British Subpostmasters to have convictions quashed following Horizon computer scandal

Extraordinary trust in computers

Dozens of subpostmasters will have their convictions quashed two decades after a computer glitch led the Post Office to wrongly accuse them of theft, fraud and false accounting.

It is feared as many as 900 former employees may have suffered miscarriages of justice after the Horizon IT system was introduced to branches in 1999.

The defective computer system would routinely return shortfalls in their accounts, reducing hundreds of subpostmasters to financial ruin, while others were prosecuted and even jailed.

A group action was brought against the Post Office over the computer system and last year the High Court approved a £58 million settlement involving more than 550 claimants.

There was a further major development on Friday as the company said it would not be opposing 44 appeals against criminal prosecutions linked to the scandal.

The appeals are the first batch of cases referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), but more are expected to follow.

Tim Parker, the chairman of the Post Office, said: “I am sincerely sorry on behalf of the Post Office for historical failings which seriously affected some postmasters.”

He added: “Post Office wishes to ensure that all postmasters entitled to claim civil compensation because of their convictions being overturned are recompensed as quickly as possible.”

Solicitors acting for some of the subpostmasters on Friday described the news as a “landmark moment”.

The Horizon scandal left a trail of ruined lives when the livelihoods of hundreds of innocent employees were snatched away by the accounting malfunction.

Seema Misra took over her local Post Office in Woking, Surrey, in June 2005, but quickly found the computer system was claiming she owed tens of thousands of pounds in shortfalls.

She had £20,000 taken from her wages, but then found herself dragged in front of the courts accused of theft – where she received a 15 month jail sentence while she was pregnant.

“If I wasn’t pregnant I would have killed myself,” she told the Telegraph last year.

It is now likely that she will see her conviction quashed.

Others will not be afforded that moment of vindication.

Martin Griffiths took his own life in 2013 after facing accusations that he had stolen money from a Post Office in Chester

The former postmaster was forced to repay £60,000 after the software erroneously cast a cloud of suspicion over him.

“My uncle had his life and his reputation torn apart by the Post Office and his mental health was completely destroyed, it’s an absolute tragedy,” his nephew, Samuel Caveen, told the Liverpool Echo earlier this year.

On Friday, the Post Office said it had set up an extensive disclosure process to identify material which might call into question any relevant historical prosecutions.

Hudgell Solicitors said their 33 clients had carried convictions against their name for a decade or longer – but they will now be quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Neil Hudgel, executive chairman of the firm, said: “For the Post Office to concede defeat and not oppose these cases is a landmark moment, not only for these individuals but, in time, potentially hundreds of others.

“We are obviously delighted for the people we represent. Clearing their names has been their driving goal from day one, as their reputations and livelihoods were so unfairly destroyed.

“We must never forget that these people endured years of suffering and how these allegations and convictions affected not only the individuals themselves, but their loved ones too.”

The Post Office said it still intends to contest three of the 47 cases referred to the Court of Appeal.

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Virginia Forces Christian Ministries to Adopt ‘Government Ideology’ or Pay $100K

Three Christian schools and a Christian network of pregnancy centers are suing Attorney General Mark Herring (D-Va.) in order to prevent Virginia from implementing two pro-LGBT laws that force “people of faith to adopt a particular government ideology under threat of punishment.” The two laws purport to prevent “discrimination” against LGBT people but, in reality, they force Christian ministries to choose between violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or paying hefty fines, as much as $100,000 per offense.

The so-called Virginia Values Act (S.B. 868), which Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) signed on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Sunday) in the middle of a pandemic, compels churches, religious schools, and Christian ministries to hire employees who do not share their stated beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender identity. A companion law (H.B. 1429) requires ministries and others like them to pay for transgender surgery in employee health care plans, a procedure that violates these ministries’ convictions.

“The faith of many Americans inspires them to act for the good of their neighbors and also requires them to abide by its teachings,” Denise Harle, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the law firm representing the Christian ministries, said in a statement. “Our clients offer spiritual guidance, education, pregnancy support, and athletic opportunities to their communities because of the religious beliefs that motivate them. But Virginia’s new law forces these ministries to abandon and adjust their convictions or pay crippling fines—in direct violation of the Virginia Constitution and other state laws.”

“Such government hostility toward people of faith has no place in a free society,” Harle argued.

The lawsuit

The ministries filed a pre-enforcement challenge, a lawsuit designed to convince a court to prevent the government from implementing an unconstitutional law.

In the lawsuit, ADF is representing Calvary Road Christian School in Alexandria (preschool through 6th grade, 250 students), Grace Christian School in Staunton (preschool through 12th grade, 320 students), Community Christian Academy in Charlottesville (K-9, 50 students), and Care Net, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that supports a network of 1,100 pregnancy centers, churches, and other ministry organizations and has approximately 22,000 volunteers.

