ECCOnoob

Say who? The world has moved on during your "28 or so years" on this planet. It really isn't such a shock to see people dress more casual in office settings these days. Even more so if the staff concerned are not customer facing. God sake, BT got rid of their strict formal dress codes for operators and non customer facing roles by the 90s. Dress down Fridays have been a concept in the corporate world for at least two decades and pretty much for the past 5 years the entire corporate sector has become smart casual as default.

Not particularly. Some of our best KCs and senior expert consultants have baggy suits, scuffed shoes and when they are not in the courtroom are generally found in a big fleece or polo shirt with some casual trousers. When they are spending their lives behind their desks to the small hours and buzzing around the country to courts, I won't expect them to be wasting time getting a perfect appearance as its their abilities on the floor that count. It is usually the ones with the absolutely perfect pressed suit, shiny shoes and pristine briefcase who are pointed out as being inexperienced or over compensating.

"In my day". You're still wet behind the ears or so you claim to be. You talk about the Gen Z generation as if you are not part of it. The world has moved on Grandma. Styles and taste and fashions changed. Obsessions over power dressing were in decline while you were still a foetus. I'd like to think that women are gaining more ways to advance themselves and gain respect beyond simply their bloody clothing. There is an arguement that corporations are softening their image from the stiff shirt of uniforms because many people felt intimidated or out of place as if it's not for them to be entering or even simply outdated. Such establishments in the business world (even the archaic legal world) have changed. Certainly outside the courtroom, there is more focus on company dress being tailored to more relaxed smart casual. Clients want to feel relaxed and comfortable and that should be reflecting with who they are dealing with. In other organisations, uniforms have become adapted to focus on a more modern style, modern image and practicality. For example, in many transport operations, uniform moved away from the traditional three piece suit, frock overcoat, peaked cap... to more comfortable and practical trouser/blazer, branded fleece, hi-viz branded short jackets. Doesn't give the drivers or dispatchers or operations managers less respect or authority. In shops and stores, the tradition of often hideous company coloured patterned blouse/ skirt-suit combination forced on assistants are increasingly being replaced with employees wearing more comfortable and modern items which usually reflect the sort of stock that the store is selling and the type of goods that customers want to buy. There is no automatic correlation between so-called traditional 'professional dress' and one's abilities. Most people look through simply the clothing these days and there is no guarantee that a stiff shirted suited bank manager with their bowler hat will do any better job than someone in their branded corporate trousers and polo shirt combo. When you are running your business, you're not rocking up in whites and a toque are you? Doesn't mean people think you are unprofessional does it?

I guess it's sad like the it's the end of an era - but not a real surprise these days. It's not properly been local for decades. We all know it's part of a big national network and even used to switch between stations if there was fault. Some of the biggest shows have been networked from Manchester or London and I think for years the only 'local' thing has been a news feed and the breakfast program. I haven't listened to it properly for a long time and most people I know couldn't care less about local radio just like they couldn't care about local television. With the advent of digital radio, streaming on a phone and podcasting what people listen to in their cars these days is pretty much their own choice on demand. Don't even really need to be tuning in for local traffic as my car's sat nav does that for me. Its all about the commerciality these days, so having a unified brand across the country is a logical step in that. The only real local radio service in big cities is the BBC or to be fair some of the very very niche community stations which have their own selective but dedicated followers. That's pretty much it really. If you want to make money in broadcasting in 2024 it's got to big national and online.

Yeah yeah. Heard it all before. Funny how its that same legal profession and lawyers who are championing for the victims to get in their compensation and get the truth out of the post office scandal. Funny how people don't mind the legal profession and those lawyers when it comes to overturning controversial decisions by corporations or government departments or local authorities. They don't mind those lawyers and legal profession when it comes to appealing unfair benefits decisions or reaching group compensation settlements for victims of illness or disease from legacy industries. Quite happy to sign up to that legal profession and those lawyers when it comes to dealing with their domestic disputes, protecting their property and assets, resolving their employment disputes, protecting their businesses, overturning insurance disputes, recouping bad debts or their property from wrongdoers. Works both ways. The legal profession has been "reformed" so many times they've lost count. The running joke is everyone hates lawyers until they need one.

