I read somewhere earlier today that a (former) sub-post mistress is so angry about Ed Davey that she is thinking of standings as a candidate at the imminent general election in his constituency. It would be marvellously satisfying if she beat him.

Tomo,

Sounds like Fujitsu is now being dragged in to the picture (as they should since this was THEIR application).

If they are at fault then they should be forced to pay up and cover ALL the damages that should be awarded to every single post master wrongly caught up in this mess.

And then everyone at the PO who had their dirty little fingers dipped in to this fiasco need to pay a price.

And every Politician who was responsible for the Post Office (Ed and co) should be held accountable. Actually, speaking of Ed Davey, Id love to know what he did every time someone brought this to his attention back in the day. Who did he pass that correspondence on to and what was his instructions.

Its a bit pointless having someone at the head of a Department who did f88k all when issues were brought to his attention. I mean we might as well have a picture of a Moose as the head of the Post Office for all the good he did (and every other politician through the years).

People in top positions MUST be forced to pay a price.

Robert

UK Post Office + lawyers / judiciary ...

Futile railing at the state of the world might be one take... but *why* should taxpayers foot the bill for the poisonous individual deeds of the Post Office and lawyers ( many lawyers surely knew, after 20+ years that the software was irredeemably shit)?

There's literally dozens of postmasters that avoided prosecution by giving the post office literally their worldly goods and some cases ended up living in a caravan... Strangely (sarc) there's no claims that the software overpaid any postmasters...

MikeHig,
Thanks for those links. I'll earmark one or both for my next visit to the UK (may be a while, given my current rate of travel). Amazing it was still doing its assigned job in 1980. Other amusing thing in my read-through was the idea of an "engine house". No, no, not just a housing, a *house*.

I suppose the modern pumping stations are not so impressive. When I was working for the NSW electricity generator, it was always much more exciting visting the old power stations. You needed the hearing protection at Pyrmont, for example (old, 200 MW), and had a real sense of the energy involved. Visiting any of the brand new (at the time, now being decommissioned) 2,000 MW generators, there was a large cowling over the workings, and it just sat there and hummed.

tomo,
I think you introduced me to the Post Office scandal a year or two ago. My favoured example for IT debacles is the UK NHS system for unified patient records. NHS one was more expensive, but the PO system more evil. Roughly equating to the worlds of Yes Minister and Brazil respectively.

Mailman,
And if it sticks to the Brazil model, there won't be anyone answering for its evil. All are just cogs in the great bureaucratic machine.

They won't building museums celebrating that sort of machine.

Thought this, on the Boeing 737 MAX door blow-out was very good. I hadn't previously heard that the depressurisation burst open the cockpit door. There's meant to be an alternative path for pressure equalisation.

It is darkly humourous that much of the cockpit emergency checklist was sucked out. Do they have another checklist for that? Anyhow, it did make a pretty good excuse for the pilots forgetting to halt the cockpit voice recorder.

Well it is good to see things are moving along now for those SPM who were treated like dog sh1t by the PO.

Now lets start seeing management being held accountable for what went on...and by management I dont mean someone like a developer or a project manager or someone middle management BUT the people in very senior positions who valued the name of the Post Office over the actual people at the share end who WERE the post office!

Robert; there certainly is something fascinating about huge piston engines.
Just outside London, close to Twickenham, the Kempton Park steam museum has a pair of triple-expansion steam engines which used to pump huge volumes of water at colossal pressures to somewhere in N. London. The story goes that they are virtually identical to the engines in the Titanic and that some of the scenes in the old B&W movie "A night to remember" were shot there.
The last time I visited they were working inside the LP cylinder of one of the engines which was accessed via one of the ports! The other engine was running - quite majestic!
Here's the website:
https://kemptonsteam.org/

Then, just along the road, there's the Kew steam museum with its remarkable collection of old engines:
https://waterandsteam.org.uk/

(possible repost — odd hiccup when I posted earlier)

Jo Nova has a story today on France dropping renewables in favour of nuclear. Good news for the French. Might be good news for the rest of us longer term, assuming they don't mess it up.

On rotaries, perhaps a "3-sweep" engine describes it. Three lobes sweeping the four stages of the Otto cycle: compression then power then exhuast+intake (vs. the 2-stroke intake+compression then power+exhaust).

In the lead-up to summer Australia's Bureau of Meteorology examined the auspices long and hard and held out for several weeks more than the US people before declaring that we were entering an el Nino weather pattern. Farmers sold down stock (or whatever) in preparation for dry conditions.

Of course it turns out that we've had heaps of rain (I'm glad to say that at least this year it has managed to be warm compared to the last three miserable summers, but it has been just as wet). So now we have the national broadcaster casting around for explanations why our BoM shouldn't be considered a laughing stock. I think they'd better try again. Chocolate pinwheels?