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British Post Office Scandal
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 337
To summarize in brief:
The British Post Office scandal, also called the Horizon IT scandal, involved Post Office Limited pursuing thousands of innocent subpostmasters for shortfalls in their accounts, which had in fact been caused by faults in Horizon, accounting software developed and maintained by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover Horizon shortfalls with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts and bankruptcies, took a heavy toll on the victims and their families, leading to stress, illness, family breakdown, and at least four suicides. In 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.
Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
Takeaways: That the government/post office knew the software was flawed, and nevertheless made hundreds of it's employees scapegoats, with criminal convictions, lost wages, opportunities, credibility, and in worst cases lost lives.
This is peak Great Britain, only maybe remove the great. And - it's easy to see a miscarriage of justice happening overseas, but don't for a moment think it couldn't, wouldn't, or isn't happening as you read this here.
MacBook Air - Yosemite
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 546
Monkey Man - Dev Patel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 496
Finally, one from the list of "to watch" and in no ways did it disappoint.
You can download, watch online, find it in the theatre...
Any more information would be a spoiler. It's terrific.
5*.
You Can Call Me Bill: William Shatner
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 503
When I was a kid I loved this.
I mean, it was the best, the concept - of "Going Boldly Where No Man Has Gone Before", the imagination, costumes, aliens. All of it. Well ahead of it's time.
Then I got a bit older, and still appreciated it, but also realized the rather simple good-nature quality of it's imaginings, the naivety, William Shatner's over the top performances, his portrayal of the best of our we would like to believe are the best of our qualities, and I slowly cottoned on to the fact that it was more than a little bit of bollocks.
Still...
And then there was the 'trekkies', those nerds that took it for far more than it was worth. And no one wanted to be seen with them...
And Shatner, his honest-to-goodness lack of self consciousness, his ability to sink his teeth into the most 2 dimensional role possible, lightly, lovingly even satirized in "Galaxy Quest", I mean, you get it, it was time for my tastes to move on, and it's even now still a guilty pleasure. Ahead of it's time, but...
Anyways. He's been the perfect everyman, completely himself, un-self-conscious, barreling on forward, turning what for many actors would have been a liability into a career, satirizing himself, he's carved and created a niche, become a loveable caricature of himself, and he's shown some growth, and gotten to know himself. And so I was a little pleased to see that they've made a movie
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKiW0yxfbSQ
And now, perhaps time to congratulate him on being himself, time has proven that it's been more than enough. And he's an inspiration for everyone that's ever been on their way and yet never arrived that sometimes that's all you gotta be...
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