No, didn't say that at all. They are of course due their justice. They are going through the process right now. Is nothing to do with "knowing their place" What I keep trying to demonstrate is that this is not a quick process. There is no instant solution. There's no single head that's going to fall and take all the blame. That is not how it works. The victim's justice will be from failure of 'the system'. A complex system which involved multiple corporations, several different governments, several different ministers, the CPS, the court service, accountants and lawyers all potentially being a contribution to the failures leading for the scandal. Quite right the priority focus at the moment is overturning the convictions then it will be a proper justified compensation award which will then be followed by the usual investigations, lessons learnt, new laws, and regulations to seek to stop it happening again etc.... I am sure for "the public"and the victims that will never be enough. But that is the reality I've been trying to demonstrate free from all the emotive outrage and bluster of the public opinion created by TV drama. Don't remember quite as much public outrage when the scandal first broke and was somberly and dryly reported in the Broadsheets and on Newsnight and Radio 4 but ITV produce a dramatised version years later and suddenly everyone cares.... Fickle the public.

....demonstrating that the facts on Grenfell were not as simple as you thought then. It's needed an inquiry lasting over 4 years, two phases of reviewing, an estimated 300,000 evidence documents and a still to be finalised report which is four volumes long and counting. Even after all that, the met police are still in debate about whether there are any sufficient grounds to actually bring criminal manslaughter charges against the 13 people they have interviewed under caution. The post office fallout will be exactly the same. Its inevitable because of the vast numbers of people, differing organisations, time frames, and list of potential failure points. That's before we get on to the complications of human error vs. deliberate negligence, who was pulling whose strings, who knew what about X and Y, who instructed, who directed, who organised, who checked it, who reported it, what got reported, what got done, what should have got done.... I get the anger and the outrage and the demands from "the public". But I am also in a position from first and real world experience of dealing with companies who breach regulations or make catastrophic mistakes. I'm well versed in the processes that are undertaken, the conflicts continually arising, the protracted arguments, the lengthy evidence process, the disclosure reviewing... I'm also more than aware that in nearly all these circumstances, as I keep saying, there is not a single point of blame and not a single head that can simply be given the chop. Doesn't work like that. "The public" always declare the over simplistic solution. They are always looking for that pantomime villain who can be booed and hissed at. "The public" can't wait to see someone spectacularly topple from their perch. But the reality is different. Even more so when you're talking about activities and events going on for nearly 30 years, involving at least half a dozen organisations with a continually revolving cast of characters. Look, I am not saying that those wrongly convicted don't deserve their justice. I am not saying they don't deserve significantly more in compensation. But what I am trying to do is give some reality to all these people who seem to think is so simple and all those who seem to think that anyone and everyone involved will suddenly be locked up tomorrow. It isn't going to happen.

Oh well that completely changed my mind then 🙄 Go on then, get on with it since it's all so simple. Can't wait to see your list of names, your categoric evidence and provable criminal charges you're going to bring against them.

What criminal act did they commit? Making a piece of software with bugs in? Failing to properly check it and patch it during deployment? When did that become a criminal act? You do realise that most of those in charge of Fujitsu presently have little to do with this. In fact they didn't even take over full control of ICL until years after Horizon became implemented. Are we going after the coders and programmers and software developers from 30 years ago. Many most likely don't even work in the industry anymore or are even alive. What about senior managers and the executive board of ICL with most long gone, moved away or retired since the company was defunct in 2002. Which of the revolving door of chief executives and directors do you believe is responsible? What about the ministers and civil servants involved in the design and development with their orders and directives to ICL? The ones who would have been involved in the rollouts & sign off of the system. What responsibility did the Labour Government in charge at the time of it's deployment have? They were the ones who funded the project, deployed it and kept funding it. They were also the government still in charge at the time the miscalculation concerns were raised and the Justice campaign group got established. What about all those auditors and accountants and lawyers all involved in the Post Office investigations and the management who chose to pursue these prosecutions? Where does the CPS come in given that they were in charge of some of those convictions themselves? What about Director of Public Prosecutions at the time, you know that one whose currently a wannabe prime minister? What about the court service and judiciary? That is the whole point I keep making about institutional failure. This is multi-party over many years and hundreds of potential people. It really isn't that simple.

