[dignick]

As the post office is such an old organisation (350 years), it used to have its own armed guard, has its own investigations branch and conducts its own prosecutions. The police wouldn't get involved because the post office was considered to have jurisdiction. Taken from this, which is a great listen: https://soundcloud.com/privateeyenews/page-94-the-private-ey...

[Roonerelli]

Really great work by Private Eye. They did all the investigation and broke the story. None of the big news outlets were on it at all

[toyg]

On internal UK news, there is nothing as good as Private Eye. Every two weeks they publish more “hard” material than newspapers do in a month. I’m a subscriber, the value for money is simply ridiculously good.

[hermitcrab]

I have also recently subscribed to Private Eye - mostly because there is now so little other investigative journalism going on in the UK that I think they deserve some support (the main papers are nearly all owned by billionaire mates of the Conservative Party). It is also quite funny.

[qmmmur]

You should check out bellingcat. It's very reputable

[dignick]

Same. I struggle to find time to get through each edition, but I don't mind paying the subscription to support quality journalism.

[khc]

Is there something equivalent for the US that people recommend?

[anonymousDan]

They should be stripped of those powers immediately in my opinion. It's an anachronism and as been shown by this incident they are not fit for purpose.

[Ichthypresbyter]

Private prosecutions are not unusual in England, although the tide may be turning against them. For instance, the RSPCA recently announced that it would stop bringing private prosecutions for animal cruelty [0], which it has done since before there were police. There was apparently pressure from MPs for them to do so, after some fairly high-profile cases where they were seen as being too eager to prosecute.

Of course, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has always had the right to take over and discontinue a private prosecution.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/28/rspca-plans-to...

[Mauricebranagh]

I used to work for BT post split from the Posties and when I commented that the procedure for IB/SD investigations was very rigorous i.e. all interviews taped two copies of the tape kept.

I said this is just like if the police where investigating your for murder and I was told ah well in the bad old days people used to fall down stairs on occasion