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Comment by pipes | Hacker News Reader

I live in the UK. It's bizarrely barely news. The scale of it is staggering yet the media coverage is small. Well it feels small to me. I don't see any public outrage about this. Part of me thinks it's because it's sort of an institution like the NHS and critisizing it is a no no (though it has been privitized).

I want to see heads roll at the post office. As far as I can remember staff knew about the software issues but covered them up. Also why wasn't the burden of proof on the software developers to prove to the court it was correct? Can the vendor be held accountable?

And lastly, the bonuses the board have paid themselves for cooperating with the enquirey, that's truly sickening. It's rotten on so many levels. It's money for sending innocent people to prison.

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The Post Office hasn't been privatised. The company is still owned by the state. Individual subpostmasters run their branches as their own semi-independent businesses using the Post Office brand - but it has always been this way in most of the country.

It's Royal Mail (the letters and parcel delivery side of things) that was privatised.

I did not know this, thanks :)

> the media coverage is small

I was mostly driving yesterday, and it had significant radio coverage. LBC even interviewed a former 'post-mistress' that suffered a custodial prison sentence, and was furious this compensation wasn't sufficient. She was convicted of taking £59k and she got a 9 month term (half of which was released with tag).

Considering people who lost their career, marriages, houses etc. I get it! Imagine your children thinking you are a convicted thief.

This was her, https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2021-04-23/never-thought-t...

I think part of the reason for relative quietness is: after 30 years of privatisation drives, what is left of the Post Office is just another business with some extra regulatory burden. "Business Screwing Up" happens every day and is hardly news.

This said, thank goodness some free press still exists in the UK. Without Private Eye, these folks would never have seen even the little justice they received.

I don't think that's really it - the public has some appetite for corporate scandal, modulo short attentive spans, and the human element really sells the story.

Unfortunately, we absolutely do have a free press here, it's just been captured by bastards who use their freedom to aid and abet other bastards. I hope hell is inventing new tortures for Murdoch and the dead Barclay.

> I live in the UK. It's bizarrely barely news.

Seconded.

I'm willing to bet only Private Eye readers (where to story broke and who continue to demand justice) are aware of this debacle and the shear scale of misery it has caused; all due to software being considered infallible.

Shearing is for sheep

As long as we hold onto the USENET tradition, that all posts pointing out a spelling or grammatical error must themselves contain such an error. Including punctuation.

:-)

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