A valid point but don't underestimate the entangled web between state owned and private. You might find an interesting read up on exactly what (now called) Fujitsu UK division was. It might now be a part of the big Japanese conglomerate, but not so long ago, even during the time of this defective system being in development it was very much ICL. ICL being a company that was set up with heavy government backing, new legislation created by the Wilson administration and support of the Minister of Technology to do their bit for UK PLC and do a bit of willy waving to those foreign manufacturers. ICL received multiple grants from the government's enterprise board during its time, including one major one to bail it out from collapse. Even Thatcher managed to get talked round. It is certainly no surprise why ICL has so many historical and current links to government contracts when the government plough several grants into it and held a 10% shareholding stake in the business for years. The Home Office, the HMRC, the DWP, the MOD and of course the Post Office were all users of their systems - so one has to really ask who was pulling whose strings. ICL/Fujitsu may well be private companies but if massive amounts of your work legacy and current is governments contracts - just how much is said government and/or their agencies involved in designing, revising, demanding, interfering, pushing through and deploying a defective system. As I have said on other posts, this is more than just a single person and single organisation issue. Much as people love to try and find a point of blame and a head to roll, it isn't going to happen. People need to start reading and looking well beyond the TV drama and cherry picked headlines.

Sounds to me like a bit of a desperate excuse making after they lost a case. Perhaps they should have used the law better to represent their client.

They can be if they fail to do regular checking of the product they bought. They can be if other users of the product raised concerns to the purchaser but just got ignored repeatedly. They can be if the purchaser of that product, which now knowingly had a fault, doesn't take any actions to check, investigate and instead blindly brings criminal proceedings against the other users of it. Your fixation on solely Fujitsu is misguided. Yes, they provided a system which turned out to have defects. However, it was the post office who failed to undertake any proper checking and auditing of the system. It was the post office who ignored the concerns raised by the users, it was the post office who kept deploying the system despite the concerns raised by the users, it was the post office who brought unsound criminal convictions by blindly accepting what the system was telling them despite concerns raised by the users. The product alone is only a tiny element of all this. If a rental property had a gas boiler it would be assumed to be 'perfect for the job', but it doesn't mean a landlord has no responsibilities for checking and maintaining it and dealing with any faults that subsequently arise does it? No technologies are completely infallible. Most people accept that. We are talking about a multi-million pound government procurement piece of IT infrastructure that was deployed nationally to hundreds if not thousands of users. You are deluded if you think there is not some onus on the purchaser, i.e. the post office and/or their auditors and/or their accountants and/or their lawyers and/or the government department to also take responsibility for some checks and balances, particularly when there was a clear pattern emerging of things going wrong. Like I said. This is a multi-party institutional failure.

Why just Fujitsu? The biggest failures are at the door of the Post Office. It was them who brought the unsound prosecutions and convictions against the postmasters. It was them who ignored the concerns raised at the time. It was them for whom the claims were being brought against and whom judgment was entered against. Look beyond the TV drama and sensationalist newspapers. Read some of the actual legal papers and judgements. Like I said earlier, this is institutional failure across multiple parties. Much as the mob mindset bloodthirsty public want it, in reality there is never some single point of blame to be wheeled out as a scapegoat in these situations.

It's not that simple. When are people going to realise its not some single head that's going to roll for this. Doesn't work like that. It's institutional failure across multiple agencies hundreds, if not thousands of people potentially involved and incidents occurring over many years. Whilst Fujitsu was the supplier of the defective IT system, it was ultimately the state owned post office who implemented the system, failed to properly audit it, monitor it, brought the criminal prosecutions, maintained a hardline stance during the litigation. At best you might get a handful of Fujitsu employees who might be found guilty of perjury if they all sufficiently found to have knowingly lied to the court. However, as for the wider organisation, it's just a piece of kit that is produced as one of their many products of many subsidiaries of many companies under the umbrella of their multi trillion Yen organisation. Oh, just for factual record, Keegan didn't take up position of UK CEO of Fujitsu until 2014, which was already after concerns had been raised about the validity of the prosecutions and they'd already been steps to set up a mediation scheme for postmasters. I wouldn't get too excited about seeing 'minister's husband toppled' because quite what direct involvement He'd have in the failure at that stage is probably very little.

