons whenever things go wrong, but that is a really bad approach in my view; enforcement/punishment for things like this should be as light (and consistent) as possible.

But instead we get insane inconsistency (depending on exact outcome) thanks to media amplification and selective outrage.

All that achieves in the end is that people become better at shirking responsibility and playing the blame game, and it hinders not only investigations of past incidents but even increases future risk by incentivizing everyone to cover their ass first and actually fix things second.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#36

Post by rahimnathwani »

XCabbage wrote: post #6

[flagged]

  But suicide is an act (even if often either an irrational one committed by people in a disordered state of mind, or perhaps a desperate one by people with no path to happiness), and understanding any particular suicide is going to require understanding the thoughts and motivations of the person who killed themselves.
In this case, several people independently committed suicide due to largely identical circumstances. Sure, not everyone falsely implicated took the same action, but I don't think we need to look at their individual circumstances to understand the root cause.

  framing suicide more like a disease that acted upon them
These people started off with agency, sure, but being falsely accused by the government, and having government employees and contractors giving false testimony, took away much of that agency.

Could you or I be 100% certain we wouldn't react the same way?

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#37

Post by closewith »

mrkramer wrote: post #27

I thought British legal system and computer forensics were serious but this case is just a travesty of justice.

The British legal system is and always has been a litany of injustices dressed up in formal attire. To be avoided at all costs.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#38

Post by xbryanx »

mike_hearn wrote: post #8

To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details o…

> please don't say they died by suicide

I encourage you to read the current thinking on this evolving language, which offers some explanation as to why we're moving away from damaging language like "committing" suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_terminology#%22Committ... https://www.iasp.info/languageguidelines/

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#39

Post by johnorourke »

mike_hearn wrote: post #8

To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details o…

"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.

Re: At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

#40

Post by mrkramer »

cedws wrote: post #19
mike_hearn wrote: post #8

To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details o…

>if software developers screw up Well, yes, they did screw up, but the fallout was amplified 100x by bad management.

"The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]."

If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...

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