“For the Ministries, personnel is policy; and so they intentionally employ staff and recruit volunteers who further their respective Christian missions. Virginia’s new laws, however, make this free religious exercise and association impossible — and label these liberties ‘discrimination,’” the lawsuit argues.

S.B. 868 and H.B. 1429 require the ministries to hire employees who disagree with their beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender; mandate that the ministries hire employees whose beliefs and lifestyles are “antagonistic to the ministries’ convictions”; prohibit the ministries from firing employees who oppose their missions; require the ministries to provide services in a manner that violates their beliefs; ban the ministries from even communicating their biblical beliefs; make the ministries use their facilities in a way that contradicts their beliefs; and force the ministries to pay for “gender reassignment” procedures in their health plans, even though the ministries object to these procedures.

These laws put the ministries “in an impossible position: they must either abandon the religious convictions they were founded upon, or be ready to face investigations, an onerous administrative process, fines up to $100,000 for each violation, unlimited compensatory and punitive damages and attorney-fee awards, and court orders forcing them to engage in actions that would violate their consciences.”

The lawsuit brings five claims against AG Herring. It claims the LGBT laws violate the ministries’ right of free exercise of religion under the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act; violate their right to free exercise of religion under the Virginia Constitution; violate their right to free speech under the Virginia Constitution; violate the Virginia Constitution’s Establishment Clause; and violate the state constitution’s Due Process Clause.

While the state constitution’s “Establishment Clause requires the government to act with a secular purpose and to neither promote nor inhibit religion,” the Virginia Values Act “targets the Ministries by singling out their religious speech and belief for hostility, and by showing favoritism towards, preferring, and promoting religious beliefs that approve of same-sex marriage and transgender ideology.”

The pro-LGBT law “also singles out the Ministries based on disfavored religious views and sends a message that religious persons with beliefs like the Ministries’ are second-class citizens, outsiders, and not full members of the community.”

Lawsuit: ‘I Won’t Let the State Force Me to Express Messages That Contradict My Beliefs’
Anti-religious bigotry fueled the Virginia Values Act
The lawsuit notes that the Virginia legislators who supported the Virginia Values Act expressed hostility to those who view marriage as between one man and one woman.

When considering SB 41 2016, a bill that would have allowed religious persons to object to solemnizing a marriage “in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief … that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman,” State Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-30) condemned the bill, claiming it “carves out a space for bigotry cloaked under the guise of religious freedom.” Ebbin was the chief patron of the Virginia Values Act in the Senate.

During a debate in the Virginia House of Delegates over an amendment to the Virginia Values Act that would have excluded “a religious corporation, association, society, or unincorporated house of worship” from the definition of public accommodations, Delegate Joshua Cole (D-28) asserted his view of Christianity as the correct one in opposing the amendment:

I understand we have theological disagreements and we have theological beliefs of what we’re supposed to carry out, but if you are a public organization, your doors are supposed to be open to everyone in the public. Now I don’t know what type of Christianity you come from, but the type of Christianity I come from, the Apostle Paul said “Try with everything within you to live peaceably with all men.”

…The Bible also says “And they shall know us by our love.” What are we doing with our witness when we allow organizations to say just because we have St. Peter’s behind it, or Christian behind it, … that we don’t like you so don’t come over here…. Madame Speaker as an ending thought, I will let you know that in Jesus’ day the sinner was not his enemy. It was the church.

These and other Virginia Democrats showed the very same kind of hostility to conservative religious beliefs about marriage that members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed toward Christian baker Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the commission had violated Phillips’ right to the free exercise of religion by subjecting him to “religious hostility” in its application of the law.

This hostility is not limited to the legislators, however. AG Herring has repeatedly insisted that if wedding photographers refuse to help celebrate same-sex weddings, they are discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. Mark Herring said as much in amicus curiae briefs in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018) and in Telescope Media Group v. Lindsey (2019), two cases on the issue of whether or not bakers and photographers have the free speech and religious freedom right to refuse to serve same-sex weddings.

Virginia Gov. Northam Sneaks in Raft of Lefty Bills on Voting, Guns, Abortion, Climate, LGBT — Under Cover of Easter Weekend
Christian ministries were not pushing bigotry
Yet the ministries suing to stop the Virginia Values Act are not pushing bigotry — they merely intend to operate on the basis of their religious convictions.

The lawsuit explains why each of the ministries cannot simply adopt the government ideology on LGBT issues.

For example, Calvary Road Baptist Church, which operates Calvary Road Christian School, “believes that the Bible is the Word of God, divinely revealed and without error.”

“Calvary Road believes that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female, and that these two distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God. Calvary Road believes that rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person,” the lawsuit explains. “Calvary Road believes that marriage has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture, and that God commands that sexual intimacy occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other.”

“To preserve its function and integrity, Calvary Road believes that all employees and volunteers must agree to and abide by its beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender,” and the school runs athletics based on biological sex. “Calvary Road maintains separate facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms for males and females. Access to private facilities is limited to those of the same biological sex in accordance with Calvary Road’s teaching on sexuality.”

