The Horizon scandal is a good extreme case of what can go wrong when too many Ministers and MPs accept official advice and believe experts, only to discover later that the official advice and expertise is badly wrong and doing grave harm.
I am all in favour of expertise. If I was ill I would seek advice from a doctor as they know so much more than I about diseases and health problems. I would also be aware of the need to ask what the side effects of treatment might be and what the record of success has been if treatment was proposed as ultimately I would have to make the decision about what to do.
Valuing experts does not mean that experts are always right. Indeed, in the areas I know best where I have some expertise of my own I am well aware of the divergence of opinions amongst the experts. This makes a Minister’s job both very interesting and very challenging. Advisers advise and Ministers decide. Sometimes a Minister needs to ask for a second opinion or a different expert view. Good Ministers are generalists but they have a sense of when the expertise is well based and when it could let them down. Good Ministers also wish to achieve good results for the public they serve. That too can demand changing experts to get a better answer.
I and a few other MPs, impressed by the work of James Arbuthnot, asked questions about Horizon from early days of the problems emerging. We all knew good honest local PO managers and could not believe some of them were accused of fraud and false accounting. As we realised the numbers involved I asked how senior managers of the Post Office and senior officials in the sponsor department could think there was suddenly a big outbreak of fraud around the same time as a new accounting system was introduced. It was also strange that no evidence came forward of these alleged fraudsters suddenly having bloated bank accounts or stuffed wallets of their own, going on a spending spree from the profits of crime.
It was frustrating that so many senior officials and Ministers stuck to the Post Office line. In future blogs I will look at other very worrying examples of where establishment thinking based on errant expertise is doing damage. As readers will know, I have been challenging establishment thinking over inflation, growth, reductions of CO 2, energy policy and migration amongst others. When people say they want change in the way we are governed, they are often seeking change in the controlling theories and policy prescriptions. When all the main parties accept the same expertise which turns out to be wrong democracy is damaged.
January 5, 2024
Good morning.
Before writing this I was struggling to find the word to describe what I think may have contributed to the above. Then it hit me – ‘Institutionalised’. They cannot believe that the ‘System’ or the ‘State’ could be wrong. We have all heard of the; But the computer tells me . . . !” over the phone. People just become unthinking slaves to the ‘System / State’ and cannot see the errors and flaws right there before them.
Witness the situation over masks during the SCAMDEMIC ? We all knew that they were useless and yet, so many went along with the charade. This was down to peer and institutional pressure. Few wanted to break out of the mould all due to the pressure brought.
People made mistakes and then, rather than admit it and say there is something wrong, just doubled down. Again, we saw post EU Referendum when the elected MP’s, unelected Lords and Civil Serpents all refused to believe that the people were right, that we needed to LEAVE. This and the scandal over the PO Managers is not entirely unconnected and they are both the result of failure on a human levels to accept the fact that ‘they’, or the ‘system’ might be wrong.
I think we need a behavioral scientist on this to better understand and learn from the above.
January 5, 2024
Even in court it is the same. The judges believe the NHS far too much for example. You really need to sit through some cases to see how broken our system is.
January 5, 2024
The Horizon scandal is a training program for net zero. Experts bankrupting the little people for their own game. I look forward if I live long enough to a documentary on how the world was lied too by governments using so called experts to con us.
January 5, 2024
Spot on Ian
January 5, 2024
The meaning of Establishment is when people blindly follow IDEOLOGY like ROBOTS whether it is from the left, right or centre.
Perfect example is Israel / Palestine:
Some left-wingers are on auto pilot attacking anything Zionist.
Some right-wingers are on auto pilot defending everything Zionist.
Rather than looking at this conflict OBJECTIVELY!
That surely Israel has the right to exist.
But not at any cost.
And that a settlement in this region IS possible. This is NOT idealism. Look at the peace settlement in N. Ireland. it’s not perfect but a 1000% better than the 1970’s / 1980’s when 99% of people (including me) thought peace would be impossible.
January 5, 2024
Correct – with net-zero, ICE cars bad and EV cars good ….without any real analysis
January 6, 2024
From what I understand there is a problem being caused by man to the environment but we’re not exactly sure how or how to deal with it. But technology is incredible and so I am quietly optimistic that we can solve the problems of the environment without destroying the environment (rather, the opposite)!
Regarding electric cars, they make good sense in cities as they reduce pollution in the city and noise in the city. Hard to see how anyone can argue with that?! Regarding car batteries, they are improving rapidly in a way many people never thought possible before.
Lastly, there is a tonne of money to be made from all this new green tech whether you think concerns about the environment is Harry Potter fantasy or not. But the (posh) Arthur Daley in me says we should be trying to use this as an opportunity to make lots of money in green tech and how this is so closely related to high tech in general. So great opportunity to increase our high tech industry even further!
(And rather than sinking into the world of Max Max regarding technology and fuel, we turn more into the world of Blade Runner or something …).
January 6, 2024
Also, we can no longer be held to ransom by dictators / semi-dictators regarding our fuel – whether that be by Russia, Iraq, Venezuela, Iran – etc. We must become 100% self-sufficient there (and it’s possible – without destroying / harming our economy to get there).
In fact, we must become a fortress regarding self-sufficiency in fuel, immigration and defence (against sophisticated missile systems and drones etc), and if possible, food (hopefully genetics will make that possible in the future – not sure).
January 5, 2024
We are witnessing a similar attitude towards “global warming “. Some commenting on this site have written that we should support the Conservatives as the alternatives would be worse. How can I vote for Net Zero and mass immigration? I cannot endorse these Policies. Many others, no doubt, feel the same. MP’s need to consult a greater variety of experts.
January 5, 2024
Daily Sceptic claims 150 Tory MPs funded by green lobby groups, no expertise just money and voting power. What did Cameron say about lobbying being the next scandal! Perhaps his suspicions was based on being in the pocket of Greensill!!
Could you confirm half your party MPs in the pocket of green lobbying JR?
Reply I dont think any of these MPs get paid or get any personal gain
January 5, 2024
Author of report on GB news a few days ago making it clear 150 Tory MPs. Who is correct?
January 5, 2024
There’s 150 tory MP members of the conservative envirn network (cen)
January 5, 2024
Cynic :
Agreed
January 5, 2024
Absolutely.
The problem is that there is a concerted effort in the scientific community to suppress any “climate denier” views.
There’s published histories by concerned scientists chronicling their struggles to have facts published. The climate change herd even pressure editors of scientific publications to change articles. Those editor roles have also become the target of the usual infiltration tactics we see elsewhere in life (the Conservative party full of non-conservatives, Electoral Commission, OBR, civil service and many others stuffed full of remainer socialists).
There is a coalition of scientists who fight the non-scientific approach to pushing climate change. Here is their Feb 2023 report:
https://co2coalition.org/publications/challenging-net-zero-with-science/
January 5, 2024
Yes Cynic, I am one who feels the same. So called net zero is a total fraud that Labour pushed for their rich mates who were giving them vastly over payed non-jobs in their organisations, even the stupid saying â settled science â , no science or technology is â settledâ we always learn more.
Then look behind the upstarts like those wanting to stop oil? Millionaires !! Out to make more money from the fraud!
