To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

Oh absolutely. The jaw-dropping thing about this is the fact that so many people and organisations have been complicit.

Also it plainly wasn't just Fujitsu - the Post Office commissioned an forensic accounting company and then canned them when it didn't like the answers (that the system was suspect).

I hope that's true, but they are running quite a lot of government IT so they will have to be replaced no doubt at great expense if they do go west.

If that's true, the Post Office Horizon scandal is going to be to Fujitsu what the Enron scandal was to Arthur Andersen.

Because there's a toxic culture of silence there.

Yes, I think I'd missed that Adam Crozier had been rewarded with that plum job by ITV in 2010.

Paula Vennells getting ordained as a Church of England priest I knew about – and the CofE's subsequent rejection of her.

Unspeakable pair. I can't safely post what I actually think of them.

I've been following this scandal for many years – I think I first heard of it around 2011 – and like other posters absolutely couldn't believe it was continuing after the first media reports.

PiL were good friends for a man sent to prison for this. He’s died before any kind of apology came through. It’s horrific. I hope his widow gets compensation.

This is why cash is king. Stop relying on computers; the plug can be pulled at any time.

I don’t know how the likes of Adam Crozier and Paula Vennells can look at themselves in the mirror. I would want to die if my actions had led to someone’s suicide.

This is his story in 2011, on the BBC:

Later he took the story to Panorama, and to Private Eye, and to The Times. I have to say that it's kind of weird that people blame the press. Without them, this would never have come out. And I currently live in a county with a far more deferential media which wouldn't have done any of this.

I don’t understand how the corruption at Fujitsu was so widespread. Everything in the standard approach to managing IT services- used at every company I’ve worked for for the past 20 years- is designed to prevent this kind of thing from happening and flag it and report it and escalate it if it does. From testing before systems go live, to the way that incidents are reported. For example, it’s pretty standard that the type of issues users report to the IT service desk are reported on every month. The top query types are investigated- there’s an entire discipline of IT management called Problem Management that deals with this kind of thing. Under normal circumstances it would be at the top of the agenda of every single IT meeting and included in every report.

For it to be buried, for service desk staff to actively be lying to users about the extent of the issue, is just mind-boggling. Everyone involved in the management and support of that Horizon system must have known, over a long period of time, that something was seriously wrong and being covered up. It’s absolutely astonishing.

That Vennels woman should be in prison.

Yes... not sure of the charge, criminal negligence maybe?
Even the CofE (one of the masters of institutional coverup and hypocrisy) seems to have sidelined her.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells

It's incomprehensible that the truth of this situation wasn't found quickly and that it went on for so long when it was public knowledge what was clearly happening.

Just finished watching it, what an incredible man Mr Bates is, can't believe they had to fight all that time, 4 people lost their life over this, why did nobody from Royal mail ever go to prison? The compensation was ridiculous, it's all so wrong. I am so glad that companies like evri have started taking a lot of trade away from Royal mail!

I was Officer in Charge of a small post office in 2006. They sacked me because they said I didn't understand the system and that money kept going missing.
I did, and it didn't.
I never even knew it was happening to others until last year!
I can't watch the programme- it's making me feel queasy thinking about it again.

It's absolutely scandalous the way that RM treated those staff during and since.
They knew that there was a problem, yet they continued to deny it while ruining innocent people's lives.
If anyone needs jailing it's those at the top. They should be made accountable! A shame they can't be stripped of their assets to compensate those who lost everything.
The compensation offered is an appalling insult. It's like some sort of sick joke!
Sorry your lives have been ruined, sorry your loved ones took their lives, but here's 20k, off you pop.
Disgusting!

how can we live without a post office though?

No one will be held fully accountable

I can’t imagine the amount of stress this must have caused them, to be accused of something so awful and not believed. Must have been truly horrific 😓

No amount of compensation will make up for the anguish caused to these poor families.

I haven't seen this yet and don't know if I could bear it. I listened to the podcast, and watched a documentary a couple of years and was apoplectic with fury. Suicides. A pregnant woman jailed, FFS.

That Vennels woman should be in prison.

It's been aired in Ireland, 2nd episode tonight. Anyone I've spoken to here has watched it and like myself just sickened. Those poor people wrongly accused. It's disgusting !

Interesting that the BBC took zero interest for so long. They are supposed to find and investigate public interest news of this kind, but they are too busy "reporting news" about fucking Strictly Come Dancing

All the people who advocate compulsory ID cards and similar should keep this in mind. Systems can (and do) go wrong - and then what?

Agree, but isnt this the case with alot of things. No one wants to stand up and take the responsibility?

Whose idea was it that the CEO got an award?

I am not sure if boycotting the post office might be damaging the wrong people ie the poor post masters. But something needs to be done about these disgraceful execs and prison sentences is too good for them.