Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 09:38 am
This is front page news here. Basically faulty software resulted in 900 postmasters being charged with fraud.

This has been ongoing for some years, but a recent TV dramatisation has brought it the fore and people are very angry.

Quote:
We have seen heroes emerge from the Post Office scandal. Now focus on the villains
Marina Hyde

Ministers feigned shock while executives pointed fingers at others, but gradually the truth is coming out. The public anger is working

week since ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office aired, and can you hear that sound? Can you feel the gathering thunder of politicians’ hooves, as the herd suddenly migrates towards the great plains of looking busy, of seeming outraged, of suddenly giving a toss?

“Everyone has been shocked by watching what they have done over the past few days,” declared Rishi Sunak on Sunday, acting for all the world like he had found out about the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history from a TV programme. Which he didn’t. Of the pursuit of more than 900 innocent subpostmasters, some of whom were jailed, and the ruined lives of many more, the prime minister explained: “Obviously it’s something that happened in the 90s.” Which it isn’t. Prosecutions of innocent postmasters happened up until 2015, with the coalition government in place for the years in which the Post Office allegedly mounted a full-scale cover-up of the injustice it continued to mete out. Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells was awarded a CBE in 2019. Which is also not in the 90s. And, just as I was writing this, she’s only gone and handed it back.

The Post Office scandal is about two things. First, the ease with which corporate executives were able to pursue, demonise and destroy completely innocent people, particularly using the justification that technology should always be trusted over humans. And second, the ease with which those bigwigs have been able to escape any accountability themselves for doing something far, far worse than anything they wrongly accused their most junior underlings of. They escaped it for decades, and are still escaping it. It is not just Vennells who has questions to answer far beyond the issue of that CBE. There is a whole host of senior figures from the Post Office, Royal Mail and Fujitsu (which supplied and maintained the Horizon system) who were involved in or stood by the long-term policy of pursuing and privately prosecuting postmasters, as well as successive ministers from the Gordon Brown administration onwards who were made aware of the problems and either didn’t really listen or chose to believe the Post Office. These are all people we should be furiously keen to hear more from.

Not for them the maximum-security prisons, the social ostracisation, the bankruptcies, the mental and physical breakdowns, the giving birth wearing an electronic tag. Ministers come and go but the executives failed upwards. The upper tiers of business in this country seem almost impossible to be cast out from. One simply moves on lucratively elsewhere. A certain status of person in our society can be imprisoned for theft (or for non-theft, as it would turn out). Yet for actions that led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, to the ruination of hundreds of lives – well, not one person has ever even been charged. In a lot of cases, they seem to have been promoted.

At last, one of our many successive governments looks like it is going to do something serious about the compensation and overturned convictions part of the subpostmasters story – but only because they can see the nation demands it. One thing we shouldn’t have any truck with is people complaining that it took a TV drama to raise the issue to outraged national consciousness. I’ve been in touch over the past couple of days with several people either involved in this story, or who produced the earliest journalism on it, and you won’t find a single one of them begrudging the way the scandal has finally gone nuclear. They are simply thrilled that somehow, anyhow, we might be moving closer to resolution for the victims. Forgive me – the surviving victims.

Some thought ITV booking Nigel Farage for I’m a Celebrity would have a huge impact on public life. In fact it won’t affect where he goes from now, one way or the other – that path was already set. But the ITV drama department’s decision to commission Mr Bates vs the Post Office is far more significant, and will be one of those rare TV dramas down the years that has a massive and measurable social impact. The story now leads the news in the mainstream media every single day. Many people found out about it for the first time after watching the programme; many more only registered the scale and scandal of it having seen this complex tale of computer systems and accounting now dramatically rendered. That is public service broadcasting at its best and most powerful.

Those hungry to learn more are directed to the public inquiry happening right now – it restarts this week after the Christmas break – to which the Post Office has repeatedly failed to hand over evidence. From Thursday, the inquiry will hear testimony from a series of those who worked for Fujitsu. Or will it? Last summer, on the eve of a crucial evidence session from a former Fujitsu engineer, the Post Office suddenly found 4,767 documents it had neglected to disclose, so the witness’s appearance was dramatically called off. There are frequently multiple significant documents that lawyers believe the Post Office and Fujitsu are not disclosing, as well as other evidence.

Also last summer, unbelievably, it emerged that the current CEO of the Post Office had actually run a bonus scheme to reward executives for cooperating with the inquiry – surely their most basic civic and moral duty. This was at the same time that 81-year-old former subpostmaster Francis Duff finally received £330,000 compensation for having lost everything during the scandal – only for the official receiver (part of the Department for Business) to immediately claw back £322,000 of it to cover bankruptcy and owed income tax. He couldn’t afford to heat his home last winter.

Meanwhile, I keep reading that the Post Office has been compensating victims (however slowly or in many cases not at all). In fact, two years ago, the Post Office asked the government to step in to pay the bill or else it would be insolvent. The government agreed. So the entity compensating victims has largely been the taxpayer. Us. Again, bit weird to think the then chancellor Rishi Sunak affects to have learned about the story from the telly last week, but there you are. Fujitsu has not paid a penny in compensation, instead picking up billions of pounds of further government contracts and continuing to do so.