January 5, 2024
With their own website declaring 150 MPs and 500 councillors as members of the conservative environment network CEN ……the policy of net-zero isn’t going to change anytime soon ….only reform
January 6, 2024
I agree. But nor can I adopt an Ian-Paisley attitude or ‘no, no, no’ / ‘never, never, never ..’ rather we need an entrepreneurial approach (which means being firm as possible but also creative about how we go about it) – as opposed to an ideological approach (‘never, never, never!”).
January 5, 2024
Mark B
It sounds like a job for the ‘Nudge Unit’. i.e. The electorate.
January 5, 2024
Another word, Mark, is groupthink!
There’s a malaise where people are not thinking for themselves, just following the official narrative – so groupthink!
It’s unhealthy!
January 5, 2024
Yes ! That too.
January 5, 2024
Mark B :
The word you’re looking for is “communism”.
January 5, 2024
@Mark B +1
The lead comes from the top.
If it wasn’t for just a small handful of MP’s like Sir John stepping in Government that is the lead in all this would sweep it under the carpet.
50,000 plus Criminals have just been set free by this Conservative Government, yet 700 innocent individuals will never get freedom or justice.
In the meantime the UK Governments will keep rewarding those that damage people and cause injustice.
January 5, 2024
Wait until they are fed âthe truthâ by AI. We are going to have to smash the machines and the new class war is against the State/political class.
Not even democrats can defend âdemocracyâ when the perversion is so great.
The Council refuses to implement what they acknowledge to be the law, currently damaging one of my properties. The Chairman of the Conservative Party who is the local MP refuses to communicate with me on this issue. One of my capitalist small business tenants has actually banned the Chairman of the Conservative Party from his premises! A pure example of the symptoms of this disease and a road to ruin for the Tory Party.
January 5, 2024
Group think in government and people coving up and protecting themselves for many years can be truly evil. As we saw with Hillsborough, blood contamination and many other scandals. See Ed Daveyâs appalling letter refusing even to meet those falsely accused of the post office offences. But why did the defence lawyer fail, the courts judges and jury system fail. How could it be beyond reasonable doubt that the software was faulty when so many of previously good character were being accused at the same time?
Meanwhile a rather larger issue.
âAndrew Bridgen today in an X – January 2022 – 30,000 more than the number of British civilians who died in #WWII.
This is being ignored by Britainâs journalistsâ Sure is an by the NHS, Government and the civil service. The issue will not go away it is worldwide and times with the Covid vaccine roll out. In younger people who never even needed vaccines too. The âexpertsâ even idiotically coerced these new tech âvaccinesâ into young people and people who had had Covid already.
January 5, 2024
Sorry full quote was âThere have been more than 100,000 #excessdeaths in the UK since January 2022 – 30,000 more than the number of British civilians who died in #WWII.
This is being ignored by Britainâs journalists.â
January 5, 2024
Re the Post Office scandal, it seems strange that if there was a general glitch in the software, why was not every post office connected affected in the same way? This leads me to think that someone somewhere was interfering with the accounts in question and may be sitting on a great big pile of money filched from the unfortunate post masters involved. Surely with such a big amount involved it must be possible to follow the money and see where it went. Maybe not, as our banking system is also faulty in that they cannot seem to trace fraudsters who rook people out of money from their accounts and the banks say they cannot trace where it went or who has it. There is much more to be considered here beyond compensation, which this appalling case has highlighted. Those responsible for this in the Post Office and the software supplier at the time must face prison, but it does not seem like that is going to happen.
January 5, 2024
graham
Always said this was the risk/problem with creating money and then being able to transfer it around the Country/World with a simple keystroke.
Governments do not print money anymore, they simply click a few buttons and hey presto it appears on a screen.
Difficult to now follow the money as no paper trail exists, that is why scammers have gained such a foothold, just a long line of ongoing electronic transfers, bank accounts set up and deleted at will, and it seems to disappear, or so we are told by the Banks, who refuse to even try and trace it for the victims of such fraud.
January 5, 2024
Zzzzzzzzzzzxzz
January 5, 2024
It’s not just the excess deaths. Many people, including my daughter, have been permanently damaged by the vaccine which as an NHS worker was forced upon her by this Government. She now suffers from a life-changing condition. Although we reported this via the yellow card system and a neurologist was tasked to look into it we haven’t heard anything further after over two years. What is this government and most governments around the world hiding?
January 5, 2024
Indeed, I would expect many more injured than killed, perhaps as many as 10+ times and not all the long term issues will be even apparent as yet.
January 5, 2024
Even now they are still vaccinating NHS workers many young and many will already have had Covid.
January 5, 2024
They have got that TV doctor woman (can’t remember her name) advertising for pregnant women to get their Covid vaccine. What is wrong with these people who ignore all the evidence? Covid isn’t even a killer for this age group and the vaccine has been proven not to work. Some people must be making a lot of money from this. Shame on them and the politicians who boycott the wonderful Andrew Bridgen who is trying to get an inquiry into vaccine harm.
January 6, 2024
Well said Christine, I agree fully and re Andrew Bridgen too. It was an outrage than Sunakâs Consocialists kicked him out for telling the truth.
January 5, 2024
Look at the article in con woman about Ferguson and Whittyâ evidence at inquiry against reality. If Ferguson stands by his evidence then his personal behaviour during covid should make him unemployable before his other dodgy modelling.
We had dodgy utter rot models by alleged experts during covid, BOE, ONS and OBR modelling all proven utter rot that have cost us all a fortune, climate modelling utter rot going to cost us all a fortune. When will govt. get a balanced view from opposing experts and reach their own decision?
January 5, 2024
Hope
Looks like the computer model was about as good as the Post office ones.
Results are only as good as the information put into them, if you guess a range of inputs, it gives you guessed answers, based on that information as a result.
Do not get me wrong, with so many unknowns at the time, you were never going to get an accurate result, the problem is the fools appeared to believe what came out, and did not think to question or clarify it.
A computer is there to help, not to instruct or obey !
January 6, 2024
+1
January 5, 2024
What was the age group? Is it related to peak birth years? There is a significant correlation between these statistics.
January 5, 2024
LL :
“Group think” is a euphemism for “communism”.
January 5, 2024
I am not sure âexpertiseâ is the issue. The Post Office case is more about a blatant cover up by senior management in the Post Office itself and also its software supplier.
Complacency is more like it. The issue was not properly investigated. Furthermore there was no punishment for the perpetrators once the truth was uncovered.
Establishment types are just allowed to get away with it.
January 5, 2024
But the courts and defence lawyers failed too how could these convictions be beyond reasonable doubt?
As to experts what does that Barrister from Blackpool one Victoria Atkins know about health care? She is paid 5 times what a junior doctor gets but I suspect 99% of junior doctors know more about the topic and would do a better job.
January 5, 2024
Seems to be around who paid the ‘experts’ and did they do a good enough job. Lawyers can only go on the evidence provided – if that is wrong or falsified what can they do? They are not computer experts. Something here is very wrong, but no-one seems to want to get to the very bottom of it, just pay some compensation, charged to the public and move on seems to be what is happening.
