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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

#191

Post by jordanb »

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't understand why someone would buy the opportunity to work long hours at a retail position and end up hopefully clearing a middle class salary at the end of the year. They assumed that there must be a real reason why people were signing up and the real reason was to put their hands in the till.

So they ended up assuming the postmasters were stealing, and the purpose of the accounting software was to detect the fraud so it could be prosecuted. When the accounting software started finding vast amounts of missing funds, they ignored questions about the software because it was working as intended. I bet if the opposite had happened, and it found very little fraud, they would have become suspicious of the software because their priors were that the postmasters were a bunch of thieves.

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

#192

Post by exiguus »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #132
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…

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.

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

#193

Post by justin66 »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #154
akudha wrote: post #140

This was depressing to read. Failures at so many levels. 1. Immediately after Horizon was rolled out, issues were reported. But ignored 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?"…

I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points. One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed. The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being r…

> One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

Which certainly contributed to the suicides.

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

#194

Post by nwienert »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #132
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…

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 being a big recent one, the insurance policy FBI agents another.

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

#195

Post by koolala »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #184
dagmx wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. I really wish we had a better word for someone who is bullied into suicide. It’s tantamount to manslaughter imho. Recently, a snark/bullying community on Reddit resulted in the suicide of their target (a woman responsible for rescuing foxes). That kind of targeting and bullying is horrific for any individual to process, let alone people who don’t have the press teams and training that celebrities do.

This sets a bad precedent. There is a wide gamut of emotional resilience in people. What is a funny insult to one person, can be rope-fuel to another. Would you want to be called that if you make a light jab at a middle aged bald guy?

Sounds unrealistic they would blame it all on one remark like that.

I'd be more afraid people would kill themselves just to get retribution on their tormentors and it would increase suicides.

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

#196

Post by KingOfCoders »

tw04 wrote: post #147
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…

I'm not sure that's really fair. Within any organization there are subgroups. For instance there was an entire branch of AT&T that was dedicated to illegally spying on Americans for the NSA. Most employees of AT&T had no idea it was even going on, so to lump every AT&T employee into the same batch of "you're bad because th company you work for was doing X" when they had no idea the company was doing X isn't really fa…

Me: "have their cliques" You: "I'm not sure that's really fair. Within any organization there are subgroups."

"you're bad because th[e] company you work for was doing X"

Which I didn't write.

All the other parts about Suzanne, also not what I wrote.

"But please don't try to oversimplify large organizations."

I didn't, I feel your comment misrepresents what I've said.

"The higher up the chain the more responsibility you can place for what the organization as a whole does"

No. Al Capone killed no one himself. People did that for him. They share the responsibility. My boss made me do it is not an excuse.

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

#197

Post by varispeed »

mystraline wrote: post #87
rwmj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual answer to this is terrible. Courts had to trust the computer was correct. There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary (and getting that evidence is basically impossible for the individuals being charged who were post office workers, not computer experts, and the source code was a trade secret). This might change, partly in response to…

Governments should have access to all the source of code they buy licenses to (and provided at sale), as a precondition of selling to a government. When these sorts of things happen, the source can be subpoena'd with the relevant legal tool, and reviewed appropriately. Why governments don't do this is beyond me. It greatly limits liability of gov procurement, and puts the liability on the companies selling such goods…

> Why governments don't do this is beyond me.

Brown envelopes most likely and de facto non functioning SFO.

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

#198

Post by cman82 »

For an excellent in-depth look at the scandal, I recommend Nick Wallis's book The Great Post Office Scandal. I read this soon after it came out and was wondering why it hadn't caused a national uproar. It was only the miniseries that prompted the required outrage.

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

#199

Post by hnfong »

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…

Fascinating. Do you have references for the motives/biases of the PO leadership?

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

#200

Post by pinoy420 »

akudha wrote: post #162
PaulRobinson wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points. One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed. The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being r…

Lets ignore everything else for a second. Isn't it common sense, common decency to ask how can thousands of postal workers become thieves overnight? We're talking about postal workers for fuck's sake, not a bunch of mafia dudes. Is there some kind of perverse incentive for the prosecutors to send as many people to jail as possible, guilty or not? run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" Oh well, now their p…

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