To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

I don't think it's too much of a tangent at all.

This has been an appalling case in its own right, but treating it as isolated and anomalous will mean we fail to learn the bigger lessons.

Thank you! Signed!

Agreed

ITV news is reporting that Vennells should hand back her CBE. Big deal. She should hand back the vast amount of bonuses she got during the period.

I just signed the petition
you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/strip-paula-vennells-of-her-cbe
Nearly 70,000 signatures now!

Read Private Eye, it's full of cosy contracts that the government won't do without even though said companies are often fined giant amounts of money (sometimes in the millions) for not delivering. They can pass that cost onto us but in the meantime they are destroying so much they are 'in charge' of.

Also AI. If you think that horizon employees being able to get into the post accounts was bad. It is nothing to the power that AI systems already have. Including being sent to war zones and being allowed to decide when to kill with no oversight. (sorry about the tangent).

My DH was in a similar position to yours. He worked for Fujitsu, on a project for the DVLA.
He also got out as swiftly as he could because it was so badly managed, awful politics.

I’d heard of it before, and listened to the podcast, but seeing it like this …it’s fucking awful.

Brilliant podcast about it -search on Radio 4. I listened to it over the summer. People still haven’t had their names cleared or compensation. Completely scandalous!

I’m glad people are getting angry. When I first signed that petition it had 7000 names, now it’s over 55000. Only 24 hrs between the two.

I can barely watch this. Utterly horrific

Watching it now.

Heart wrenching

The DWP terminated a big contract with them due to problems.

Considering how low the standards of the DWP are, that's going some.

Just as with Crapita, the DWP and DWP service-users, so too do Fujitsu, the PO and the subpostmasters & mistresses sound like a classic case of Supplier, "Customer 1" and "Customer 2".

Customer 2 is the end-user, and is captive with no choice but to use whatever product or service Customer 1 procures. The supplier and Customer 1 care only about their cosy relationship with each other; Customer 2 gets screwed.

Defence procurement famously has similar problems.

I know my local MP spoke about it in parliament for years.

You're right, Fujitsu are dinosaurs but they are so entrenched in the Government with all their public sector contracts. The Japanese have enormous leverage and influence (jobs/investment/trade agreements), so it's unlikely they'll be scrutinised too much by the Tory's. Fujitsu think they'll weather the storm, they're represented by a top crisis management law firm and have an internal project (Project Holly), which is their crisis management plan to try and salvage their reputation. They're shameful!!

it also illuminates how many financial barriers to justice there are in this country.

One slight issue I have is the media keep using the phrase ‘the worst miscarriage of justice in the U.K.’ Not really comparable with the Birmingham 6 and the cot death women sent to jail for murder. It’s not a competition. It’s enough to state it’s a miscarriage of justice affecting hundreds of people.

Crapita seems to be another one that can never do anything bad or incompetent enough to stop the government from loving them unconditionally, no matter how hard they apparently try.

It is absolutely outrageous that people can escape justice, even if they do excuse it as corporate manslaughter.

For each of these actions, somebody/ies made deliberate, conscious decisions that led to lives being destroyed, even to suicide.

Just as, when honours are given out, somebody/ies has deliberately decided that this isn't just a decent person (which you would kind of hope most people would be as standard), but an outstandingly amazing person who needs to be officially told just how amazing they are.

Whether it's Paula Vennells, Tony Blair, Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile or any of the many others, they didn't just have a big hat with the names of every person in the public eye in it and pick them out tombola-style to see what honour they randomly won; each of these was reviewed by a high-up public official, who had ready access to all information about them in the public domain, and still they came to the conclusion that this was an outstandingly good person.

I think the names of these people making these recommendations and decisions should be released, so we can know exactly who it is who has adjudged a very obviously disgraceful person to actually be amazingly good. It makes you wonder what they may have done in their own lives, if their yardstick of greatness is so very low.

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it's the people themselves (or their lackeys) who push and push for their honours, maybe also happening to make a substantial donation at the same time. What kind of a narcissist would you have to be to determinedly chase such a thing for yourself? The exact sort who shouldn't ever be remotely considered for an honour, in fact...

I was talking to dh about as he works in the IT business and worked for Fujitsu years ago. He said it's well known that Fujitsu services are shit and there have been problems with other big contracts. The DWP terminated a big contract with them due to problems. The issue with the PO is it was just too easy to blame the little people rather than question a big corporation.
Dh left Fujitsu as soon as he could. He says it's a dinosaur in the IT world.

After watching all 4 last night on itv x, we have just watched the factual one (narrated by Toby Jones who played Alan Bates) It remains utterly shocking.

Quite - and there doesn't seem to have been even an elementary effort to investigate the finances of the postmasters. If someone has stolen £30k for example, it has to have gone somewhere, been spent on something, transferred somewhere or repaid a debt; even if they thought it was cash stashed under someone's floorboards - why didn't they look to rule this out? I get that money can be hidden in overseas accounts or cryptocurrency but there still has to be a point of exit from the UK banking system.

Yes, I want to know this.

The money paid by subpostmasters to Post Office became part of Post Office's income. It should indeed be refunded. Some of it has been.

Large errors in favour of subpostmasters tended to be picked up by the system and fixed, although sometimes badly. For example, in one case Horizon recorded a foreign currency transaction incorrectly, leaving a subpostmaster with an apparent surplus of nearly £500. Fujitsu tried to fix this but messed it up, leaving the subpostmaster with a shortfall of nearly £500, which they then declared to be a real shortfall that the subpostmaster had to pay.

The evidence available suggests that large Horizon errors were almost always in favour of Post Office.

Given the lack of controls at Fujitsu, it is certainly possible that some of their employees used their position to defraud Post Office. However, there are many other ways money could have disappeared. There is a blog post at Podcast: Where Did All The Money Go? – Post Office Scandal that sets out 14 ways the money could have disappeared.

"Lawyers say enough evidence has emerged for police to consider prosecuting former Post Office executives."

God I hope so.

I can't understand how I, some numpty with no connection with the PO, have known for years there were major problems with Horizon and also grasped the impact it must be having on subpostmasters & mistresses... but the PO (& Fujitsu) got to merrily carry on.

The wickedness is breath-taking.

This was effectively the Post Office's view - they were constantly being scammed by postmasters before Horizon but didn't know so Horizon just showed the extent of the problem.

In practice, most were very honest.