January 5, 2024
So, if Liam Fox was in the position because he was a trained medic, would he automatically be better than someone put in the post to oversee and question the NHS Management?
January 5, 2024
Lifelogic
Was it decided by a jury, or simply by a judge ?
January 5, 2024
@Peter
At what point does your ” blatant cover up” become a committed fraud ?
January 5, 2024
@Peter The so-called experts are not the ones that brought in the prosecution, a Government Postal Minister, the PO Chef Executive, and the Prosecution Service all had personal over site and made the personal choice
January 5, 2024
So the complacency was unreservedly trusting in a long-established institution like the Post Office.
The issue was being written about and questioned soon after the cases first came light. Nobody in authority outside the Post Office and the software supplier pursued this.
January 5, 2024
Paid-for experts, experts that have become politicised, experts that have sacrificed independence of thought and action and experts who deliberately spout falsehoods and obvious lies for their political paymasters represent a direct threat to democracy and freedom. All of the aforementioned have mushroomed in recent times since the governing class creaked open the Covid gateway.
We have slime who will sell their granny into hell for a few quid. These lowlife creatures are shameless and they now infect both the state, the public and private sectors
January 5, 2024
Politicised and bought or suffering wrong headed group think – on lockdowns, vaccines, the size of the state, on net zero⊠see the new book âthe end of scienceâ Prof. Dalgleish et al.
January 5, 2024
@DOM – An “expert”, ex is âhas beenâ â spurt, is a drip under pressure. So simply an âexpertâ is a has-been under pressure
January 5, 2024
Talking about “paid-for experts…………who spout falsehoods and obvious lies”,Elon Musk has a message on Twitter/X for western “defence” “analysts”,4th January:
“Just don’t invade Russia.It’s never a good idea.”
Love it!!
January 5, 2024
I can’t help thinking that Ministers want an easy life and a free pass if they get things wrong. Blame the expert, it wasn’t me guv! They are all in on it nowadays. How many resign when they preside over a cock up? In the past it wasn’t so, people actually did resign and were not able to pop up a few months later with a new plum job. At least that’s how it worked a lot of the time.
There should be accountability by those in charge. They might be more willing to listen to a lot of different advice before embarking on a policy, and more open to changing tack if things start to wobble, instead of doubling down.
January 5, 2024
@ Wanderer
“Blame the expert”
How many times or how badly does an expert need to be wrong, before they cease to be an expert.
Does anyone keep score ?
January 5, 2024
Require all advice to be provided with professional liability, just like architects, lawyers, engineers, accountants, medics. Treat lobbyists and scientists as advisers.
January 5, 2024
This forces them into the hands of insurance companies and their professional bodies and can (perhaps rather surprisingly to some) actually reinforce deluded group think. Preventing then speaking freely and potential threats of litigation prevent them speaking freely so they say as little as possible of substance.
January 5, 2024
Experts like Stradivarius and Rembrandt achieve great results if you use them properly. However Stradivarius couldnât paint to save his life and Rembrandtâs violins sounded like a cat being skinned alive.
This government makes bad choices on assignments. The liability you see is ours for what theyâve wasted.
January 5, 2024
Common sense helps. As you point out, it was lacking when considering the absence of supporting evidence. The failure to apply common sense to the other issues you mention often arises from the dominant influence of”experts” paraded by single issue pressure groups. The consequences are stupid laws and regulations of which the Climate Change Act and prime minister I’ll declarations to ban this or that by some arbitrary date are among the more obvious examples.
January 5, 2024
Yes the political candidate selection process does not pick people who are good at spotting BS. That is a large part of the problem. All aspects of society in the UK is still full of class based selection rather than being meritocratic. We have disconnected success in the eyes of the end citizen consumer from the metrics senior execs get measured on. We have allowed fake complaints processes and organisations allover the public sector which completely fail to learn and leverage from the complaints made by the public, and generally just covers stuff up as its first duty. Individuals within such organisations are heavily incentivised to be grey men who do not rock the boat, and anyone whistle blowing will have their life destroyed unless they fit some political agenda. We have one of our main parties promising to hire massive numbers of new staff into one of the biggest failures of an organisation on the planet, like that will help with anything.
We are a laughing stock internationally, so much so that big US companies just treat us as a sales outlet as they have learnt the way we fill senior ranks here.
January 5, 2024
One area of extraordinary expert incompetence which gets little focus is defence procurement. today, in just the latest example, itâs announced that a warship which was recently refurbished at huge public expense is to be scrapped as there arenât enough sailors to crew her. But the blithering incompetents who brought this about are never named and shamed. My guess would be they include a good number of people with assorted gongs and honours and in receipt of sizeable inflation-proof pensions from the taxpayer.
January 5, 2024
Ironically it is the HMS Westminster!
January 5, 2024
Actually,there has been a lot of focus on the shortcomings of defence procurement over the past decade.It’s just that nothing has been done about it.The MIC has powerful allies.
January 5, 2024
A near neighbour works for the MOD from home. He walks his dog, goes to the gym, out for coffee, shopping etc etc. His supervisory role tells me his staff aren’t supervised and his managers clearly don’t supervise him. That’s why we have the MOD problems, 5.6 million on welfare, many imported, and taxes at 70 year highs. Useless and no action taken by this foolish Government for the work from home/welfare culture is embedded and not challenged.
……………….”When all the main parties accept the same expertise which turns out to be wrong democracy is damaged”……………… No Sir John it’s broken.
Out here in the real world we see and experience daily the impacts of mass uncontrolled immigration on our health, Cities, culture, heritage attacked and actions by those invited here by the political class with NO MANDATE. Given free reign to protest and act with immunity by the non Equality higher status endowed by the Westminster fools. All are protected by their superior protections than white English tax paying men. Aviva, enact discrimination and get a gong rewarded.!
The One Nation Liberal Tory’s and Labour have blown it and we don’t want more of the arrogant same past the next election, we want Reform!
January 5, 2024
Defence is a closed shop. There is a revolving door for former, admirals, generals etc. plus former politicians with a defence background. ACOBA does nothing to stop this.
Any issues with dodgy kit, or bribes to purchasers gets swept under the carpet. Value for money is never even looked into.
January 5, 2024
The expert military recruitment capita has been the death of our armed forces …and no one has the bottle to revert back to the old system, as it will highlight incompetence and corruption
January 5, 2024
Rather than scrap expensive ships that take years to build, surely the easiest, cheapest ,and quickest solution is to employ more sailors, oh we just sacked the most combat experienced ones.
I wonder, do we still have as many Admirals as we do fighting ships ?
January 5, 2024
As for seeking advice from a doctor, John, that is only for VIP’s now in our system, as the rest of us are being palmed off with PA’s, paramedics, and nurses. Pot luck whether they will spot that your pain is cancer cos they simply don’t have the diagnostic skills. Massive disincentives in the system from actually spotting cancer early while it is easily treatable, cos the NHS doesn’t want the massive increase in curative treatment workload that would lead to, it is incentiviy to just leave it too late so people are not saveable and they just have to dish out end of life morphine.
January 5, 2024
With the general public’s commitment to smoking, obesity and promiscuity, many are willing victims of cancer of various forms.
