Rightly or wrongly, surely ALL the convictions have to be null and void now by default? and ‘lots of’ compensation paid unless there is real evidence of wrong-doing?
The difficulty with that is the precedent it sets for governments to dictate to the courts what to do. We pride ourselves in this country on the independence of the judiciary and parliament and it doesn’t sit right with a lot of people in the legal world because: if parliament can direct that all PO convictions are overturned, parliament could direct that all convictions of people COVID offences should be overturned, or all PPE fraud cases, or misconduct in public office cases etc. Or vice versa to force courts to convict people. That said, this is precisely what parliament are proposing doing. It may have been better to fund the appeal courts, legal aid and work with the judiciary to find a way to accelerate and simplify these cases but still leave it to judges to do the actual decision making in each case.
We know the system was flawed, it’s a proven matter of fact…. so that sets a high bar of ambiguity.
I think much of the issue is actually that many people pled guilty. That creates a real mess, and indeed probably contributes to some investigators still believing today that they were guilty. That sort of scenario happens all the time, indeed we see people here getting upset when an accused “negotiates” a guilty plea to careless rather than dangerous driving. Its a bit of a messy bit of process, and when the whole system works well might fall into the evidence given yesterday of “pragmatism” but what it does is increase the risk of pleas of convenience and miscarriages of justice because nobody actually has to look properly at the evidence for a plea.
God knows I’ve left jobs before, when I come across this kind of bollocks… I was lucky enough to be able to walk away rather than relying the job to pay my mortgage or whatever.
Some people can’t afford to walk out of a job, and I don’t really blame them for that. .they may be coerced into towing the company line, and thus, become part of the probelm.
I’m not saying people would have to walk out immediately – but some of these people have been there for 20+ years and despite all the scandals are still there, ten years after anyone in the business must have been aware that something was wrong. How overpaid/unemployable would you need to be to turn a blind eye for a decade or more?
It seems many if not most of the POL investigation teams had worked at POL for all or most of their careers. Walking away from a job that pays well with a good pension is very difficult I would have thought.
You are probably right – there is a mentality in some places (and I image POL HQ could be one of them) that keeping your head down and quietly playing the game is the way to incremental salary increases and an ever increasing defined benefit pension. None of that would stop anonymous whistleblowing or gently questioning management – none of the witnesses so far seems to have suggested they tried to raise a red flag.
Add to that POL have, imo, a high level of excess middle and upper management left over from prior to privatisation.
The PO is not privatised. I know the government would like to give the impression that this is some shonky private company stuff – they are owned by tax payers. IF theres a dodgy culture driven by shareholders thats ministers not private equity firms! Whilst they would like us to perceive PO’s as places to buy stamps they are effectively local facilities for transacting with government and thats why its not privatised. Its how lots of people got, and indeed many still do get, their benefits, pensions etc.
