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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

#371

Post by Ray20 »

marliechiller wrote: post #187
octopoc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It assigns agency to the person who died. Think about it this way: I have relative who is vegan, so she has been trying to convince me to kill myself for many years now. I can still choose whether I do it though, and obviously I chose not to so far, although during COVID I didn’t have much other social interaction, so I nearly went through with it. I had agency throughout though. I’m not dead because I chose not to g…

whats veganism got to do with comitting suicide?

Mental illnesses usually occur in conjunction with other mental illnesses.

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

#372

Post by vkou »

XTXinverseXTY wrote: post #228
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…

Forgive my indelicate question, but why would someone buy a PO franchise?

Why would someone buy a Subway franchise?

Demand for postal services is, on a long horizon, generally more consistent than demand for any particular junk food.

The better question is: why the hell would the government sell a PO franchise?

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

#373

Post by jen20 »

Jooror wrote: post #261
jen20 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible This will change when elected officials start getting hoisted by their own electronic petards. The Venn diagram of midwit enterprise developers who build systems with audit trails yet could not swear under penalty of perjury that the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case is almost a circle.

Show me a system for which you believe the audit trail is absolutely correct in every case and I’ll show you a midwit…

It is straightfoward to build systems which derive their state from the audit trail instead of building the audit trail in parallel. That is what event sourcing is.

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

#374

Post by tumsfestival »

Nasrudith wrote: post #171
ignoramous wrote: post #5

Another post office operator, Seema Misra, was pregnant when she was sent to prison. She said in testimony that the local newspaper had published a photo of her and labeled her the "pregnant thief." While she was in prison, her husband was beaten up and subjected to racist insults, she testified. The tidal wave of fascist & far-right grievances are so hard to contain and fight against in the moment. Multi-cultural so…

Blaming the grievances on multiculturalism is yet another lie on the never-ending pile of lies that is fascism. If everyone was a literal clone from the same insular culture, fascism will invent new distinctions to create outgroups to oppress.

After race it's religion, when it's not religion it's politics, when it's not politics it's social class... It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if we will ever achieve anything like the Star Trek future where we just get past racism and bigotry. I have a feeling bigotry will be our great filter as a species.

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

#375

Post by jen20 »

spwa4 wrote: post #299
jen20 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That is the kind of thing that every reasonable person should be calling their MP's office about daily.

What do you mean? The government very strongly responded to this scandal, including having the person directly responsible, who instructed the post office to hide proof of the postmaster's innocence, appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She has since been thrown under the bus, though, of course, not prosecuted or imprisoned (despite ordering wrongful prosecutions of over 900 others) The politician…

Indeed - the accepted mechanism to influence the range of issues MPs care about (outside of election times) is to bombard their office with communication until they have no choice but to care. That is what needs to happen here.

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

#376

Post by burkaman »

veeti wrote: post #340
burkaman wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling someone a robber means they are currently a robber. It can be inaccurate and untrue in the same way that calling someone a bartender would be inaccurate and untrue if they are a lawyer who hasn't tended a bar in 20 years. I don't like the idea of prosecuting people for this, but I don't think it's illogical.

Would you extend the same courtesy to a murderer or child rapist?

Honestly I don't know, I think it would depend on how long ago the crime was and if there's a credible reason to believe they won't do it again. I do think there's a meaningful difference between "they murdered someone" and "they're a murderer", and in general I do prefer to describe people's actions as opposed to using "they're a ___" labels.

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

#377

Post by viciousvoxel »

citizenpaul wrote: post #369
lawlessone wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way many think about welfare/unemployment/disability schemes. Constant hoops to jump through to prove they're looking for work or still incapable. Or in the case of illness to prove they're still sick. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59067101

There is a rather famous book written on this subject. Catch-22. In order to be given disability you must jump through so many hoops that no one whom is actually sick could complete them. Or how in unemployment you must prove you must spend your time proving you are looking for a job so you cannot spend you time actually looking for a job. My personal fav because its almost universal is sick-day policies that codify…

Minor correction, but in the book the act of asking to be discharged on account of insanity is taken as proof that one is sane, because no sane person would want to keep flying bombing missions day after day with low odds of survival.

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

#378

Post by gowld »

carstout wrote: post #329
XTXinverseXTY wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my indelicate question, but why would someone buy a PO franchise?

Historically it wasnt a bad thing since it was an add on to an existing shop. The general idea being that I would come in to pick up my pension/tv licence or various other things the PO used to be the source for and then spend it in the other part of the shop.

Pick up a TV license! Something else no sane person would do.

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

#379

Post by oc1 »

VagabundoP wrote: post #364
duncans wrote: post #143

What is amazing is the engineers the Fujitsu employed would testify in court against some of the subpostmasters saying "there were no faults" where in unearthed evidence of their support logs they could be clearly acknowledging bugs that could create false accounts, manually updating records and audit logs to balance it out (and also sometimes screwing that up). See Nick Wallis' coverage: * https://www.postofficetria…

Absolutely scandalous. What kind of engineer is she?

Hopefully an unemployed one. She deserves to be thrown into jail.

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

#380

Post by hungmung »

ginko wrote: post #314
michael1999 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incremental, and goes back to things like clocks. Imagine a witness says "I saw him go into the bank at 11:20. I know the time because I looked up at the clock tower, and it said 11:20". Defence argues "The clock must have been wrong. My client was at lunch with his wife by 11:15". Clocks are simple enough that we can presume them to correct, unless you can present evidence that they are unreliable. This presump…

Maybe Napoleon should have conquered Britain after all.

Yeah but then every criminal case would presume guilt.
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