January 5, 2024
Yes, go to try to get a local NHS surgery GP appointment, face to face, almost no chance. HOWEVER, I can get a face to face GP appointment tomorrow…IF I am prepared to pay ÂŁ250 for 20 mins. So, deduce: there are GP’s available to see patients, it’s just that the doctors find it more remunerative to charge patients directly, rather than be paid by the NHS to see patients. So what’s gone wrong here?
January 5, 2024
It’s less than half that price to see a GP, or ENT consultant, in London. So you are being overcharged. It would be very affordable if we were not being taxed till the pip squeek to pay for an NHS which doesnt deliver.
January 5, 2024
With regard to my MP, I have absolutely no faith in the person concerned to make good decisions on my behalf due to the MP’s very poor problem solving skills, caused by a) not being a fact based decision maker and b) having very low level helicopter vision. Based on what I read in the media, I suspect that many MPs (including Ministers) have similar characteristics to my MP.
The task of putting in place MPs who are fit for the task will take forever. With developments in digital technology over the last twenty years, I believe that the UK should switch from representative democracy to direct democracy ie emulate Switzerland.
January 5, 2024
Good Morning
Thank you for yet another big dollop of Conservatism and common sense. As a life long Tory voter I am sorry to say that I shall note be voting for them at the next GE. They have become a simpering mass of liberal platitudes which actually disgust me. You , Jacob Reece Mogg and a number of others are the only remaining beams of light in Westminster. I pray daily that you all will band together and start fighting back, our Country desperately needs you all to take action and regain the Conservative Party from the wets or move to an alternative political home.
yours sincerely
Lesley
Lesley McConochie
January 5, 2024
The last sentence of Sir John’s article sums up very well.
How can this situation ever change all the while the freedom and scope of what can be said seems to be shrinking by the day.
If unpalatable truths cannot be told how can truth survive.
If experts and advisers are hand picked not because of wide ranging knowledge, but because they adhere to the political code that seems to have taken over everything, then democracy, freedom, truth and everything else will shrink further.
As we see the generations who have been given today’s version of education take over, I fear even more for truth, common sense, ability to judge fair and square (how can you judge fairly if your delicate sensibilities cannot be exposed to unpalatable truths?) and democracy will pay a huge price.
January 5, 2024
Remove special advisers, reform civil servants, half the number of ministers and get MPs to take responsibility âŠ.upholding the wishes of the voters and their constituency
January 5, 2024
Talking about the establishment and clinging to the old empire âŠ.why do we still control and fund 14 Overseas Territories
January 5, 2024
This is one of many instances where the 60s mantra “the man in Whitehall knows best” is seen to have been upgraded via that modern day curse, the rise of malevolent technology that has arguably coined a new tacit mantra “the machine/system/program is always right”.
No he doesn’t, and no it isn’t.
January 5, 2024
‘Computer says “No”‘ ?
January 5, 2024
One problem here is that each wrongly accused person was tried separately in separate court cases by different judges with different defence lawyers and different juries so the sheer scale and coordinated nature of the hundreds of alleged offences weren’t entirely clear to them. The only people who had an overview of that were the post office officials who covered it up – and with ministers like Ed Davey above them they had no oversight at all. I am not sure how that issue could have been addressed – my feeling is that if they had been a private commercial company owned by shareholders they would have been more sensitive to the threat of company reputational damage and a cover-up would have been harder, but maybe not. It is a problem, as we have seen in the NHS when state-owned organisations screw-up their first thought is to cover it all up.
January 5, 2024
Hi John
Great post (experts on tap NOT on top WSC).
Another issue, linked to Net Zero, to ask Qs about is the killing of raptors, other precious birds and millions of bats by wind turbines and the miles of transmission lines needed to connect them up. E g. See:
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/wind/wind-turbines-kill-too-many-birds-and-bats-how-can-we-make-them-safer.
The numbers in Europe are worse:
mortality rates:-
Spain â 330 Birds per turbine per year
Germany â 309 Birds per turbine per year
Sweden â 895 Birds per turbine per year
Plus roughly twice as many bats.
Appalling and distressing numbers.
There is an expensive paradox involved in adding more wind generation as this makes the energy cost become even higher. This is because the cost of the back up system that in only used 30% of the time will be very expensive since the operators need to recover their costs with less running time!
Nuclear is the only answer to these issues with a mix of hydrogen generation to divert their output into when capacity equals load.
I very much doubt another generation of wind will replace the current ones when their short life (20-2/5 years) expires.
January 5, 2024
Coal & oil is the only answer ….I don’t believe the hype of the UN IPCC
January 5, 2024
I’m sure that several of your readers, like myself, look forward to a future blog which examines how establishment thinking based on errant expertise (much of it relying on computer modelling) did such harm from early on in the ‘Covid-19 pandemic’. Had the Government paid attention to real experts such as Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Professor Jay Battacharya, Dr. Karol Sikora and others who advocated ‘focused protection’ of the vulnerable (thus leaving the rest of us to get on with our lives), our country would not be in the terrible mess it is in now.
Many people believe that Paula Vennells, chief executive of the Post Office at the time of the Horizon scandal, does not deserve her CBE.
Some of us are still reeling from the recognition of ‘no jab no job’ Sajid Javid in the 2024 New Year Honours list, he who mandated covid-19 ‘vaccines’ for all care workers. About 40,000 left their jobs rather than accept a medical intervention still at its experimental stage. This had a huge negative effect on the whole of the UK healthcare sector including the NHS. He was on the point of decreeing the same for nurses and doctors. Some left the NHS in anticipation of that threatened mandate.
Enormous long-term damage resulted from the actions of Sajid Javid when Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Which brings into question, as with Paula Vennells, the deservedness of the gong.
January 5, 2024
Expertise is anti democratic when any of these happen âŠ
You only allow a small number of experts with the same view point.
When experts fail to publish their decisions in peer reviewed journals papers that are open to everybody to criticise before any decision. The Government could easily set up an independent journal.
When MPs canât publicly quiz the experts before any decision, during the implementation and after implementation.
When the public donât get a chance to vote on experts decision every 4 years.
When experts are not financially or criminally liable for fraud, acting anti-democratically as above, data manipulation, failing to disclose conflict of interest, failing to disclose past and future benefits to themselves or any friend or family member.
January 5, 2024
Experts say donât cut firebreaks, donât dredge canals and rivers, build on flat planes, donât disturb the environment âŠ.result flooding, fire every year
January 5, 2024
Who wanted to do away with paper accounting?
And why?
One of the stepping stones towards a world of AI
And total, unadulterated Mad Max-style chaos.
The fight to obliterate human input.
Do these people really understand what they are supporting?
January 5, 2024
JR: “It was frustrating that so many senior officials and Ministers stuck to the Post Office line.”
It was more than frustrating for those sub-postmasters who were wrongfully prosecuted, financial ruined, had their reputations shattered and in some cases committed suicide as a result!
This has been on going for 20 years. It is a total disgrace but typifies the callous disregard for truth and justice by the Post Office and governments of all hues. All those in office during that time who were involved in this should be charged with perverting the course of justice.
