#Horizon IT scandal

[towerblockers]

Post Office Slashes Jobs to Fund Sub-Postmasters: A Bitter Pill for Workers

Oh, what a lovely day for the Post Office! They’ve just announced a grand new plan, haven’t they? The kind that sounds like it’s straight out of a fairy tale – if you’re a sub-postmaster, that is. But for the hundreds of employees facing the chop, it’s more like a horror story penned by someone who’s never quite understood that jobs are, you know, how people pay for things like food and…

[kitlandslot]

My hottest Arcane take is that a lot of caitvi antis come across as complete wimps whose only exposure to lesbian couples are kids cartoons and vanilla yuri manga. Like I’m fairly certain half an episode of Killing Eve would instantly make these people pass out if caitvi of all ships is their limit for fucked up relationship dynamics. Please I am begging you watch/read more lesbian media made for adults, there’s an entire world out there that you’re missing.

[fantasy-girl974]

► Concept art of Fashav

MIRACLE LINES by @grexigone​ and me​ (a Pacific Rim x Horizon AU)

********

Sunshine Boy has a special spotlight at the start of chapter 14 ✨ In the story he likes to show his tattoos, so I had to chose those scandalous tank-top and hoodie 👀 (thank you again @little-box-of-wonders for his outfit's idea *smooches* 💕)

[inexpressiblybeautiful]

I wonder what Mycroft's reaction and response would be to the whole Kate Middleton saga. 😂

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

SCREAMING at all of you to watch Mr Bates vs. The Post Office (on itvx in the uk and idk maybe britbox internationally or……. u know….. i’m sure you can find it somewhere….)

[superbeans89]

‘Sorry for screwing over your entire organisation for 25 years. Here’s a knighthood.’

[anch-vaviel]

Last year's VS this year's birthday party with my lovely friends on Vaviel! A lot has changed over the past year but we're still all besties!

2022:

2023:

[resist-the-oligarchs]

Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Horizon whistleblower - BBC News

It's all coming out now, after all these years.

The UK Post Office has been managed by probably corrupt, and certainly incompetent individuals who have tried to cover up some kind of dubious deal with Fujitsu over this faulty Horizon software.

Their actions have ruined the lives of nearly 800 sub-postmasters and their families over the course of over 20 years, many of whom were tragically bankrupted and even wrongly jailed.

Many £millions in taxpayer money was paid to Fujitsu and we now need to know the names of the guilty who caused this huge miscarriage of justice.

Financial compensation alone doesn't even come close to putting this right.

[muninnhuginn]

kinda neat how media can be used as a jumping off point to learn about new things. there are the obvious things like documentaries, but then there are all sorts of other things. when 'hamilton' first got big, you ended up with people learning about aaron burr and the new york water system and various trivia from usa history around that era which wasn't even featured in the musical itself.

when 'mr bates vs the post office' came out recently over here (UK), a whole lot of people were able to appreciate the impact the whole horizon/post office affair had on its victims. sure, the story has been in the news for a few years now, but it's the first time it's been a story actively discussed in daily life. and people learning more about it has actively pushed the government to consider speeding up compensation or mass exonerations.

and even aside from these obvious instances, there are a lot that don't tell you up front and you realise as you're watching. when shows and films and books reference real life events through the veneer of fiction. suzume, referencing the tohoku earthquake of 2011 (something I imagine pretty much every japanese citizen is aware of - suzume's own age is very deliberate in how she lost her mother to the quake. she was very young at the time it happened, but it still had a huge impact on her and many others). link click, referencing the 2008 sichuan earthquake (and deliberately having the arc revolve around school-age children in a run-down old building when irl one of the reasons the casualties were so high was because of poor construction of school buildings). various kdramas referencing generational SK disasters: imf financial crisis (explored in 'reborn rich', but I imagine many other shows), sampoong department store collapse (referenced in 'move to heaven', but again, once I knew the history, it made a lot of sense why so many corrupt villains in kdramas were specifically involved in construction).

it's a mix of how, if you know the events being referenced, they'll impact you more. but if you don't know the events, then it gives you a reason to learn. I personally had very very vague memories of the 2008 earthquake, just in terms of some clips on the news at the time. I had no idea about the various factors that made the disaster so much worse until I realised what was being referenced when watching the show and decided to read up on it.

I have somewhat conflicted feelings on how fictional (or dramatised in the case of mr bates) media approaches specifically *disasters*, as opposed to other historical events, but I think the shows I've mentioned here at least take a victim-first approach.

[transpondster]

The Post Office scandal is about two things. First, the ease with which corporate executives were able to pursue, demonise and destroy completely innocent people, particularly using the justification that technology should always be trusted over humans. And second, the ease with which those bigwigs have been able to escape any accountability themselves for doing something far, far worse than anything they wrongly accused their most junior underlings of. They escaped it for decades, and are still escaping it. It is not just Vennells who has questions to answer far beyond the issue of that CBE. There is a whole host of senior figures from the Post Office, Royal Mail and Fujitsu (which supplied and maintained the Horizon system) who were involved in or stood by the long-term policy of pursuing and privately prosecuting postmasters, as well as successive ministers from the Gordon Brown administration onwards who were made aware of the problems and either didn’t really listen or chose to believe the Post Office. These are all people we should be furiously keen to hear more from. 

 Not for them the maximum-security prisons, the social ostracisation, the bankruptcies, the mental and physical breakdowns, the giving birth wearing an electronic tag. Ministers come and go but the executives failed upwards. The upper tiers of business in this country seem almost impossible to be cast out from. One simply moves on lucratively elsewhere. A certain status of person in our society can be imprisoned for theft (or for non-theft, as it would turn out). Yet for actions that led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, to the ruination of hundreds of lives – well, not one person has ever even been charged. In a lot of cases, they seem to have been promoted.

[lost-carcosa]

[insidecroydon]

Post Office scandal: 'I wept for a few hours' says Tory MP

Stamp of approval: Mr Bates vs The Post Office, aired this week, has brought to broader public attention the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history Millions of television viewers have been horrified by the impact of the Horizon IT scandal, brought to their screens this week in a shocking mini-series. According to one MP, the government can’t do enough for ‘those who have been…

[chriswhodrawsstuff]

Calling all luvies

Trigger warning. I read about a tragedy today. Back in 2023 a man walked into a job centre and set himself on fire. Much of his desperately needed state help had been removed and he saw no other option than to end his own life. This struck a chord with me as I had planned to do the exact same thing had my recent application for support gone the wrong way. I had foolishly imagined that with such…

[fantasy-girl974]

► Concept art for Aloy and Kotallo's outfits

MIRACLE LINES by @grexigone​ and me​ (a Pacific Rim x Horizon AU)

********

Chapter 12 is here! And we're back this time with a good SOFT(tm) moment huhu 😌 So here's a concept art of their new outfits for the new chapter (the colors wasn't voluntary to match but hey, let's blame the Drift hehe👀)

[fabricdragondesigns]

Scandal: Poorly Designed Software Led to HUNDREDS of False Convictions |...