This whole Horizon IT scandal is so dystopian and I am to this date amazed they didn't sue the shit out of their management.
Imagine how many people were wrongly convicted just because your software was shitty and buggy. How many lives have been ruined?
Several people ended up committing suicide because of how financially ruined they were.
They are suing them. It's just that the courts aren't as enthusiastic about dispensing justice in case of the executives as they were with the sub postmasters.
It's just that the courts aren't as enthusiastic about dispensing justice
In Netherlands there was a system which was supposed to indicate if you maybe committed fraud regarding taxes and benefits. That system was completely buggy, plus highly biased. People went to the highest courts to prove their innocence and the courts rather trusted the tax authority, which trusted the system.
Children were taken away from families, people lost their jobs, etc. This for around 100.000 people/families.
The government knew and ignored that things were going wrong. A cabinet fell, people voted for the same people, pretty much the same cabinet was installed again.
I wrote this from memory, there's a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scandal?wprov=sfla1
It went on for ages. People are still heavily affected. Most haven't been helped. It is one of the many scandals as a result from a majority voting for the same right wing party. People were sold that all these problems were due to left wing parties, now there's an even more extreme right wing parties trying to form a cabinet. Because obviously it wasn't right wing enough. Urgh.
It was known that the software was shitty and buggy before it was foisted on the Post Office, having been rejected by DWP (and the Post Office right up until they were given no choice). It was Blair's decision, he didn't want to upset Fujitsu or discourage investment from Japan.
Short and long versions of a report into that on the JFSA website.
Pressure from govt to pretend that it worked, and to make the business profitable for privatisation, caused this inhuman clusterfuck.
She was later sentenced to 15 months in prison for theft and locked up on her son’s 10th birthday while eight weeks pregnant. She was put on suicide watch after collapsing in court. Her case was among those overturned by the court of appeal in 2021.
The inquiry is looking into the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of post office operators who were hounded for more than a decade because of shortfalls in their branch accounts that were due to bugs in the Post Office’s Horizon IT system.
This whole story was already shitty. What a mess and how horrible that so many people were harassed and tormented or jailed and fined due to a buggy system.
Imagine having your life ruined and thrown in jail. And then the 'executive' who is willfully responsible for it gets away by offering you an insincere and shitty apology! They haven't even returned the bonuses they got for it!
If this is the way the judicial and economic systems treat the rich and the poor, it won't be long before there's a worldwide French revolution.
It’s been going on for decades now and there hasn’t been a revolution yet.
Good for her. She was horribly mistreated, and she and her family were put through hell for something that she didn't do. Justice for her is not a bullshit, half-hearted apology, so she should feel no obligation to accept that or settle. I hope she pushes on until she gets real justice. And I hope that comes soon.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/