January 5, 2024
BT,
Agreed.
January 5, 2024
If your doctor had been suggesting a new largely unproven means of treatment you might also ask yourself the question “Who benefits”.
I fear this is not asked often enough in politics as it is rarely the little people who do.
January 5, 2024
Your reference to medical treatment where you state, correctly, that “…ultimately I would have to make the decision about what to do.” is a reminder that this situation is likely to change fundamentally. Our right to decide what action we take about our own health is likely to be handed over to the World Health Organisation if many of our MP’s have their way. You have spoken against this move on many occasions for which I thank you, but handing over such decisions to “experts” is not only contrary to medical ethics but exposes us all to the malign influence of companies and governments whose main interests are about power and money. Pfizer’s track record on honesty about their products isn’t great considering how often they have been fined in court actions.
Throughout the period where we have been subjected to government interventions for covid19 I have sought to speak with medics about the situation. Interestingly, the general advice from NHS staff was how it was essential that all official advice was followed, but non-NHS research staff painted a much more nuanced picture, including the futility of face masks, the collateral damage of lockdowns and the need for the individual to assess whether an injection of gene therapy (“vaccine”) is acceptable.
Horizon, Covid and Net Zero have had one noticeable similarity, dissenting voices being ignored, censored, insulted and generally discredited no matter how highly qualified those voices might be.
January 5, 2024
@ David+L – quite right! Well said.
January 5, 2024
Agree – MPs have turned their backs on the voters
January 5, 2024
Most ministers, it seems, are below calibre – they cannot work things out for themselves, hence the mess we all too often find ourselves in.
Ministers are too afraid to go against the establishment line – They play at being in charge but are inclined to follow WEF policies blindly or do as civil servants tell them.
If MPs were more aware, then we wouldn’t have had the twin disaster of climate change and lockdowns imposed on us to ruin our lives
January 5, 2024
First we should vastly improve the quality of those we allow to become MPs. If the buck stops with MPs in terms of democratic governance we need to up the quality they bring to the job.
Many bad decisions coming out of Parliament occur because party loyalty via the whipping system allows, nay demands that it happens. Parliamentary parties produce far too many camels where thoroughbred arab stallions was the aim.
The executers of decisions, our civil service, whose opinions may have been sought at senior level quite legitimately, have become grotesquely politicised. We know from Margaret Thatcher the uncanny accuracy of Yes Minister. However when the EU went overtly political and Parliament lost its executive power, they were replaced by senior echelons of the civil service in cahoots with counterparts in the EU. Parliament became a rubber stamp operated by organ grinders monkeys and democracy departed. We are living with the residue and a civil service defiant of the change that Brexit brought about. They are the sand in the gear box designed by incompetent and unwilling parliamentary engineers. Those who can play the system combined with the scribes and mediocre politicians are the identifiable swamp that needs clearing.
My first action would be to rewrite the CS contract. My second would be to end the Uni PPE, Gopher, Seat route to becoming an MP. My third would be to introduce penalty clauses into government contracts. My forth would be to insist on the employment of value analysis against all government/politicians pet projects so that suffering further HS2s ends. Lastly imposed schemes such as Nett Zero would be subject to Referendum. Establishing that ultimate power rests with the people. Scribes and most politicians would hate it, but that is democracy, a kitchen they are not fit to operate in.
January 5, 2024
@ agricola <i."…we should vastly improve the quality of those we allow to become MPs." – through a vast improvement in the quality of those allowed to vote for them perhaps?
A dispiriting truth is that we get the governments we deserve!
January 5, 2024
‘First we should vastly improve the quality of those we allow to become MPs’
Agree – but first we need to remove the restrictions on becoming an MP i.e the required signatures etc (all designed to stop the average Joe from applying)
January 5, 2024
I’m afraid I can only whole heartedly agree with you AC.
As SIr John states, we “are often seeking change in the controlling theories and policy prescriptions” – Yes, that is very true but the chances of us actually getting them look pretty remote…and that’s the real problem.
Brexit was essentially a miscalculation. Our ‘elites’ thought they could swing the vote the ‘right way’ and were clearly shocked when they failed to do so. Frankly, I’d like to see them shocked more often…it might do them good
January 7, 2024
Parliament didn’t lose its executive power. It never had it. It lost its legislative and scrutinising powers, its proper functions.
January 7, 2024
PS. I should clarify tha talthough the sovereign is in Parliament, or was until Lady Spider decided otherwise, the executive function is reserved to the government within Parliament, and is not a function of parliament as a whole. Although the Rogue Remainer Parliament wrongly seized control of the order paper. Measures to prevent a recurrence of these constitutional outrages have yet to be taken.
January 5, 2024
I made a similar comment yesterday about so called outside experts outweighing common sense, but there are more strands to this as well, when a complete misunderstanding of human nature, and the feeling of a need to follow the Company/Party Line, or not rock the boat for “personal” survival.
How many time have we heard of mangers, big bosses, and politicians say they knew the policy was wrong at the time, but felt they were forced to follow the management/party line due, to collective responsibility/loyalty.
Nowadays for many, it seems that money and position is much more important than having the courage or guts to speak up when you think matters are wrong.
The vilification of past whistle blowers serves as a big reminder that big brother will always try to silence the little people who are brave enough to speak out.
The Post Office, and the NHS blood scandal are but two that are now in the headlines, after decades of delay and frustration.
All of those involved in the deliberate and shameful cover up’s should be taken to task !
January 5, 2024
The default position for the establishment is cover-up and lie. Hopefully Mr Bates v Post Office will be the first of a series.
January 5, 2024
Many of the so-called “experts” are nothing of the sort. Guido Fawkes web site, a rare modern voice doing real investigative journalism, often shows up the BBC “experts” to be Labour activists and/or rabid Brexiteers etc.
Govt often engages with people who are not even the representatives of a group of people as they claim. The so-called leaders of Muslim communities are often self-styled attention seekers who do not speak actually for the community they claim to represent.
January 5, 2024
Guido Fawkes is a bit sweary and infantile in the comments section.
It also has its own agenda.
January 5, 2024
Sunak and Starmer showing their utter contempt for those who suffered by refusing to say her CBE should be taken away. Had it been a bank chief they would be on it like a flash. Part of the scandal is that she received this gong for âservices to the post officeâ when these problems were well known about, a judge commenting that Post Office evidence was akin to saying the earth was flat and question marks whether it misled Parliament.
The people who have had lives ruined have been offered ÂŁ600, 000 to drop their claims, annual salary for post office Chief Exec ÂŁ573000.
It stinks
January 5, 2024
Thanks Sir John, my wife and I watched the Post Office Horizon scandal last night on ITV with shock and dismay. Group think and a total unwillingness to investigate openly and thoroughly with ruthless management determined to protect themselves at all costs. Itâs a horrifying example of incompetence, corruption and protectionism going all the way up to Ministerial level. Iâm astonished to read a Post Office Minister claims they were misled by officials? Surely itâs their fundamental duty to ensure they are not being misled? Iâm deeply suspicious Senior Civil Servants and some Ministers in the Net Zero Department are affected by Group Think and are being misled by the eco-activists at the Climate Change Committee?
