#DifficultTruths

Between 2000 and 2014, 736 people who ran local branches of the Post Office were wrongly convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud.  The scandal was caused by errors in an accounting system which the Post Office installed in its smaller branches. It was called Horizon and it wrongly claimed there were cash shortfalls of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of pounds. Hundreds of subpostmasters – managers of the local branches – were accused of stealing and were hounded for the missing money. Some spent their life savings or re-mortgaged their homes in an attempt to plug the gap and many went bankrupt.  The Post Office knew there were problems with Horizon, but still decided to prosecute them. Many ended up in jail, most were shunned by their communities, and some even took their own lives.  Seema Misra was pregnant with her second child when she was jailed in 2010… “I was so scared. I was so scared. For me, it’s just like Post Office authority is like a Mafia. I never thought I’m going to come out alive from there. I swear to God, if I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have killed myself, that’s for sure. Being in the prison for the crime I never committed.” When a series of reports into the Horizon IT system revealed serious defects, people who had been prosecuted began fighting to clear their names. In 2019, after various court cases were brought against the Post Office, it agreed to pay £58 million in compensation to the hundreds of sub-postmasters that were wrongly convicted.  There was widespread outrage and a public inquiry into the scandal began in 2020, but it has not been a straightforward process.  There has been a lack of cooperation from current Post Office management and a recent discovery that those working for the Post Office at the time of the convictions used racist language to categorise workers.  The Post Office says it has paid over £110 million in compensation to those it wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting. But hundreds of victims have still not received a penny and hundreds more had to pay tax on the money they were awarded. The Post Office is entirely owned by the UK government. It has admitted that the company doesn’t have the money to cover all the claims from sub-postmasters, which means taxpayers will have to cover the shortfall.  The Inquiry is set to go on until early 2024. Those affected may never fully recover from what happened to them, but one day they might get the compensation they deserve. This episode was written and mixed by Rebecca Moore.

Gender stereotyping: can we stop damaging our kids? From the age of six, children associate being clever with being a boy and being nice with being a girl. More than half of adults believe gender stereotyping they faced in childhood constrained their career choices and 44% say it harmed their personal relationships in later life. It’s one thing to swerve the pink dollies and blue superheroes, but it’s incredibly difficult to avoid reinforcing toxic stereotypes as parents when they were such a big part of our own reality as kids. What can we do, in our schools and homes, to raise a generation of kids who don’t self-censor based on gender? Our special guests include: Dr Javid Abdelmoneim, physician and television presenter, No More Boys and Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free? Ella Smilie, head of policy & campaigns at the Fawcett Society and leading researcher on the report Depictions, Perceptions and Harm: A report on gender stereotypes in advertising.  Victoria Richards, writer, journalist & editor.  Gina Rippon, author, The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain. Chair: Liz Moseley  What is a Tortoise ThinkIn? A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise. Drinks from 6.00pm, starts promptly at 6.30pm. If you are late to a ThinkIn you can ‘SlinkIn’! If you would like to contribute to this ThinkIn, let us know by emailing thinkin@tortoisemedia.com We film our Thinkins so we can watch them back, edit the best bits and share them with members who weren’t there in person. Members can find their ThinkIn booking code in My Tortoise, under My Membership.