Putting aside that the victims deserve more damages payment which is not something I would dispute.... I am going to challenge this default position that legal fees are 'extortionate'. What exactly are we defying as extortion here? I've debated before that, whether or not people like us, lawyers are qualified professionals and therefore expect to be renumerated like any other qualified professional and their firms will charge accordingly just like any other specialist service practice. This group action that the campaign set up and which led to the initial award of damages to the victims was extremely lengthy, complicated, involved hundreds of claimants, dozens of lawyers, multiple barristers including some QCs, independent experts and years of legal preparation/drafting/reviewing work. When it finally got to trial, the initial hearing itself lasted for several weeks and that was followed by several other interim court hearings, applications, an appeal and mediation to reach settlement. It is a frequent occurrence that legal costs will outweigh whatever damages. This group of 550+ claimants were bringing their civil claims with the support of litigation insurance funding not their own personal cash so let's not get misleading here. Its also obvious that said litigation funders will expect to recoup their funding if the case succeeded which is exactly what happened. For all the rights and wrongs of the terms of the settlement agreement (which is now being hopefully resolved), the fact is that the big scary headline numbers sensationalised in the TV programme and media, in reality is equates to roughly £84k legal costs per case. That £84k has to go towards solicitors fees, litigation funder, expert witness fees, external counsel, support staff overheads, court fees disbursements for travel, accommodation, transcription services.... For a litigation that went on for several years, got appealed, various applications and was a complex group action in the High Court, it really isn't that much. Blame the government, blame the Post office blame Fujitsu for their negligence, but I'm not buying this whole "greedy lawyers" shtick.

What exactly are you expecting to happen? Influential billionaire had a list of names of other billionaires - several of the high profile ones, most of us already knew about. That's it. Gossip, public speculation and stirring rumours isn't automatic evidence of a crime being comitted. What is actually newsworthy right now?

The law also "thinks like this" Forgetting the medium, let's just boil this incident down. A group of perverted adults have targeted a child profile and deliberately created imagery of highly violent sexual acts played out in real time in front of the eyes of that unknowing child. You think that's acceptable? You think that's beyond repercussions? Mind you, I am dealing with the poster who spent an entire thread bemoaning the fact they were restricted from freely filming kids in their swim gear. I think it's you who is the troll.

Yes and catering trolley servers don't become the fountain of knowledge and privy to intricacies of transport tendering process and operational demands either. Do you get it now. No, you are quite right. I didn't leap from being a sales assistant to solicitor. There was 8 years of open university, practicing exams and training in between.

Ok, so playing your game... I am a 'retired' sales assistant from Atkinsons therefore I am an expert in all retail commercial operations and strategic business planning and store management, right? Its pathetic. People know exactly what you are. You were a server from a catering trolley for a contracting company onboard trains for a few years at most. How the hell you think for one second, that gives you any serious expertise about the intricacies of transport planning, commercial bus operations and route scheduling... Think you need to seek professional help with that level of extreme delusion.

GTA has a 18 certificate. It is also well established by the purchaser of such game what content is going to be expected. Furthermore, it does not show the explicit sex in real time from the first person point of view - so it's hardly equal. What people seem to be missing here is that metaverse is not simply 'a game'. The characters and avatars are uniquely designed by the user and identified with a unique name linked to the individual. There was not a point of expectation which such child user would have their profile targeted and witness sexual acts committed upon it. As I mention earlier, the act committed by the alleged perpetrators potentially breaches the law by means of communications or other unwarranted imagery of sexual violence performed directly in front of the eyes of a minor. Virtual world or not, that is potentially a valid prosecution.

I am well aware of what Network Rail does. What you have "forgotten more than I will ever know" has not a single relevance to bus scheduling and commercial route operations. Neither does biased BS articles in RMT propaganda magazines for their gullible membership. Oh really. Funny that. I thought it might have had something to do with the company's £6m losses. Funny how they also closed stores in prestigious locations like Leeds and Edinburgh and Cardiff and Windsor and pulled out of the markets in France and Germany too. clearly not the target markets there too..... hmmm. You just keep digging love.

Yeah, definitely. Will be a solid test case on interpretation of the Act wording. Suspect it will be another one where half of the office will be watching a live feed if it gets up to supreme court level.