January 5, 2024
Net-Zero experts come from universities that are government funded, its an evil and corrupt system
January 6, 2024
Funny, the committee of experts put together by the CCC has people from:
BAE systems, East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, Barratt Developments, Tesco, Low Carbon Energy, Ethical Diary, Legal & General, Lloydâs Bank, Velocys, DHL, John Lewis Partnership, Futerra.
Obviously these people might at one stage have gone through universities. But right now they are not, as you claim, coming from universities.
Do you ever check before writing? I guess not.
January 6, 2024
….and industrial experts ….that want to secure or continue to secure government contracts & licences
January 5, 2024
The big give away in this sad case was the high numbers involved, all of a sudden, in a profession that up till then had had a very good record of honesty. This should have prompted questions from anyone with basic common sense, but as we know, that is a quality almost totally lacking in senior politicians, and it is the accountable politicians who are most to blame, because they are the group whose main function is to ask questions of the officials and advisers, and insist on proper answers. But, as usual, it turned out to be nobody’s fault.
January 5, 2024
Sir Ed Daley, post office minister now claiming he was âpreventedâ for meeting victims, allegedly he refused to meet Bates.
This is a man who thinks he could be Prime Minister. How is it we get such utter incompetents in such important political positions?
January 5, 2024
It’s Davey actually. But calling him Daley may be a Freudian slip. Remember Minder? Made me chuckle, so thanks.
January 6, 2024
they both find themselves diving into deep water!
January 5, 2024
Spelling mistake ? Surely you mean Sir Ed Dopey.
January 5, 2024
A comprehension test question for 7-year old schoolchildren asked something like:
If two people say A is right and nine people say A is left, is A right or left?
The master explained that just one person could be right even if everyone else in the world held the opposite opinion.
January 5, 2024
So the answer to the comprehension test question should be: “I don’t know. I’ll go and find out.” Science is empirical, which means finding out, rather than accepting dogma.
What’s happening with lockdown/vaccine harms is that the experts contributing to the Covid Inquiry mostly don’t want to find out. No more than did those responsible for what was going on with the PO Horizon scandal. We must not be afraid of the truth, no matter what it does to established reputations.
January 5, 2024
âWhen all the main parties accept the same expertise which turns out to be wrong democracy is damaged.â
Make no mistake, very often the âexpertiseâ is deliberately wrong.
We have become a one party communist state where there is no difference between the Parliamentary parties. They all believe in mass immigration and the Net Zero Strategy and this is promoted daily by the state broadcaster.
For communists the means always justifies the ends.
The unilateral Net Zero Strategy (passed through Parliament with neither a vote nor a costing and based upon the totally false âexpertâ narrative that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 will case the planet to burn and boil) which cannot possibly bring us energy security, in fact quite the reverse, is a perfect illustration of where âthe official advice and expertise is badly wrong and doing grave harmâ
January 5, 2024
How about starting to ask some serious questions about the truth concerning climate change, the Climate Change Act and Net Zero policies, Sir John? They will take us back to the Stone Age if they are not stopped.
January 5, 2024
I’d like to see an open debate with a free vote ‘are you for or against net-zero’ ….I want to know where each and every MP stands
January 5, 2024
IH – It will not happen, you know that and we all know that. The globalists need to promote the Globalist WEF NWO agenda.
January 5, 2024
It also demonstrates the dangers of changing Ministers every 6 months or so, nobody has time to get a handle on whatâs going on in the Department hence the rise in power of Civil Service Mandarins.
January 5, 2024
WILLIAM – The ministers are clueless any way, They are all career politicians. WE are irrelevant they do not care about the people. However change is coming and panic will ensue.
January 5, 2024
The Horizon scandal is a good extreme case of how there is no justice in this country for the average person other than the super-rich and the super-poor.
It is so wrong that people are coerced into pleading guilty because they canât afford to risk going through our court system yet you have the Prince Harryâs of this world who can afford to take up the court’s time with frivolous litigation.
January 5, 2024
Christine
It is even worse than you describe.
If you are taken to court by the Public Prosecution Service and are then found innocent by the Court, rarely if at all do you get your legal costs paid, thus proven innocent people can lose their house (if that is the only way to fund their defence), to pay their legal costs, to prove they are innocent.
You can claim legal costs for a private/civil action, but then the court decides at what level, sometimes not all of your costs are awarded.
It is now only justice if you can afford it !
January 5, 2024
Todayâs diary is describing the advancement of ânet-zeroâ in a nutshell ….blind ignorance, admiration for scientists and fear of woke media
January 5, 2024
It is a fundamental flaw in society today, we read soundbite then take them to be the verbatim irrefutably the truth.
People get wound up by the soundbites they garner from so-called social media and similar conclusions are accepted as truth.
I find the flaw, and I mean this politely as I appreciate the outlet with Sir Johnâs Diary is that out of the respected necessity the comments, we make are just brief snapshots of a view that is consumed correctly by those of a similar view, but, distorted when each nuance isnât fleshed out.
Sir John just don’t change the rules the system works as intended.
January 5, 2024
Labourâs latest poster showing the current PM with glinting teeth presenting a New Deal has reversed his photo image from left to right, showing his hair parting on the wrong side. That may have an intended underlying meaning or just be clumsy Labour processing, like placing the negative upside down in the darkroom. Both lack expertise.
January 5, 2024
What mystifies me is that sub postmasters were convicted, when the Post Office could not prove that the new charges were correct. How could the Law allow these charges to be proved? What were the Judges thinking?
January 5, 2024
Balanced judgement and experience are the cores of good management ; this applies to all situations no matter what size . There is also a strong case for medium to longer term planning in decision making . When mistakes and divergences occur the day to day operations can easily be modified when this control mechanism applies .
Too often Governments are more influenced by personalities rather than professional decision making and the weekly PM questioning in the HoC is a typical example ; it points to the basic weakness of the Party system .
As things stand now we are suffering from short term adjustments to major concerns and the overall public have suffered .
January 5, 2024
Not only should we seek a balanced view from experts, we should also take direction from the People.
I find that in general, there is wisdom in the majority view.
We voted to remove ourselves from the eu and at the last general election voted for a Conservative government.
Since then many who consider themselves to be experts have resisted the popular will and have even tried to use the term âpopulismâ as some sort of insult.
The terrible taxation decisions of recent times and the awful record of the Bank of England are just 2 (of countless) examples of where favouring the âexpertsâ in defiance of the People resulted in self-inflicted problems.
January 5, 2024
”Not only should we seek a balanced view from experts”
No such thing as ‘balance’ when the science is ‘settled’
January 5, 2024
The Horizon Post Office scandal is appalling and a perfect example of management groupthink and a refusal to accept they could be wrong. The Horizon / P.O. management should be ashamed of themselves and where are the prosecutions of those people. As should the Judges, Barristers and Solicitors who should have been there as a safeguard.
BUT exactly the same is happening with Net Zero. A blunt refusal by Government, MPs, Just Stop Oil and its offshoots to examine the facts without prejudice. This is an equally big scandal in which ordinary people are being forced to pay so called green taxes, which will increase more and more, because those with power and influence have made, and continue to make stupid decisions based on a false premise.
