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The Post Office were told about the problems in 2003 but decided to sack the contractor they had hired to check their software rather than deal with the problem
by tonyedgecombe 3y ago
The Post Office were told about the problems in 2003 but decided to sack the contractor they had hired to check their software rather than deal with the problems.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974
Why aren't management in the dock over this.
- ericfrazier 3y agoGross negligence. Claw back their wages to compensate the postmasters.
- donmcronald 3y agoNot even close. They conspired to cover up deficiencies while people were being criminally prosecuted for the discrepancies caused by those deficiencies. The knew about it and they belong in jail. Nothing less.
- Clubber 3y agoYes, they deserve the jail time they so effortlessly dolled out to the innocent people.
- game_the0ry 3y agoThe problem with modern management is that they are rarely accountable to those that have been wronged. Rather, they are accountable to their bosses. And the are fine as long as they are sycophantic bootlickers.
- heresie-dabord 3y agoFrom TFA: "The Post Office said the honour was given for [Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells'] work on "diversity and inclusion", and her "commitment to the social purpose at the heart of the business and her dedication in putting the customer first".
- 1123581321 3y agoThey are paying out roughly 150k per prosecution. That seems low if most of those resulted in fines and jail time. Does anyone have a source for data on the outcomes of these cases? (If pressed on “seems low” I couldn’t exactly say, but if ten million is the actuarial value of life then every year of adult life in prison should be worth at least 175k, on top of the difficulties of enduring prosecution and career and reputation being harmed.)
- gpderetta 3y agoAndrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted and spent 17 years in a UK jail. He is likely to eventually get less than £1M compensation and that's after the government scraped the rule that "board and lodge" would be subtracted from the compensation. edit: accidentally a word.
- 1123581321 3y ago17 years (missing a word.) Link for those unfamiliar like me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_conviction_of_Andrew_Malkinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_conviction_of_Andrew_... That seems grossly unfair. Based on what I'm musing, at bare minimum, 3 million would be appropriate.
- concordDance 3y agoWhat's a good rationale for any particular sum? I mean, for starters you can just calculate average lifetime earnings and subtract expected earnings of the person over the remainder of their lifespan, then add an amount per year in prison roughly corresponding to the QALY value of prison vs normal life... But is there anything else you might add on? I expect the above calculation to only arrive at about a million for a country like the UK (which is less rich than the US and has less bad prisons).
- lamontcg 3y agoNeeds a compound annual growth rate, plus there's lost opportunity costs.
- hermitcrab 3y agoFujitsu provided shoddy software that was inadequate for the job, then lied about it. The Post Office threw hundreds of subpostmasters under the bus, rather than admit the issues in the system. Senior management at both the Post Office and Fujitsu should be in the dock. There has only been 1 Fujitsu whistleblower (as far I am aware). Surely hundreds of IT people must have known? The mainstream print media mostly seem to have ignored this scandal, perferring instead to write about celebrity tittle tattle (with a few honourable exceptions, such as Computer Weekly and Private Eye). This scandal has been known for years. But only the recent TV drama seems to have forced most politicians to care about it (with a few honourable exceptions, such as Lord Arbuthnot).
- anigbrowl 3y agoThe function of the mainstream media (particularly in the UK) is not to inform the public but to keep them in line. It's worth remembering that Rupert Murdoch owns 4 newspapers and a TV channel.
- hermitcrab 3y agoMurdoch has possibly done more damage to the UK than any other human being alive.
- ascorbic 3y agoThere have been literally hundreds of articles about this in the mainstream media for well over a decade. Yes, Computer Weekly and Private Eye deserve the biggest share of credit for persuing it, but it's simply not true to sat that the rest of media has ignored it. The real scandal is that even though it was widely reported, so little was done about it for years.
- hermitcrab 3y agoI would be interested to know the number of articles published on the scandal by mainstream papers, such as the independent, Guardian, Times and Telegraph.