Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 585 posts

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

#281

Post by arrowsmith »

cgriswald wrote: post #257
arrowsmith wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the tabloids either but what exactly do you propose we do? Are you sure it's a good idea to undermine the freedom of the press? A government with the power to censor the tabloids is also a government with the power to censor the news outlets that you do like. I'd be careful about opening that can of worms.

Civil defamation laws could equally be used to undermine freedom of the press. In any case, the 'can of worms' you are talking about was the state of affairs in the UK until 2009 and is currently the case in several US states and yet somehow we still have people in those states openly criticizing a sitting president. Rather than throwing our hands in the air, maybe we could expect our governments to craft laws in suc…

The UK already has extremely strong defamation laws, to the point where we attract "libel tourism" - foreigners find dubious excuses to bring their libel cases to the UK courts so that they have an easier chance of winning.

Lots of people in my replies are telling me that I'm wrong, but no-one has yet answered my question: what specifically should the government do?

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

#282

Post by penguin_booze »

tialaramex wrote: post #123
zapzupnz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious to know how American legal system is better than any other country’s. From the outside looking in, it looks just as broken if not worse. You may have been kidding, but I’m sure someone will genuinely think so and have some decent arguments for it.

My favourite inspiration goes the opposite direction. The United States has this Supreme Court, a final Court of Appeal, politically independent and empowered even to decide that the government's actions are illegal. Sounds great. The UK had this rather antique thing called the "Lords of Appeal in Ordinary" aka "Law Lords" who were in theory just some Lords (ie people who are arbitrarily in the upper chamber of the P…

Politically independent?! Between an extremely dry sense of humour and sarcasm, I can't tell which.

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

#283

Post by duxup »

jordanb wrote: post #191

I went on a deep dive on this scandal about a year or so ago. One thing that struck me is the class element. Basically, the Post Office leadership could not understand why someone would buy a PO franchise. It's a substantial amount of money up front, and people aren't allowed to buy multiple franchises, so every PO was an owner/operator position. Essentially people were "buying a job". The people in leadership couldn…

These kinds of assumptions about fraud always make me wonder about the folks in charge.

I was at a company acquired by silicon valley company. Our tech support department was folded into another tech support department. Immediately the folks in the valley were upset that we closed more cases / had far higher customer satisfaction scores ... by far. They made no secret that they assumed that us mid-westerners doing the same job had to be inferior at the same job.

Eventually a pool of managers in the valley developed a full blown conspiracy theory that we were cooking the books by making fake cases and so on. It just had to be that right? No other explanation.

They finally got someone in an outside department to look into it. They found folks closing cases prematurely and even duplicating cases. The people doing it all worked for the managers pointing fingers at everyone else ...

Sometimes the folks who talk about fraud think those things because that's how they work.

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

#284

Post by akudha »

arrowsmith wrote: post #270
helloguillecl wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, calling someone by a crime they have been sentenced of, constitutes defamation.

What? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Why does it not make sense? If I was involved in a robbery at age 18, as a dumb kid, should I still be called "robber xyz" for the rest of my life? Especially if I turned my life around?

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

#285

Post by foldr »

exiguus wrote: post #192
KingOfCoders wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "deep state", just the state. Calling things "the deep state" tries to partition the state in two parts, a good one and a bad one. There is also no "deep Amazon" or "deep Meta". Amazon is Amazon, Meta is Meta and the state is the state. People working for or representing the state have their own agenda, have their cliques, have their CYA like people everywhere else. And the state as an organization priori…

Deep State makes kind of sense here, because the U.K. Post Office, had there own Law Enforcement. They can act like the state in several ways. I think the correct term is "Private prosecution". And as fare as I understand it, the U.K. Post Office was able to have there own judge.

No, the Post Office doesn't have its own "law enforcement" (if you mean something like a police force) or its own judges.

Any company has the right to bring a private prosecution under UK law, and this was the basis for the prosecutions in question. It just means that the company pays for some of the costs involved.

Whether or not private prosecutions should be allowed is certainly a legitimate topic of discussion. Let's not muddy the waters with misinformation about the Post Office having some kind of parallel police and courts system. It just doesn't.

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

#286

Post by esseph »

nwienert wrote: post #247
tokai wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iraq war was definitely not the work of any deep state, if you follow your definition. It was pushed by the president and his government, not faceless bureaucrats.

Certainly the pressure on them and the “intel” they saw on WMD was in part the work of the deep state, that the president was captured by them is sort of the point.

You've got it backwards, at least in your description.

They went after the intel they wanted to find to justify their position. It didn't matter if it was real or true, it just needed to come from the intelligence apparatus.

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

#287

Post by throwawayHpCvfn »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #271
throwawayHpCvfn wrote: post #118

As someone who attempted suicide almost ten years ago, I'm disheartened by how cold-hearted the comments on this article are. Accusations of certain wording being "woke" or "PC" and completely ignoring the substance of the article itself, as if the wording were the tragedy here. If we must have this discussion, I stopped using the phrase "committed suicide" when I found out it was a relic of when it was illegal and s…

[flagged]

Me: "Hey, I survived a suicide attempt several years ago, and I appreciate it when people who know the negative history behind 'committing suicide' say something else, because it shows that they care."

You (pre-edit): "The problem many of us see with saying 'unalived by suicide' rather than 'committed suicide' is the artificiality of the sentence and the implication that the language we speak has to keep up with the correct newspeak due to the latest euphemistic moral cleansing lest we appear uncouth and uncultured."

My point stands.

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

#288

Post by mr_toad »

nwienert wrote: post #194
KingOfCoders wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "deep state", just the state. Calling things "the deep state" tries to partition the state in two parts, a good one and a bad one. There is also no "deep Amazon" or "deep Meta". Amazon is Amazon, Meta is Meta and the state is the state. People working for or representing the state have their own agenda, have their cliques, have their CYA like people everywhere else. And the state as an organization priori…

There’s incredible utility to the term. It refers to people in the government with a lot of power and little public exposure, and perhaps some indication of using their power against the will of the general public, and yes there’s tons of these people, and it’s quite good to have the public generally worried about them. American political history is littered with deep state plots that turned out to be true - Iraq war…

> There’s incredible utility to the term.

It’s a red flag, so there’s that.

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

#289

Post by akudha »

wat10000 wrote: post #264
s_dev wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2. Prosecutors didn't bother to verify if there is another explanation before accusing thousands of people of stealing? Isn't it common sense to pause for a second and think, "could we please double check the evidence? how can thousands of postal workers suddenly turn into thieves?" They genuinely thought that the new software was uncovering a lot of theft that previously went undetected. This actually spurred them…

Rationalization is a powerful force. People rarely come to objective beliefs based on evidence. They come to beliefs and then search for evidence. In law enforcement, people tend to decide on a suspect and then look for proof. Hence why you so often see prosecutors and police fighting to punish innocent people, sometimes even after they've been proven to be innocent.

In law enforcement, people tend to decide on a suspect and then look for proof.

Yikes, such people shouldn't be in working in law enforcement then

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

#290

Post by UK-AL »

jedimastert wrote: post #227
SCdF wrote: post #157

Effectively tortured to death. One of the things that frustrates me with how ethics is taught in computer science is that we use examples like Therac 25, and people listen in horror, then their takeaway is frequently "well thank god I don't work on medical equipment". The fact that it's medical equipment is a distraction. All software can cause harm to others. All of it. You need to care about all of it.

Jesus I desperately wish real ethics classes were required for computer science degrees

In the UK they are I think? Well if they want to be BCS accredited.
Post reply on HN