January 5, 2024
Keith from Leeds : “A blunt refusal by Government, MPs, Just Stop Oil and its offshoots to examine the facts without prejudice.”
The fact that the recent revelation that the backbench Net Zero pushing Conservative Environment Network composed of 150 Conservative MPs and Peers is funded by the same organisations that fund XR and JSO demonstrates that the Tory Party has become the political wing of XR and JSO.
January 5, 2024
Our Post Office its status and system has been root and branch destroyed based on an opinion and not sign of facts or proof.
The flaw as I see and itâs the same with many things that are todayâs disrupters, unsubstantiated opinions. Everyone and anyone can become an accuser, that is then not given a robust rebuttal by those that are there to protect society â our MPsâ our Legislators.
Throughout this scandal we the people have empowered our MPâs, the Government to have oversite of the PO with a Postal Services Minister. So we have had a Member of Government paid and empowered to overseeing the Post Office Management
Its no-good blaming the software. The software didnât instruct the Prosecution to bring in charges. The Postal Services Minister, the Chief Executive of the Post Office(her Wiki page- is a British ex-businesswoman and former Anglican priest, very Christian of her) , the Prosecution Team all each and every one of them were required actually paid to ensure the evidence supported their claims. They all neglected their responsibility.
The lead in all this as with everything else in todayâs world comes from the top, if the people we empower and pay absolve them self from accountability and responsibility. Is it then any surprise everyone else is comfortable taking the same lead and just shrugging their shoulders.
In the meantime, this attitude at the top has destroyed lives, itâs even suggested it has caused deaths. Compensation will never reinstate someoneâs life and will never bring it back to normality for those affected â the innocent in all this. The ongoing criminality is the failure from this Conservative Government to step up to the duties we have empowered them and paid them to do and redress the situation instantly. In the last few weeks this Conservative Government have been comfortable bypassing UK Law and letting 50,000 criminals go free in the UK just to get the numbers down before the coming election. But the innocent â its still Conservative Government inspired life of purgatory.
January 5, 2024
NatWest’s chair has said he believes it is not currently “that difficult” for people to get on the housing ladder.
Sir Howard Davies said people have always had to save for a deposit but admitted you had to save more today.
He told the BBC he recognised people were “finding it difficult to start the process”, but warned of “dangers” in “very easy access to mortgage credit”.
But critics said his comments on the Today programme were “astounding” and “out of touch with reality”.
“What planet does he live on? This is astounding to hear from a senior banker,” said Ben Twomey, chief executive of campaign group Generation Rent.
Katy Eatenton, a mortgage and protection specialist at Lifetime Wealth Management, called Sir Howard’s comments “ludicrous”.
—–OMG – this idiot is the Chair and doesn’t see a Deposit or Cost of Mortgage on very high housing in the South of England as being a much of a problem! The Board ought to unseat him immediately – a right plonker.
January 5, 2024
@ Mickey Taking – Davis should have gone when Rose was dismissed in the Farage-Coutts scandal but this government was content to leave him in place until his scheduled retirement.
January 6, 2024
and a mega-bucks retirement.
January 5, 2024
Academics, government ministers, customers and company spokesmen are not necessarily experts. The engineers who designed the system usually are and in so many cases will tell you that the device or system has not undergone enough testing before being deployed. Testing something thoroughly will push a cost up which bean counters hate, or cutting back on it is a result of a company trying to undercut its rivals.
Engineers are so rarely consulted, but they should be. In my experience they are usually kept in the back because they are too honest.
January 5, 2024
Netlamb – OH so true.
January 5, 2024
netlamb :
Youâre absolutely correct.
I recently watched the evidence sessions of the HoC Select Committee âEnergy Security & Net Zeroâ on the subject âKeeping The Power Onâ. The Committee interviewed company spokespersons for the renewable and nuclear industries, all pushing their products They didnât interview the most important person for this subject, an engineer, not another salesperson, from the National Grid and preferably one with a knowledge of the Capacity Market.
January 5, 2024
This week the UK became a communist state with the introduction by this tory governmentâs proposed Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate â which will eventually force all car and van makers to only sell emission-free vehicles by 2035, starting with a legal requirement for 22% of new cars sold to be pure electric this year
Weâre (like the old Russia) forcing companies to only make and sell authorised state sanctioned goods âŠ..our MPs are the new secretariat of the Politburo
January 5, 2024
glen cullen :
Agreed.
January 5, 2024
One of my elderly relative who has voted Tory all her life told me never again â due to net-zero the NHS has replaced her Ventolin inhaler with a Salbutamol inhaler to reduce the NHS âinhalerâ co2 footprint by 5% âŠ.Ventolin works for her and Salbutamol doesnât
Your party, your MPs, your Experts keep attacking your own voters
January 5, 2024
Sir John,
The Speaker has unilaterally decided to fly the flag of Palestine over Parliament next week, and to welcome the Ambassador to Parliament. Should one of you not inform him that we recognize neither the state of Palestine, nor any of its representatives, nor its flag?
Westminster is not the Speaker’s personal property.
January 5, 2024
So parliament is happy to recognise Palestine but not Taiwan nor Tibet
January 6, 2024
Apparently MPs were sent an email announcing the visit to Parliament of the Palestinian envoy Husam Zomlot. Now the Telegraph reports that a House of Commons spokesman for Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has denied that Zomlot was ever due to visit Parliament. Either this is a lie, and he was, or someone in the Speaker’s office has got some explaining to do as to the source of that email information.
January 5, 2024
As has been said so many MP’s are signed up to the CEN and are not allowed to question anything.
They do not think for themselves or represent their constituents properly
This is why no Minister actually changes anything; they seem to be doing what they are told from abroad.
We no longer have a democracy. It is irrelevant Sir John whether your many colleagues are paid.
This a national scandal and it is time it is admitted. A General Election is pointless.
Like many others I shall be voting for Reform.
I strongly suggest that you and a few others should renounce your party and join Richard Tice and Nigel Farage.
January 6, 2024
All tory parliamentary party sub-groups are scantioned by the leader and the conservative party …..so in real terms its the whole conservative party agreeing to the poivies of CEN
Funding –
Grants (83% of our income), including European Climate Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Oak Foundation, WWF-UK, and Clean Air Fund.
Sponsorship from businesses and charities (10% of our income),.
Donations from individuals (7% of our income).
January 5, 2024
Incredible that too many of these establishment figures can move between multiple stepping stone disasters in their track records despite serially demonstrating mega incompetence, brazen arrogance and sheer vanity which seem to be highly valued by the “elites” today. The greater the financial damage means you are destined for even bigger expensive projects as you have some weird experience of working within the system – seems to be the reality. However:
If you are a good upright citizen with integrity you are regarded as naive and light weight and deserve to be fooled “en masse”.
January 5, 2024
“I have been challenging establishment thinking over inflation, growth, reductions of CO 2, energy policy and migration….. ”
Perhaps you could add the vaccine to that list.
