I knew nothing about this calamity. The fact you pointed out that discrepancies went from a small number to hundreds after Horizon entered the picture should have been a huge red flag. British legal system sounds just as flawed as ours (of course, ours is a British descendant) where prosecutors and cops want to badly to have a conviction they will coerce a "confession" or hide evidence to the contrary, or simply fail to follow other leads. But something that involves prosecuting HUNDREDS of mom-and-pop contractors is horrific. I wonder if some top level officials got kickbacks from Horizon? Maybe the single-minded persecution was meant to draw attention away from the real crooks. I'm just blathering since I know only what you wrote. Shades of the banking collapse in 2008 that led to the Great Recession. The perps were never punished, not one little bit. Power offers immense immunity.
Only now are there beginning to be rumblings about holding people who were in power to account. Those are only rumblings. British history has often been cruel. It has hundreds of years of track record favoring the elite over everyone else. Although much progress has been made toward a more evenhanded system, that's a lot of past to leave behind.
The USA's system is actually much better about reining in the elite than the British system, *when it puts its mind to it*. We are taught that England is the mother country for the USA, but it's much more of a mix--thank heaven.
It's funny, leaving my birth country has caused me to see it in an entirely different, more nuanced light than I could when I hadn't lived anywhere else yet. And coming here from another country causes me to see the UK differently from native Britons. I should have spent a few years abroad when I was much younger.
I knew nothing about this calamity. The fact you pointed out that discrepancies went from a small number to hundreds after Horizon entered the picture should have been a huge red flag. British legal system sounds just as flawed as ours (of course, ours is a British descendant) where prosecutors and cops want to badly to have a conviction they will coerce a "confession" or hide evidence to the contrary, or simply fail to follow other leads. But something that involves prosecuting HUNDREDS of mom-and-pop contractors is horrific. I wonder if some top level officials got kickbacks from Horizon? Maybe the single-minded persecution was meant to draw attention away from the real crooks. I'm just blathering since I know only what you wrote. Shades of the banking collapse in 2008 that led to the Great Recession. The perps were never punished, not one little bit. Power offers immense immunity.
Only now are there beginning to be rumblings about holding people who were in power to account. Those are only rumblings. British history has often been cruel. It has hundreds of years of track record favoring the elite over everyone else. Although much progress has been made toward a more evenhanded system, that's a lot of past to leave behind.
The USA's system is actually much better about reining in the elite than the British system, *when it puts its mind to it*. We are taught that England is the mother country for the USA, but it's much more of a mix--thank heaven.
It's funny, leaving my birth country has caused me to see it in an entirely different, more nuanced light than I could when I hadn't lived anywhere else yet. And coming here from another country causes me to see the UK differently from native Britons. I should have spent a few years abroad when I was much younger.