Airbnb has created a lot of value for its shareholders. I think it’s an open question whether it’s been a net negative or positive for the world at large when you consider all the externalities.
I’m afraid this is nonsense. Elected officials aren’t irrelevant. The majority of them support this legislation and that is why it got enough votes to become law. You don’t have to like it (I’m not a huge fan either), but it’s a perfectly straightforward case of a popular policy becoming law via the democratic process. A process that’s notoriously imperfect and not guaranteed to yield the best outcome in all cases.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this law must have come about by sinister machinations just because you don’t think it’s a good law.
The reason I think this is because: 1. I know this first-hand and 2. You have to be completely blind to not see the same thing happen multiple times with multiple laws (this has been happening for decades).
Elected officials are irrelevant because, in this case, they are functionally unable to propose a reasonable alternative. Policy options were presented, all of the policy options offered in this case were to empower Ofcom (again, how old are you? are you unable to think of another situation like this: same thing happened with BoE/PRA in 2010, same thing happened with Border Force creation, same thing happened with illegal immigration where the only functional action presented was to increase Home Office staffing, I can go on and on) so what was the alternative?
You also may not understand what is going on here either: this legislation gave Ofcom new statutory powers but what you might not be aware of is that Ofcom has also been granted through non-statutory instruments significant new powers that interlock with this legislation...who voted on that? Again: media campaign by the powers that be, multiple Home Office ministers have been railroaded into this, Ofcom/security services have been granted new powers (the latter by the back door...again, tell me what that has to do with "social media abuse"? nothing).
Finally, elected officials are mostly pawns. The majority of "them" do not know what is in the legislation. They have been told the PM wants "Molly's Law" passed, so it is passed. Some of the scrutiny was laughable...do you understand that the law has a provision that requires tech companies to provide "end-to-end encryption" that the government can break? To their credit, this was questioned by legislators several times...it wasn't removed from the Bill, despite it obviously being unrelated to anything in the Act. Again, how are you this blind? Do you see why elected officials might be irrelevant if you are so blind?
I don’t think there’s much connection between a plane’s ability to do a sideslip and how well it glides. A sideslip is just what naturally happens if you apply opposite aileron and rudder inputs. I think the issue is just that it’s a rather acrobatic maneuver to perform in a large passenger jet.
Yes an airliner is not designed for it and could easily get into a deadly spin when doing it. Especially engines out because you have two huge surfaces blocking airflow. A glider can do it pretty naturally because of its extremely low stall speed.
Since a sideslip increses air resistance by essentially flying sideways, if I didn't know that it has been done, I'd say it might even break apart a (long, thin) plane that wasn't designed for it. And it still might, but at much higher speeds than close to landing.
It's not unheard of for airliners to use a sideslip when landing in a crosswind, so I don't think structural strength is likely to be an issue at landing speeds.
This is a myth as far as I’ve been able to determine. The prosecutions were ordinary private prosecutions. The Post Office didn’t need any kind of special legal status in order to prosecute.
Well, hey, far be it for me to tell you that you’re wrong, but the BBC says that you’re wrong as do numerous other sources.
> The Post Office itself took many cases to court, prosecuting 700 people between 1999 and 2015. Another 283 cases were brought by other bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
That isn’t inconsistent with what I said. The Post Office prosecuted under the general right for private individuals or companies to bring a prosecution.
No, the Post Office doesn't have its own "law enforcement" (if you mean something like a police force) or its own judges.
Any company has the right to bring a private prosecution under UK law, and this was the basis for the prosecutions in question. It just means that the company pays for some of the costs involved.
Whether or not private prosecutions should be allowed is certainly a legitimate topic of discussion. Let's not muddy the waters with misinformation about the Post Office having some kind of parallel police and courts system. It just doesn't.
> Any company has the right to bring a private prosecution under UK law
That's a simplification. The Post Office has a more privileged position due to its history; it has both formal access (e.g. to police computers) and informal deference from CPS that regular companies do not enjoy.
That’s true, but it’s unclear the extent to which any of that was a factor. For example, how was the Post Office’s access to the PNC relevant here?
It may be that the CPS would have taken over these prosecutions and dropped them if the company in question had been, say, Tesco. But I don’t see how we can be sure of this.
> It may be that the CPS would have taken over these prosecutions and dropped them if the company in question had been, say, Tesco. But I don’t see how we can be sure of this.
I agree we can't know for sure. But I think it's a mistake to shrug it off and assume the fact it was the Post Office had nothing to do with how it played out.
> But I think it's a mistake to shrug it off and assume the fact it was the Post Office had nothing to do with how it played out.
I agree. My only aim here was to correct some of the wild misconceptions about the powers of the Post Office that pop up in these threads. It’s one thing to suggest that the Post Office was given special deference by the CPS and other parts of the legal system. It’s another thing to suggest that the Post Office has its own judges, or that the Post Office has some kind of unique legal power to bring private prosecutions. Unfortunately, serious factual errors of this kind tend to get passed over lightly in pile-on threads where everyone wants to vent their (justifiable) anger at the Post Office. People expend more energy responding to my factually accurate posts (probably because I don’t redundantly rant about how awful the Post Office is) than they do correcting blatant misinformation.
It’s only an inversion of the usual burden of proof if you assume that evidence from a computer can only ever be used to aid the prosecution. It can also be used to aid the defense, in which case this presumption makes it harder to convict someone, not easier.
However, historically, there’s been a series of products like this that have turned out to be vaporware.
reply