Nel corso della prossima legislatura verranno rivisti sia il programma quadro dell'UE per la ricerca, #Horizon Europe, sia il programma educativo #Erasmus plus.
I paesi dell’UE stabiliscono le proprie politiche per l’istruzione superiore e la ricerca, ma le elezioni al Parlamento europeo hanno ancora una certa influenza. Nel prossimo mandato, ad esempio, i programmi di ricerca e formazione dell'UE dovranno essere rinnovati.
So the good news is that the bill to exonerate the SubPostmasters gained Royal Assent last night, freeing up the fixed compensation scheme for those whose convictions are now quashed (or allowing them to apply to have their individual case assessed).
The, perhaps, not so good news, as much legal commentary has been focusing on is the (potential) precedent it sets for governments to reverse the decisions of Courts.
In this case it would seem pretty just, but in the future?
@ChrisMayLA6 I think the pardoning of "witches", homosexuals and (in Canada) users of marijuana, were all done by the parliaments and not the courts, but perhaps that's because there was no compensation involved.
Convictions regarding possession of marijuana dated from the 1960s and up until it was made legal in Canada. It meant they couldn't get a passport and were locked out of many jobs.
Another #Horizon thought: tech teams seemingly didn't know Horizon data may be used for criminal prosecution.
If devs don't know how a system is to be used, they can't exercise good judgment in making it.
People snark about "software craftsmanship" being hipstery, but there's truth to it: good software is far more Savile Row than it is Henry Ford. Business may want interchangeable cogs but good software needs skilled people empowered to think carefully, do good work and give a shit.
That's not even an ACAB "they wouldn't work on a system they knew would send people to jail" point (thought it might be for some developers depending on their ethical views), it is a "if you want to build a system with the sort of data integrity and reliability such that you can put the data in front of a court, please let me know ahead of time because that's an important set of constraints the developers need to understand" point.
I've started playing #Horizon Zero Dawn in the last few days and I've gotta say, it's amazing. The incredible graphics and intriguing story that makes me wanna play more to learn about what is actually going on, but at the same time to spend my time enjoy and explore the environment as well.
The evidence of the callousness & mendacity of the various parties who persecuted & destroyed the lives of sub-postmasters gets more extensive by the week... these people should be prosecuted & locked-up for what they have done....
Its a picture of how the institutions of power in this country have a complete contempt for those who they think are obstructing them.
@ChrisMayLA6 the Law Societies (England and Scotland) are pretty easy on ‘unethical’ behaviour - in the moral sense.they are very hot on the technical sort. My sibling has suggested that the English Law Society was sniffing around white early on and some hearings, private of course, have been underway for some years.
As she says, brown underwear time for a number of prominent (in the business/profession) time for more than a few.
The #PostOfficeInquiry has just been told that internally, #Horizon was described as having "military level encryption".
Remember, yesterday, we found out they were using MD5 for hashing the audit log data despite being being built after 1996 (and apparently having fairly shaky security on the stored hashes).
Also, remember the training slide: "Link for instance is unable to decrypt the encryption we have, so we have to decrypt before sending!" (para 80 of the Technical Appendix).
One more #Horizon#PostOfficeInquiry thought for the day—the email threads that are shown in the Inquiry are a synecdoche of the hellscape of working in the big corporate world.
Pages of blathering from deeply mediocre people incapable of thinking beyond hashtags, KPIs, bullet points and mission statements. Neverending CC chains for arse covering. Constant prioritisation of comms over reality. Hideous typography.
It's both aesthetically repulsive and morally bankrupt.
Today at the #Horizon#PostOfficeInquiry emails from Post Office were shown discussing what terminology could be used in place of “bugs” which was considered both “slang” and “emotive” (despite being a completely normal term used by software developers).
They considered using “defects”, and seemed to settle on “exception” which they treated as synonymous with “anomaly”.
