Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6

Original poster

The post office scandal

130 replies

Bringonthesun24 · 09/01/2024 22:44

Not sure if there is a thread. There probably is. I've just watched this video and I'm utterly in shock!

It seems that there could be potential for people at fujitsi to have altered the post masters accounts which could have been ordered by the top at the post office.

Why did they get rid of only that 1 vistor book. Why did they pay that guy a visit the day after he went to fujitsu.

There is so much more to this than meets the eye. I've watched some of videos and clips of other post masters and it breaks my heart to see how broken they are. How their lives were ripped from them and the shame they had to bear whilst knowing they were innocent. I actuay feel so angry for them.

Why is something only being done now after a bloody drama on TV. Why were the public not as aware of this scandal?

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGejPxjAx/

TikTok - Make Your Day

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGejPxjAx

OP posts:

Thread gallery

SerendipityJane · 19/01/2024 17:23

El Reg also has an article on the general problems of government IT procurement.

Oh well inwardly digested.

Does anyone remember when HMRC were forced to pay other companies to "tender" (which they did in the knowledge they would never get the contract) and eventually the gig went back to Fujitsu ? One of the reason being (and this is another scandal) that despite the UK paying well over top dollar, somehow the systems were still Fujitsus property. Which is not unlike you paying for you wedding photos, only to discover they still belong to the photographer.

It should be a fundamental contract term that if you do business with the UK government then the IP in the system belongs to the government. Not the contractor.

SerendipityJane · 19/01/2024 17:36

SerendipityJane · 19/01/2024 11:48

It'll be interesting to see if this is the rare case of a police investigation into an immensely powerful institution where a prosecution follows.

It won't be. Worth a £1 stake at odds of 1,000,000,000:1 though.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/19/fujitsu-accountable-post-office-scandal-too-important

Fujitsu will never be held accountable for the Post Office scandal. It is too important to this government | Sam Fowles

This isn’t its first failure, yet the tech giant is so embedded in the public sector that it seems invincible, says Sam Fowles, a barrister, author and broadcaster

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/19/fujitsu-accountable-post-office-scandal-too-important

Merrymouse · 19/01/2024 22:17

GoldenMalicious · 19/01/2024 09:41

Yes, I appreciate my logic only goes so far and if POL had previously flushed out all fraudsters, albeit slowly, then you'd be correct in your assertion. If you add in an assumption that Horizon was supposed to make fraud more difficult in general then you could argue that there should have been a reduction in fraud rather than an increase. (I don't know if fraud reduction was an explicit requirement of Horizon but I would have expected it to be a side benefit at least). In which case, perhaps we (POL employees) were all just hard of thinking. I don't know - the whole situation is so awful, and for those of us who were in POL at that time it is difficult to come to terms with what our 'most trusted' employer was up to - whether through malicious intent, ignorance, poor controls, groupthink or whatever. In my case I spent 19 years (2000-2019) being told that Horizon was 'robust' and was going to deliver so many wonderful things. Then in 2019 Justice Fraser tells us it's a crock of shit and everything we'd been led to believe was wrong. It's hard to get my head around and while I completely accept that the subpostmasters and counter clerks impacted by this scandal have been so badly wronged, I also want to believe that for most of us, we were acting in good faith.

Show quote history

Even a ‘robust’ computer system is capable of error, particularly when there are so many integrations with third parties.

If the Post masters couldn’t check the transactions behind the balances there was no way anyone should have been confident that they were correct. The system was set up for failure.

Chrisitright · 02/06/2024 12:48

Yes it is true that there was a computer problem however the people who were behind covering this scandal up are clearly guilty and I for one am sick to the back teeth of the lack of integrity and accountability through the years of abuse of power.
I WANT TO SEE THE PEOPLE AT EVERY LEVEL OF THIS MASSIVE ABUSE TO BE PROSECUTED.
shall we ever see it?
what must we do to get this?

HoneyButterPopcorn · 02/06/2024 13:05

The fact that people know there is a problem but instead of hands up and giving it they pretend there’s no issue and hi on the attack.

Like the chinook crash where pilot error was blamed until they finally admitted computer error was actually the cause. The pilots families were grieving and told their dads/sons were to blame.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6

Swipe left for the next trending thread