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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

#511

Post by dataflow »

LocalH wrote: post #458
stretchwithme wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed for the right to other people's money. Government running charity interferes with the normal feedback in society. And the need to ask politely, justify one's apparently bad decisions and change failing behavior. People become "entitled" to regular cash so a lot of the fear that ordinarily motivates the rest of us goes away. Any system that asks nothing of people is a bad system. I grew up on welfare.…

Administration of means testing is often more expensive than doing away with the means testing. How about UBI coupled with repealing the minimum wage?

> Administration of means testing is often more expensive than doing away with the means testing. How about UBI coupled with repealing the minimum wage?

Er... why wouldn't UBI be more expensive?

I'm not even arguing against UBI here, I'm just trying to make sense of your claim, which seems quite dubious.

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

#512

Post by tjpnz »

monksy wrote: post #384

Don't forget her name: Paula Vennells (Royal Mail CEO). She went on record to state there was no issue despite reports. I'm sure we're see justice for her actions. /s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells Remember her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPYo_gq329w

I haven't. She's yet to face any real consequences too. Thoroughly despicable.

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

#513

Post by KingOfCoders »

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…

"littered with deep state plots"

My argument is that these are not deep state plots, these are just plots. This are plots that states are doing. This is the state. This is an organization of millions of people. There is no deep state. The state is just like any other large organization.

Take for example the eBay stalking scandal.

"The eBay stalking scandal was a campaign conducted in 2019 by eBay and contractors. The scandal involved the aggressive stalking and harassment of two e-commerce bloggers, Ina and David Steiner, who wrote frequent commentary about eBay on their website EcommerceBytes"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

The CEO was not involved.

There is no "deep eBay", there is just eBay. We don't use the phrase "deep eBay" for a reason. And in the same way "deep State" does not make any sense.

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

#514

Post by bigstrat2003 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #430
klik99 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone brought this up in a previous HN comment section as an example of trust in software ruining peoples lives. But your explanation is far more human and recontextualizes it a bit for me - it just happened to be that this was done with software, but the real motivation was contempt for the lower classes and could have easily have happened 100 years ago with an internal investigation task force. Growing up half in…

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

Most claims of racism in America are in fact classism. Very, very few people have actual dislike of others based on race. But a whole lot of people dislike people due to culture or class signals.

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

#515

Post by pipes »

boppo1 wrote: post #431
pipes wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Where can I listen to these tapes, particularly the ones you describe as black-mirror level?

For a while the YouTube algorithm was suggesting clips of them to me. I think it was from a British newspaper.

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

#516

Post by IOT_Apprentice »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #514
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.

Most claims of racism in America are in fact classism. Very, very few people have actual dislike of others based on race. But a whole lot of people dislike people due to culture or class signals.

Do you think Stephen Miller is a classist rather than a bigot? Why not both? I mean he is only worth somewhere between 1-10 million. Shrug.

I think Vivek Ramaswamy found out how that worked out for himself in politics and at DOGE as a billionaire.

I suspect your view of very, very few is suspect.

The founding ideas of MAGA certainly cling to it. The 60-70 million voters for it have zero issues with it.

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

#517

Post by bigstrat2003 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #26
Horffupolde wrote: post #9

Suicide is a verb and result by itself. Would the author also say “he died by murder”?

Language evolves, like it or not. In 2025 English, suicide is most commonly a noun.

Suicide has never been a verb in English in my 40 years on this earth. The OP claiming it is a verb is... really odd.

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

#518

Post by pjc50 »

nirui wrote: post #488
pjc50 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suicide victims weren't programmers, they were postmasters, who had been falsely accused of fraud by the software.

Damn! That's dark. I should've read the article first, but I did not. Sorry. I kinda understand the false guilt these postmasters must have felt when they were wrongfully accused. These people should not be dead like that, those who puts them into that living hell should. Oddly though, the justice of this world usually don't work like that. Usually, it's the people at the lowest level who suffer the worst fate/abuse,…

> Damn! That's dark. I should've read the article first, but I did not. Sorry.

Now you will remember to at least skim the article before posting.

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

#519

Post by comp_throw7 »

blipvert wrote: post #480
foldr wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth as far as I’ve been able to determine. The prosecutions were ordinary private prosecutions. The Post Office didn’t need any kind of special legal status in order to prosecute.

Well, hey, far be it for me to tell you that you’re wrong, but the BBC says that you’re wrong as do numerous other sources. > The Post Office itself took many cases to court, prosecuting 700 people between 1999 and 2015. Another 283 cases were brought by other bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wpp4w14pqo.amp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution#United_Kin...

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

#520

Post by harvey9 »

comprev wrote: post #432
sarreph wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that contempt arises in both cultures. My point about the UK was more around the phenomenon that the class "obsession" stems from the notion that somebody's class in the UK is ostensibly immutable from birth. (It is my impression that class in the US is much more about money; your status and class can be correlated / increased by your level of wealth). In the UK it doesn't really matter if you become a millio…

From my experience living most of my life in the UK from birth there is an element of truth to class being immutable - being directly linked to money and the status of property ownership - for now anyway. The Thatcher years created an opportunity for working class (who traditionally lived in rent controlled properties due to low income) to purchase their houses for pennies on the dollar. Suddenly, millions of familie…

To clarify: Right to Buy your rental home applied to homes rented from the local government, not ones rented from a private landlord.

These days you can get a big mortgage on a cheaply constructed apartment and still get hit for huge maintenance charges by a grasping building management firm.

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