Finally (for now), I will say the Post Office scandal has hundreds of human tragedies at its heart – but it is not a natural disaster. These types of victims exist because there are perpetrators, and unless those involved are held to account, we will continue to present as a society with one rule and endless get-outs for executives, and quite another for the little people. The inquiry continues. The story continues. Stay angry, and keep watching.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/09/heroes-post-office-scandal-villains
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Type: Discussion • Score: 0 • Views: 759 • Replies: 31

 
Mame
 
  2  
Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 09:41 am
@izzythepush,
Wouldn't someone have been slightly suspicious that so many people were accused of the same thing? That seems ridiculous.
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 09:46 am
@Mame,
People were aware of it, but it took the drama to bring it home.

Basically the execs decided to blame the ordinary people, and the Post Office itself could deny appeals.

Mame
 
  2  
Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 12:06 pm
@izzythepush,
I read 4 people committed suicide, and many lives were ruined, financially, and maritally. A bunch of them could have banded together and sued the Post Office before all that happened. It's disgraceful and totally stupid. 900 people!! That's a whole village in some areas. How could the accusations even be believed??
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 12:45 pm
@Mame,
That's what everyone is saying.

The problem arises from an institution with the power to carry out its own criminal investigation, prosecution and even the ability to deny an appeal.

We don't know what ministers knew, but Ed Davey, current Liberal leader, was the minister responsible during the coalition and he says he was lied to by the post office bosses.

The only thing I can say with any certainty, (and this is an actual prediction, I don't know for sure,) is that an effigy of Paula Vennells will be set on fire at the Lewes Bonfire Night festivities.
Mame
 
  2  
Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 02:02 pm
@izzythepush,
The government needs to step in and apply some oversight to the Postal institution. No one or institution should not be allowed to regulate themselves.

What are they doing about the software company that caused all this mess?
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 02:12 pm
@Mame,
It's all happening very quickly as the govt is scrambling to get a hold of this, nothing yet, but talk of big fines.
Mame
 
  2  
Reply Tue 9 Jan, 2024 03:11 pm
@izzythepush,
Some of those people should sue. They lost their jobs, houses, friends, family... disgusting.
0 Replies
 
lmur
 
  2  
Reply Wed 10 Jan, 2024 07:37 am
@izzythepush,
I've been reading about this in Private Eye for the best part of a decade. Amazed it took so long to reach the public consciousness.
izzythepush
 
  3  
Reply Wed 10 Jan, 2024 09:49 am
@lmur,
People were aware of it, but it took a dramatisation to bring home the full human cost of what happened.
bobsal u1553115
 
  1  
Reply Fri 12 Jan, 2024 04:03 pm
I believe I read somewhere the post office used some version of an AI program to project what income that indivudual offices should be making and started arresting those who missed the mark.

Is that correct?
Mame
 
  2  
Reply Fri 12 Jan, 2024 05:53 pm
@izzythepush,
I was just reading about that drama today. People will be compensated, apparently, but how and who determines that? They told them it was the software, but it was ignored. Is the developer going to be held accountable, if they're even still around? It's tragic.
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Sat 13 Jan, 2024 04:23 am
@Mame,
It's still ongoing.

There has been some pushback against the blanket pardon because it could include some people legitimately prosecuted.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Sat 13 Jan, 2024 04:24 am
@bobsal u1553115,
I don't know.

The software was faulty but the post office kept insisting it was fine.
Mame
 
  2  
Reply Sat 13 Jan, 2024 09:04 am
@izzythepush,
How did they finally realize it wasn't fine? Who figured that out?
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Sat 13 Jan, 2024 09:13 am
@Mame,
Quote:
Computer Weekly broke the first story that exposed the problems being experienced by subpostmasters.

In 2004, Alan Bates, a subpostmaster in north Wales, contacted Computer Weekly about the fact that he was getting unexplained shortfalls, which he was convinced were caused by Horizon errors.

Nothing was written, but in 2008, Lee Castleton also contacted Computer Weekly telling a similar story. This was enough to spark a wider investigation.

A year later, Computer Weekly told the story of seven subpostmasters who were experiencing unexplained losses. This stimulated Bates’ fight against the Post Office, which had already been going on for nearly 10 years. The article revealed to subpostmasters who were having Horizon problems that they were not alone and that the Post Office was lying to them.
Full story @ Computer Weekly
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Sat 13 Jan, 2024 09:30 am
@Mame,
The dramatisation does a very good job.

The post office lied to those affected, telling them they were the only ones it was happening to.
0 Replies
 
bobsal u1553115
 
  1  
Reply Sat 13 Jan, 2024 10:52 am
@izzythepush,
Quote:
The software was faulty but the post office kept insisting it was fine.


Because computers don't make mistakes, and GIGO is a myth.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Sat 13 Jan, 2024 11:58 am
Quote:
[...]
The strangest part of the story is how long it took for the truth to dawn on the political system. Journalists had been doggedly telling the story of Horizon’s victims ever since Computer Weekly broke the story in 2009. Trade paper the Press Gazette reckons that the magazine has published about 350 storieson it since 2009, mostly by Karl Flinders. Seventy of these came before the end of 2018 and the rest followed after the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance brought a group action trial against the Post Office that year and a public inquiry began in 2020.

Despite this admirable journalism (and sterling work by a handful of MPs), it somehow failed to become a hot political issue until ITV screened Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Then the dam broke. As the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason put it, “Here we are, seven days later, and the prime minister stands in front of a packed House of Commons, and says the government will put forward a new law… How extraordinary. The power of drama. The momentum it has generated, the public opinion it has shifted, the government it has galvanised.”
... ... ...
The Guardian
Mame
 
  2  
Reply Sun 14 Jan, 2024 01:06 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
Incredible, isn't it?
0 Replies
 
 

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