“Calvary Road welcomes workers of any race, color, ethnicity, and national origin in any of its ministries, so long as the potential workers share Calvary Road’s religious values and doctrinal beliefs,” but it cannot employ those who disagree with its fundamental beliefs.

ADF is also representing a wedding photographer, Chris Herring, who also brought a pre-enforcement challenge against the Virginia Values Act.

Anti-religious bigotry seems on the rise, with Democrats adopting extreme pro-LGBT and pro-abortion policies and legacy media outlets reporting Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s mainstream Christian beliefs as some sort of extreme religious insanity.

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TOPPLED! Oxford-educated museum curator who sparked fury for posting guide on vandalising statues leaves job after independent review

An Oxford-educated museum curator who sparked outrage after tweeting a guide about vandalising statues has left her job after an independent review.

American-born Madeline Odent posted messages to her 5,000 Twitter followers in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement explaining how they could use household goods to permanently damage monuments.

A police probe was launched after she revealed that covering bronze busts in ‘a tone of tomatoes’ could irreparable damage them and make them impossible to display.

Her comments sparked calls for her to be sacked from her taxpayer-funded job at at Royston and District Museum in Hertfordshire from MPs and local residents.

Mrs Odent is no longer employed, but the council had refused to say if she was fired or quit — despite previously saying it ‘condemns all criminal acts including damage to statues and monuments and incitement to commit unlawful acts’.

The American also failed to clarify, telling her followers: ‘They are not commenting because they can’t and neither can I. Anyways, I don’t work for them anymore.’

Mrs Odent appears to have stopped working for the council at the end of August. She revealed she had a new job but declined to comment further.

Royston Town Council probed Mrs Odent after condemning her tweets, adding that her position would be reviewed following the next full council meeting.

A spokesman said: ‘Royston Town Council deplores and condemns all criminal acts including damage to statues and monuments, and incitement to commit unlawful acts.

‘The council has instigated an external independent enquiry into the recent use of social media by one of its employees.

‘This will ensure that the process is completed free from any political influence and should provide a fair and measured conclusion.

Glamorous curator Madeline Odent, whose maiden name was Madeline Briggs, comes from a wealthy family of American academics and is married to a banker.

Local Tory MP Oliver Heald said he had been bombarded with messages from locals, adding: ‘I deplore criminal damage to national monuments and statues in public places… It is important to respect the rule of law and there is a democratic and lawful process to remove statues.

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No English, no visa – even if you’re married to an Aussie: Huge change brings in language test for loved ones who want to settle in Australia

Immigrants applying for a partner visa will be tested for ‘functional levels’ of English before they are granted permanent residency.

The government may require immigrants who do not speak English to have 500 hours of free class under the plan announced in Tuesday’s budget.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the new requirement would promote social and economic inclusion.

‘It’s a much more basic level of English language competency and we think this is important to just enable people to engage to access government services,’ Mr Morrison said on Wednesday.

‘For example, to engage with those who are seeking to assist to access and get the best possible medical treatment, to understand what teachers are saying at school at parent-teacher conferences, and to understand their rights.’

Partner visa are processed in two stages. First an applicant gets a temporary visa for about two years after which they can apply for permanent residency.

The English language requirements will need to be fulfilled at the second stage when the partner wants to become a permanent resident.

‘What this will mean is that we will require an applicant and a sponsor to have met functional level English or to have at least made reasonable efforts to learn English,’ said Immigration Minister Alan Tudge.

‘And by reasonable efforts we mean for most people that would be doing about 500 hours of free English language classes.’

Mr Tudge said the English test will be much simpler than the one needed to be met for economic migration.

Earlier this year the government made English classes free for migrants.

The policy will kick in from the middle of next year. The requirements will apply to applicants and their partners who are permanent residents not citizens.

Mr Tudge said about one million partners who are in Australia cannot speak English.

‘In some cases, the husband will not want his partner or wife to learn English. And in part that’s for control reasons,’ he said.

The announcement has been slammed by the Opposition, who claim the new rule ignores Australia’s multicultural values.

Andrew Giles, a Labor MP and the party’s spokesman for Multicultural Affairs and Assisting for Immigration and Citizenship, said the government needs to understand the impact of the new measure.

‘It’s come about without any context … and it seems to reflect an understanding of Australian society that’s anchored in the past, that doesn’t recognise the multicultural nation we are today,’ he told SBS.

People can apply for partner visa from inside or outside of Australia.

It can set applicants back about $8,000.

Applicants are often allowed a bridging visa while their visas are processed.

Other visa changes announced on Tuesday include waiving or refunding application charge for temporary visa holders affected by the COVID-19.

There is also a push on the Family Stream Visa, with a temporary application increase from 47,700 to 77,000.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American “liberals” often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America’s educational system — particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if “liberals” had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. Email me (John Ray) here.
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