88V8 wrote:Well there was that moron Carl Beech who was behind Operation Midland and eventually ended up in pokey.
Beech was in a long tradition of fantasists: I consider Arthur Miller's
Crucible a brilliant insight into the sort of environment of Midland. Beech would've been a nobody if it hadn't been for the Witchfinders General - very senior Establishment figures like Tom Watson and Vera Baird (and indeed the media) - putting enormous and sustained pressure on the police to find witches. The insignificant Beech was convicted, Watson fell on his sword (albeit long after), but Baird is still vigorously hunting witches, which kind-of illustrates how fortunes can vary.
I'd say the Post Office is rather different: it was on an astonishingly big scale, devastating for victims, yet was never a great media circus. Indeed, few of us knew anything about it, even if one or two journalists on the fringes (and thus easy to dismiss) took up the cause starting about ten years ago. It takes a lot of energy and determination to sustain a campaign long enough to see the light of day. Most injustices, by their very nature, remain unknown to anyone beyond those directly involved.
Perhaps the Windrush scandal (and more recently similar tales from EU citizens) might be a better analogy. But that was superficial by comparison: it was politicians and officials, not court verdicts, and thus much quicker to surface and lead to a U-turn and compensation. And we don't hear of individual cases, we can just hope that restitution and compensation goes to those genuinely affected while suspecting it's going instead to those who spin the best story.
For celebrated individual cases, look at high-profile foreigners on trial. Whether slightly foreign - like Irish folks convicted of Birmingham, Guildford, etc - or properly foreign like Arabs for Lockerbie. No wonder other countries won't extradite their citizens in high-profile cases!