(Let’s ignore the fact that “exception” has a very specific technical meaning in many programming languages…)
It was under Crozier's leadership (2003 - 2010) that much of the Horizon computing systems errors and prosecution of innocent sub-postmasters occurred.
But today he said he was unaware that the Post Office even had the power to prosecute!
Post Office officials knew about the bugs in #Horizon as early as 2002, but it seem no one decided to to tell Crozier.
We're often told that the reason bosses of big companies get multimillion pound salaries and bonuses is because they have very rare and valuable talent.
I'm not convinced that not having the first clue WTF is going on in your own organisation is all that rare a talent. I have come across plenty of people who can do that.
Unless of course he's lying through his teeth. That probably can't be entirely ruled out.
@statsguy the reason for those multi-million dollars of salary I guess technically is that the buck stops with these guys and if the company fucks up its on their head.
Yeah, sure. As if anyone of those guys ever had to deal with the consequences of their ineptitude.
So, it now transpires that in the middle of the Horizon IT debacle Paula Vennells claimed that sub-post masters were likely to be tempted to steal by having large amounts of money in their tills...
when as we now know actually it was here & her associates who were tempted to steal by fraud by covering up IT problems they were aware of.
And just in case you had forgotten Vennells has served as an Anglican priest...
More evidence of the malice of the Post Office in the Horizon IT case(s) it brought.
What is interesting is how this whole situation is unravelling like an onion to reveal at its heart a vindictive & callous PO management who were prepared to collude with Fujitsu in covering up the problems with the software.
Its almost unbelievable that people could act this way... but then we only have to look to our political class to see where they got the idea from!
@ChrisMayLA6 unravelling yes but it looks a controlled unravelling. Damage limitation control. The tv show is now a memory for the audience, move onto the next upset to be upset about. Fujitsu look to get the UK gov ID card contract coming up.(PASS scheme). BAU.
Perjury - lying in court carries up to 10 years in prison. They must have lied to get subposmaster / mistresses put in prison, so the execs should face 10 years for a start, it is a shame we don't have consecutive prison terms as some of them should be facing the rest of their pathetic lives in jail for what they have done.
I still think we should open up a few open cast mines, surround them in fences, barbed wire, and armed guard towers and force these lying / corrupt scumbag execs to life ( until they die ) to hard labour smashing rocks or similar.
That's quite the smoking gun. For those who didn't follow, the UK post office used a faulty accounting software, and rather than investigating the software, even after being warned, accused people of stealing, leading to some cases of innocents thrown in jail and some suicides. I truly hope the people responsible for the coverup, starting with that Vennells character, go to jail, but alas elites are shielded from their actions... #horizon#uk
The extreme financial problems in #Birmingham are less about the settlement of an #equalpay case & more about the disastrous implementation of an #Oracle IT system.
While this has been discussed publicly in the past, its worth emphasising its critical & central role in Birmingham's problems.... like the #Horizon IT problems at the Post Office, a large multinational #informationtechnology firm seems to be causing havoc with impunity!
@ChrisMayLA6 meanwhile, in Scotland, Unionists councillors have decided that devolution and the SNP is the cause of all their woes. They've therefore decided to bypass Holyrood and go directly to Michael Gove. Gove is reportedly keen to speak to them. I would imagine that will go down brilliantly with the 50% of English Local Authorities who are on the brink of bankruptcy. But hey, SNP bad.
@ChrisMayLA6 the words "Oracle" and "IT disaster" are seldom found far apart.
However what is interesting is the procurement process: why government keeps going back to these big IT companies, who keep screwing up with little consequence.
We like to think it involves some combination of golf memberships, trips to Las Vegas and compromising pictures with strippers, but often it's just plain incompetence and short term thinking.
#JeremyHunt giving advice to #Fujitsu (you may recall something about their behaviour in the #Horizon IT situation) on how to get (more) government contracts.
Yup, no consequences for Fujitsu even as #postmasters lives have been ruined.
[you can finish off this post with your own choice of expletives]
