E K Stokes

When you join the (UK) Post Office, a government owned and run organisation back in the eighties and through the nineties (with unique powers and its own investigation branch, police, like for the railways) you have to sign the Official Secrets Act. The 1989 revision of the Act introduced provisions surrounding illegal disclosure of sensitive information – otherwise known as leaking. The maximum sentence for espionage under the Official Secrets Act 1911 is 14 years, but longer terms can be imposed for a series of offences. The problems with Horizon were known from day one, but who is going to risk their: bonus, job, or even prison? Who thought it would get so out of hand? Errors in the system were corrected remotely overnight, with the best intentions, but one change can generate knock on effects. The Post Office Investigation branch (police force) were there to arrest "imagined" criminals and were the people who dealt with mail theft etc. with absolutely no knowledge about complex computer systems. It's not too difficult to imagine how a series of events led one to another and finally a catastrophe that destroyed people's lives and even killed some. A good analogy would be a series of aircraft crashes which are found to have been caused by a design fault, the only difference is the scale and the cover up!

Insist is a strong word, I don't think anyone insists on marriage, same sex or hetero. Some gay people insist on a one to one relationship which is perfectly understandable for many reasons. If you have an open relationship that means you or your partner want to sleep around, it kind of begs the question about relationship. You live your life like you want, if what you want is a one to one long term partnership you need to give up being totally selfish and only doing what you want, you need to consider what your other half wants. I don't believe in gay and straight, those are labels which were invented, sexuality is fluid, so for myself (and others, I hazard) there is no gay sexuality model to fit into.

I have to confess I skipped through the start, then something grabbed me in the story and I went back, started over and read it properly. I think it was immediately obvious that Ryan would fall for Brian, you put in clues at the beginning: "Not so sure what the fourth one, Brian Beck would do. ... Brian didn't seem to have his heart in it... The return of Ryan's dad in ghostly form at the point where Ryan was at his lowest and the partial playing out of two future scenarios was a clever way to end the first chapter, because now we want to discover how Ryan saves Brian and the rest.