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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

#491

Post by dagmx »

koolala wrote: post #195
ImHereToVote wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you see a lot of people harming themselves physically and framing people in their suicides?

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

#492

Post by immibis »

hermitcrab wrote: post #478
dagmx wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish someone had the political capital to do something about the tabloids. They’re really a detriment to society.

I think the Internet is gradually destroying them economically. Google stole their lunch money. Unfortunately it is also destroying the broadsheet papers. I'm not sure any of them profitable now. And that means much less investigative journalism.

The Internet is giving tabloids wider reach with less printed paper

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

#493

Post by dagmx »

arrowsmith wrote: post #202
dagmx wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish someone had the political capital to do something about the tabloids. They’re really a detriment to society.

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.

Simple things like anti-harassment rules, paparazzi regulations and rules against publishing known fabrications would be a good start without impugning on the freedom of press.

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

#494

Post by immibis »

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…

This is the same organization that talks about Palestinians dying, while Hamas slaughters Jews by the millions. Don't expect unbiased voice.

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

#495

Post by downrightmike »

m101 wrote: post #429
dimal wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how supposed fraud from lower class people is a high priority that must be punished, but fraud from upper class people is almost always protected by the corporate veil.

Let's not even talk about the financial crisis

We solved that by printing money and bailing everyone out, they didn't even have to promise not to do it again, such good chaps.

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

#496

Post by DoctorOetker »

thom wrote: post #437
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…

The purpose of a system is what it does.

There once was grafitti in my city which read something like:

"Every system creates,

the bullshit it deserves"

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

#498

Post by wolfgang42 »

RedShift1 wrote: post #41

What was the actual bug in the software that caused the accounting errors?

The judge’s report[1] lists twenty-eight different classes of failure, including:

- Confusing and buggy UI causing clerks to duplicate or mis-enter transactions

- Inventory getting “stuck” in branches after the product was discontinued; the attempt to remove it hid the inventory but caused its value to reappear on the books again each accounting period

- Failing touch screens entering spurious purchases overnight

- Incomplete rollback of distributed transactions

- Byzantine failures during hardware replacement causing multiple transactions to be assigned the same ID and overwrite each other

- Fujitsu employees with unaudited write access to the production database making one-off modifications

- The point of sale system simply telling the clerk to give too much change back to the customer

There’s no “one bug” here; the main failure was that those responsible continued to dismiss any problems as users being either in error or outright malicious, despite massive amounts of evidence that the system had technical flaws. Better quality software would have reduced the problems, but no system is bug-free and in many cases very little effort was made to identify the root causes of problems, much less to prevent similar ones from happening again.

[1] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-...

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

#499

Post by hardwaresofton »

pipes wrote: post #399
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…

I've been following this since the guardian wrote about it, maybe 2011 or 2013 (private eye was earlier) It was insane. I couldn't understand the lack of fuss. Maybe it is because as a programmer I guess that 95 percent of all software is complete shit and most of the developers don't know or don't care. You've hit the nail on the head "why would anyone want a middle class life" yeah they have never known anything le…

> One final thing, Paula Vennells was an ordained church minister. She was preaching while she was overseeing the destruction of so many innocent hardworking people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells > > I don't know why that makes this all worse but some how it does. Somehow it speaks to what the UK is or has become.

It makes it worse because most people are familiar with the tenets of christianity and know that this behavior is counter to that value system.

I think it's one of the most redeeming points of christianity/religion in general -- there is a standard to which people can be judged and agree to be judged. That's why it makes it worse, this person is not only doing terrible things, but doing terrible things while professing to believe a value system that would not condone it.

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

#500

Post by johnnyanmac »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #486
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traditionally America likes to pretend this kind of class contempt doesn't exist It just manifests as racism.

there's still regular ol classism, too, racism is just part of the calculus. Poor white folks don't have it good, they just have it less bad than poor not-white folks

Some bits here and there. That faded as the US became a super power, and came back a bit as the 80's started stripping down the middle class thst was growing.

Of course, but the 2010's it was decided by the powers that he to re-introduce identity politics as the new form of class warfare. Which was 80% sexism/racism and 20% classisn.

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