“When the state confronts 25% excess-mortality rates among young adults and remains remarkably uncurious about its cause, one must eventually conclude that its indifference is deliberate.” (Mark Steyn)
January 5, 2024
I found the allegations against the postmasters quite astonishing. It would only have taken an Accountant less than a week to ascertain that the system was at fault. A simple procedure of analysis and checks with transactions between the manual records and a computer printouts would very quickly have found the problem.
Everything in accounting has to have a double entry and the accounts must balance. If computer programmers were altering the accounts it would have been so easy to spot. Where were they putting the entries? I just canât understand how it wasnât found very quickly. itâs really difficult to fool an accounting system, errors show up very easily. It amazes me that a set of accounts could have been produced with such catastrophic errors. If money was going missing, the original bank account where the money came from just wouldnât balance because there would have been losses and there werenât any.
January 6, 2024
That’s what Suspense Accounts are for. They are internal accounts where you post money that you cannot properly allocate for the moment, the idea being that you come back later and make the correction. This last bit was obviously never done, the credit balances in the suspense accounts were eventually written back as profits in the PO accounts, when those credits really belonged to the sub-postmaster personal accounts. That’s how the shortfalls arose. They were not real.
I suspect that the Post Office employs a pretty low grade of employees among its accounts staff, almost as low-grade as the execs.
January 5, 2024
If I created a computer system that I knew to be buggy and not fit for purpose.
And then went on to make ÂŁÂŁsquillions from a secure contact.
I think I would definitely want to have access to the entire systemâŠwith the ability to manipulate input.
January 5, 2024
**
Contract
January 5, 2024
The situation regarding so-called Experts is far worse than Sir John suggests, particularly when it comes to Net Zero, and as evidenced by the Covid Scamdemic.
Firstly, the Globalists decide on their objective. Then they decide how best to achieve it. Then they carefully select and pay SOME Experts to provide the “evidence” and justification for their policies and at the same time they use the law, media, Big Tech and coercive propaganda to silence any other Experts who dissent.
This country has been ruined by so-called Experts and the CONsensus which operates in the Establishment. It’s why it will make no real difference whether Labour or the Treacherous Tories are elected later this year.
January 5, 2024
Reported on the BBC tonight –
‘Conservative Chris Skidmore is quitting as an MP over the government’s energy plans, triggering a by-election to replace him’
So he wasn’t a Tory MP he was really Green ….how many more ?
January 6, 2024
In June 2023, it was announced that Skidmore had been appointed to a professorship at the University of Bath to undertake research on sustainability and climate change
January 5, 2024
The contract for the Horizon computer system was awarded to ICL in 1996. ICL was taken over by Fujitsu in 2002.
After two sub-postmasters had contacted Computer Weekly, the trade journal undertook an investigation and reported on seven sub-postmasters who were experienced unexplained losses since the introduction of the Horizon system. After that it became a regular story in the computer press and then public knowledge.
ICL was created under a Wilson government as the British champion to take on the might of IBM. ICL was formed from three British computer manufacturers of totally incompatible hardware and software. Of these companies’ products, that of International Computers and Tabulators’ 1900 range was finally selected by the government as the basis for ICL’s product line despite English Electric having developed the better product, the System 4 IBM compatible machine. So effectively politicians destroyed two companies of which at least one had a better product range. As a result of being an internationally uncompetitive product, ICL was almost entirely dependent on the government for sales.
For those of us in the computer industry at the time, ICL had a generally poor reputation and seemed to lose its way as it found itself competing with a greater diversity of market offerings from the market leader, IBM which unlike ICL was able to power its computers with computer chips from its own foundries. This latter was the reason for Fujitsu’s involvement. Horizon was a massive undertaking and also being a government contract had a negligible chance of success.
It wasn’t until ARM Holdings was founded that there was an indigenous, internationally competitive computer product range. What did a Tory generalist do? He allowed it to be purchased by a Japanese hedge fund whilst crowing about what an amazing piece of inward investment had been achieved, despite Brexit.
The bungling fingers of generalists are all over this sorry tale. They simply don’t know enough to make the right decisions.
January 6, 2024
So true that without government support ICL could not compete and Fujitsu took over its lucrative business. Computer Weekly was always publishing the success and failure of IT projects, most of the latter always in the Public Sector, a well known backwater of technology, alien to bleeding edge competition, just like the Police force.
The Post Office scandal appeared very early in CW as a classic case of how not to implement a new system, never mind the system with largest rollout of remote clients (40,000 terminals) in Europe, without training all the staff first.
Unbelievable it is too that even the help line needed help themselves as they were in the dark as to what was going on.
As an independent systems specialist I worked troubleshooting many where expertise was lacking and once tackled a different Post Office system to Horizon. It was obvious that senior management was not computer literate and delegated such matters to subcontractors instead.
January 6, 2024
A sizeable number of people within the Post Office, notably their legal department, must have known what was going on in the numerous Horizon prosecutions (and the lies they told the victims that they were all the only one) but still failed to do anything to stop or even challenge it.
That must show something very unpleasant about normal human psychology (just as the famous experiment of Stanley Milgram did or even as some of the work of Marina Abramovic, recently exhibited in London, did).
January 6, 2024
Well done JR – you never left off on the PO scandal – now you have a result.
Police investigating ‘potential fraud offences’ after Post Office Horizon scandal
January 6, 2024
The pattern in Westminster (and among regulators and government ministers) appears to be: to ignore every evidence of state-fostered irregularity until it can no longer be avoided, then to avoid speedily rectifying the abuse, then to take as long as possible before compensating those abused, and then once all stable doors have been long since slammed, to turn the tanker round and the penalise the taxpayer by either mounting an eyewateringly expensive inquiry (from which only lawyers benefit), or by prosecuting a protracted fraud case no jury can ever grasp – ending in the trial being abandoned.
Utterly shameless.
January 7, 2024
I don’t know the details of the Post Office cases but I gather that the problem has been found to be a software fault. Well software is testable and either it meets a specification and requirement or it doesn’t. Anyone with expertise or user experience in software knows only too well that faults often take months or years of use in service to come to light. The more complex the software the more this is likely because initial testing cannot be 100% comprehensive within practical cost and schedule constraints. When subsequently something appears to go wrong a responsible manager would have the software checked for undiscovered or untested possible failure modes. Expertise doesn’t come into it other than that required to answer for the software’s performance, reliability and integrity – a task genuinely requiring expertise. Did the responsible managers even ask for such tests and checks? If not it is the managers who were at fault not the experts. It should never even have been necessary to escalate the issue to ministerial level. When it was escalated it was the responsible managers who should have directed to take action and engage the software experts. And yes, it is true they don’t have to be expert themselves but they do have to accept they have the responsibility to take the necessary action and to engage expertise when problems arise. Did they do so?
January 8, 2024
I think you need to look at who is being appointed to top positions in firms like the Post Office. I remember well when people got promotion by working their way up the ladder at firms. Where has this small group of people who seem to be being passed around into all the top jobs (Adam Crozier is one example and also mixed up in the PO fiasco) come from and been approved into top jobs? The whole system of ruling this country is sick and corrupt. It needs dismantling and starting again but I am afraid there are no longer good men and women who have others welfare in their sights. We need to go back to Quaker style business where profit went along with good welfare and care for workers.