Things that cannot be said. Imagine a world where being funny depended on picking on people less powerful than you: women; people from ethnic minorities; gay people; people with disabilities. The truth is, you don’t have to imagine – you can just watch mainstream comedy from not very long ago. There is a better way and, gradually, we’ve been finding it. On the other hand, imagine a world where we’ve become so prickly that we just can’t rub along with each other any more. Some people think that’s where we live now. How do we pick a path between what shouldn’t be said and what cannot be said? Our special guests for this ThinkIn included: Jayde Adams, comedian, writer and actress. Scarlett Curtis, writer, journalist, blogger, and curator of Feminists Don’t Wear Pink & Other Lies. Michelle De Swarte, comedian and TV presenter.  Lynn Enright, journalist and author of Vagina: A Re-Education. Libby Purves, journalist and broadcaster. The Readout  The ThinkIn began with a Ricky Gervais quote and a nod to Voltaire: “If you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things you find ‘grossly offensive’ then you don’t believe in free speech”. How does that apply to comedy and where should the limits – if any – lie? There were fascinating and surprising points of view: Political correctness as power-play: PC language sees itself as offering protection to the vulnerable but there are other theories out there. What if, instead, it has come to be appropriated by precisely those people in power who don’t need protection, and used to silence minority voices? A plea for the return of “good, old-fashioned despising”. Unfashionable, but that’s the point: if we find something despicable, let’s say so. Moderation in all things may sound healthy but what does it do for the blood pressure? And, as so many negative terms have been reclaimed and put to good use, a call for ‘snowflakes’ to be rescued from people who only use it perjoratively: why not allow a greater admission of vulnerability in society – a willingness to say “ouch, that hurts”?  Lessons of the 2015 attacks on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. In the light of recent controversies about satirical cartoons (from the end of daily political cartoons for the global edition of the New York Times to the sacking of a Canadian cartoonist, Michael de Adder), how do we understand the power, potency and potential danger, of such satire in today’s world? What next? Political correctness-watch. The term has been so bandied-around and used so loosely that it’s lost its meaning. Has it been captured? Is satire on the run?

Justice must be seen to be done, so, as the law stands, people who have been arrested for an offence can be identified in public. But should all offences be treated as equal, or are some like sexual offences so damaging to the accused that to be arrested in connection with them, even if no charge ever follows, can do irreparable damage to a reputation? How does the law balance the rights of victims of sexual offences and the accused? Is it time to give anonymity for people accused of sexual offences until they are charged? What is a Tortoise ThinkIn? A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise. Drinks from 6.00pm, starts promptly at 6.30pm. If you are late to a ThinkIn you can ‘SlinkIn’! If you would like to contribute to this ThinkIn, let us know by emailing thinkin@tortoisemedia.com We film our Thinkins so we can watch them back, edit the best bits and share them with members who weren’t there in person. Members can find their ThinkIn booking code in My Tortoise, under My Membership.

Monday evenings in the Tortoise newsroom get lively. These discussions are the heart of our editorial planning for the weeks ahead. It’s when we discuss what’s happening right now in the world and ask you to help us filter what matters. Come and tell us what you think, what you know, and what you want us to do about it. Together, we’ll figure out how to get to grips with the world around us.   On Monday we’ll be asking whether, in light of allegations, is it still ok to… listen to Michael Jackson? Watch Woody Allen? Dance to R Kelly? Should we divorce the art from the alleged crimes? What is a Tortoise ThinkIn? A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise. Drinks from 5.30pm, starts promptly at 6pm. If you are late to a ThinkIn you can ‘SlinkIn’! If you would like to contribute to this ThinkIn, let us know by emailing thinkin@tortoisemedia.com We film our Thinkins so we can watch them back, edit the best bits and share them with members who weren’t there in person. Members can find their ThinkIn booking code in My Tortoise, under My Membership.

Until recently, few of us would have seen gender as a civil rights issue. Many of us would have believed that gender is assigned at birth, and assumed that the number of people interested in gender rights would always put the issue in a different category from other great rights battles: women’s rights, black rights, gay rights, or disability rights. But the arguments have shifted with astonishing speed. Is it now time to say that gender is the civil rights issue of our time? What is a Tortoise ThinkIn?  A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise.  Don’t worry if you think you don’t know enough to comment – we all feel that way. So we prepare Tortoise Notes for every ThinkIn – an all you need to know guide to the subject we’re discussing. You’ll receive this ahead of the ThinkIn. And when the conversation is done, we don’t drift off. We’ll send you the Tortoise Readout – our point of view, informed by what we’ve heard.  Drinks from 17:30.