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British Post Office Scandal

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Re: British Post Office Scandal

#141

Post by michaelt »

minimaul wrote: post #53
walthamstow wrote: post #6

Britons - this is your reminder that Private Eye is available for subscription at the very low price of £45 for an issue in your letterbox fortnightly.

I wish Ian Hislop would drop his opposition to doing a sensible online version - I'd happily subscribe for access to the same content posted online, but when I get it posted through my door I find I don't read it.

Considering how often they've been sued over the content of the magazine [1] I suspect they quite like knowing that every publication is immediately water under the bridge.

Once they've mailed out the magazine they can't delete a story, no matter what - and if someone doesn't like the content? Two weeks later it's disappeared from news stands.

Newspapers that rely too heavily on advert revenue also often have conflicts of interest (which you'd know about, if you were reading the Eye) so I suspect they like having enough subscriber income that they only need to sell ads for wool sweaters and reading lights - advertisers who are unlikely to want a story spiked.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Libel_cases

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#142

Post by IshKebab »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #46
IshKebab wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they really "finally started to investigate". They opened an investigation in 2020, apparently interviewed 2 people and then gave up. What have they done recently?

Apparently so, but they're not forthcoming with more details as it's an active investigation now since the TV series is drawing attention to the scandal. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67899189

From that article:

> Two people have been interviewed under caution but nobody has been arrested since the investigation was launched in January 2020.

Exactly what I said.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#143

Post by hermitcrab »

drumhead wrote: post #139
hermitcrab wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you'll hear about a story in Private Eye years before it gets to the national press or the BBC. Still waiting to hear why a certain young person (of very modest accomplishments) made it into the House of Lords. Given the absence of any reporting by PE on this, it seems that rumours of a 'super injunction' might be true.

A certain prime ministers alleged daughter?

Daddy BoJo or sugar daddy BloJo? I think we should be told.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#144

Post by M95D »

cpach wrote: post #32
pmx wrote: post #2

My wife was watching the ITV drama on this last night and I had to leave the room. It was making me so incredibly angry that such huge injustices can be allowed to take place. I recommend the show to anyone with better control of their emotions that me!

Sounds horrible. Link, if anyone is curious about the production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Bates_vs_The_Post_Office

> Outside the UK?

> Due to our broadcast and content licences, you can only watch ITVX in the UK.

I really wanted to pay and see it. Oh, well, I'm going to be a pirate again...

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#145

Post by cge »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #29
mattbee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been looking and there has been no information about the nature of the software fault(s) that were the source of the accounting discrepancies that were the trigger for these miscarriages of justice. [edit: yes there are, see above] But we can't blame this scandal on a software fault, or even an averagely terrible government IT contractor - there were some monsters in the Post Office who chose to take this a…

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post... > One, named the “Dalmellington Bug”, after the village in Scotland where a post office operator first fell prey to it, would see the screen freeze as the user was attempting to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed “enter” on the frozen screen, it would silently update the record. In Dalmellington, that bug created a £24,000 discrepancy, w…

I had assumed that bugs allowing such miscarriages of justice would require a completely unsound accounting method in the software. Unless, eg, the accounting simply didn't store a transaction ledger and software didn't store logs, and instead mostly just updated balances with no history, it was unclear to me how software bugs in an otherwise reasonably sound accounting method could result in accounting so wrong that it couldn't seen to be incorrect when investigated at the level of thoroughness one might expect for court proceedings.

But these bugs suggest that at least some of the errors would likely have been obvious in a ledger, and the Post Office simply didn't care. That rather makes Fujitsu look not quite as bad here, and the Post Office look worse.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#146

Post by makomk »

pjc50 wrote: post #107
makomk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big problems with British politics at the moment is that lots of people seem to think that if the BBC is less willing to pretend there are easy solutions with no downsides the government is ignoring than other parts of the media this is seen as them being in the government's pocket. Which isn't the same as not willing at all, they pretty systematically focus only on the downsides of government policies alr…

> s less willing to pretend there are easy solutions with no downsides the government is ignoring than other parts of the media this is seen as them being in the government's pocket I really cannot parse all the double negatives in this. Is this an allegation relating to the BBC's ties with the ruling party? https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approvin...

If there's any policy which people are calling for but which the government doesn't currently support - for example, passing a law that blanket overturns all of these convictions - it tends to get portrayed as an obvious win with no downsides by much of the British press. If there's something which is currently government policy or effectively so, like leaving this to the courts, we hear about only the downsides of that policy. The BBC does this too, but not quite to the same extent, and they get a lot of flack for it as in this case.

Actually, the government has just announced that they are going to pass such a law, and this helps further demonstrate what I mean. After they announced this, the Guardian ran an analysis piece pointing out all the same reasons why this is potentially a bad idea that the BBC talked about before: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/no-precedent... Their top headline article is also about this announcement and leads by pointing out the same problems: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/rishi-sunak-... The way in which the BBC is more pro-Tory than publications like the Guardian is that they're less likely to ignore these problems when talking about activists calling for this prior to it becoming government policy. That is, in order for a British media publication to be adequately anti-Tory in the eyes of the press, whether they treat a proposal as bad or good has to depend on whether it's coming from the Tories.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#147

Post by hiisukun »

A similar, software based debt-recovery occurred in Australia from 2016-2020 [1]. The government of the day in 2015 figured they could recover ~$1.5B by automating some of the processes, since there were not enough people to investigate all the possible instances. The main issue was that the software scheme used averaging, which in some cases was not accurate.

As in this story, despite people immediately claiming issue with some of the methods, it was pursued for years. And again, in several cases it tragically resulted in suicides.

In the end, after ~$1.8B of repayments and a royal commission, a couple of people resigned but there was - at least in my view - no significant repercussions for the decision makers and responsible parties at the time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#148

Post by minimaul »

raminf wrote: post #123
minimaul wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Ian Hislop would drop his opposition to doing a sensible online version - I'd happily subscribe for access to the same content posted online, but when I get it posted through my door I find I don't read it.

FWIW, just started a digital subscription ro PrivateEye via PocketMags. It's essentially a PDF of the magazine inside a basic reader (i.e. lots of zooming and scrolling). In the U.S. it runs $6/month.

Sadly not available in the UK - I'd quite happily take that as an option :/

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#150

Post by [deleted] »

M95D wrote: post #144
cpach wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds horrible. Link, if anyone is curious about the production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Bates_vs_The_Post_Office

> Outside the UK? > Due to our broadcast and content licences, you can only watch ITVX in the UK. I really wanted to pay and see it. Oh, well, I'm going to be a pirate again...

[deleted]
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