I suspect the media will be very cautious about what they are going to publish - if anything. Ultimately, all there seems to be at the moment is a list of names. That could mean everything or mean nothing. Whilst I am sure it will get the public tongues wagging with lots of ill-informed judgements being made to damage someone's reputation.... ultimately, what is the crime that can be proven? Unless there is categoric evidence of sexual acts with minors... photographs, video footage, history of payments, physical injuries, DNA proof, testimony from the actual victims, clear witness statements... a list of names is all they have. Names on a piece of paper. That's it. In theory, the late Prince Philip could have been found to have sexual relations with an 18 year-old Greta Thunberg round the back of Windsor Castle... Of course, a scandal which probably will have brought down the royals, but legally will have been perfectly acceptable. No crime committed. That is a basic fact in English law and most jurisdictions around the world where age of consent is between 16 to 18. Fact is, regardless of the public perception and personal distaste, many of these parties and groups and high profile get togethers filled with significantly older men chatting up significantly younger women, could be perfectly legal acts. Let's face it, well outside the billionaire circles, affairs, extra marital relations, one night stands, rich men getting their ego strokes by young lasses getting a nice freebie or some jewellery or some trip away happens all the time. You only have to hang around some of the more pretentious bars and restaurants to see it happening. The girls know what they're doing just as much as the lecherous blokes do. Most people might not want to accept it, fact is if someone is over 16 or 18 and they're fully there on a consensual basis without any coercion, it's no one else's business. It may well be disgusting or it may well be that the older person should know better or should have better standings.... But ultimately, if it's all consensual and the women involved are there by their own volition, what can be done.

But potentially something did happen. If these perpetrators are proven to have deliberately targeted the child's profile character designed by the individual victim uniquely identified as the individual victim and it was the individual victim who was witnessing the attacks through her VR headset then that is the cause of harm. Just because that person has an anonymous profile through a cartoon avatar does not mean that they were immune from distress and impact from actions. Creepy men letching with lurid narrative to underage girls in old-school chat rooms were not technically causing physical harm, but they'd still be hauled up for their crimes if they were caught breaching the Sexual Offences Act as sexual communications to minors on any device was an offence. It seems that in this present story we have a group controlling their adult form avatars to perform a sex crime against a child avatar profile whilst the real world child is watching, it happen in real time before their own eyes through the VR headset. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that such will be falling under the same sort of offence and obvious causing psychological harm. Whether it can actually be proved is a different story as I don't know how metaverse captures its data, but that doesn't mean it should simply be dismissed. We all have our anonymous profiles on here. We are all just a faceless piece of text presented on a forum. However, if my profile started deliberately being targeted by someone and I got genuinely threatening actions against it or death threats or distressing images sent to me directly, do we not think that will be reportable and actually be a crime by the sender. Do we not think that it could be argued the sender was attempting to deliberately harm me? As the line between reality and the computerised world is becoming increasingly blurred, this sort of action is going to get more and more prevalent. It can't just be dismissed as "oh it's a computer game" or "they should just turn it off". I do love how GB news have typically got all frothy mouthed about this, playing it all down and banging on about how silly it all is. Yet the same channel and it's moronic viewers will be first ones out with a pitch fork demanding that they lock them up, throw away the key, cut their nuts off, let them burn in hell the second a story about a rapist or paedophile or child trafficker comes out. Talk about hypocrites.

🤣🤣🤣 Yes, how many boxes of kit kats you would need... Stop being so deluded. You were not sat in high level strategic meetings about tendering and procurement. You were not in charge or had input or had knowledge whatsoever regards infrastructure management or deployment of projects or operational needs. You pushed a trolley up and down the carriages and did some restocking. That's it. More than that, you weren't even directly employed by any train operating company nor certainly not network rail given your particular job role would be outsourced through SSP/RailGourmet. Thus even less ability in your third party lowly grade status to be picking up what would be highly confidential and commercially sensitive information. You are talking out of your posterior. Let alone the fact you're trying to show off your knowledge of bus use which has even less relevance to your days as a trolley dolly on the trains. Did the EMT crew rooms regularly have in depth conversations and statistics about bus passenger use?