To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

[5foot5]

There is already a thread about this on the Telly Addicts forum here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4970440-mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-mon-to-thur-itv-9pm-tv-pace-no-spoilers

However this seems like such an important subject that I thought I would draw attention to it on AIBU.

The first episode aired tonight but the whole series is available on itvx.

Most of you will no doubt have heard about the Horizon scandal, but whether you have or you haven't this program is compelling. It will probably make you furious but it deserves as wide an audience as possible.,

This is from Feb 2020. Being repeated tonight on R4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000f5hb?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

So the people that allowed these poor post masters to be prosecuted should be charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice in my opinion.
Wouldn’t it be great to see people actually jailed for this ?..

But Paula Vennels was CEO after ?2012 - the problem started in 1999 - where are all the other men who ran the post office over that time - surely someone has the names.

Adam Crozier was CEO of Royal Mail until 2010. At the time, Royal Mail owned Post Office. David Mills was CEO of Post Office 2002-2005 and was succeeded by Alan Cook. He left in 2010. There was then a gap before Paula Vennells was appointed, by which time Post Office was no longer owned by Royal Mail.

Horizon started being rolled out to branches in 1999. Vennells is the CEO most closely identified with the Horizon issues because Bates didn't really start campaigning until 2009 and the campaign didn't gain much traction until 2012, by which time Vennells was in place. Her predecessors and the various chairs of the board over the relevant time period all share responsibility for what happened. But Vennells, in my view, carries the greatest share. She had all the evidence that there were problems with Horizon, but turned a blind eye. She misled parliament and broke promises to MPs and subpostmasters. It seems clear from what we know that protecting Post Office's reputation was more important to her than doing the right thing for those who had been wrongfully convicted and/or had their lives ruined by Post Office.

Paula Vennells also oversaw the mediation process - that should have resulted in the SPMs being compensated without having to embark on a very costly court case, but instead resulted in the PO sitting there and blaming the SPMs for that happened to them and basically wasting even more of their money, time, energy and already shaky morale. She is an utter disgrace, and her sex has nothing to do with it.

Paula Vennells was a Priest quite worryingly . Blimey, I’m sure she’d burst into flames if she ever had the gall to walk into a church!
Shes a disgrace.

I'm strangely unsurprised by Vennells becoming a priest. There's a certain manipulative, narcissistic, personality type for whom it's an attractive position of power.

Of course I don't know the woman, but I that's certainly the vibe I get from her.

For some reason she reminds me a lot of Rebekah Brooks née Wade.

(Many men of the same stamp also available, of course.)

It's gone into a lost money account then profits.
The post office had special powers so police were not involved. Then when interviewing suspects they lied to them and used coercion to get them to plead guilty to lesser charges pointing out their contract said they were liable for all losses.

Yes , he wouldn’t said he won’t accept an honour until Paula Vennells loses hers.

A man with integrity and honour. Unlike Vennells. She’ll never give her honour up , she’ll go kicking and screaming.

Sadly I think you’re right.

Whilst, of course, Paula Vennells should be stripped of her CBE - not 'asked to hand it back' - and the person/people in charge of the due diligence before giving the honour to her seriously cross-examined and forced to justify their decisions, we all know that she is very likely to decide to keep it and not be made to return it.

However, I think this will actually work against her. Honours do not exist in a vacuum and are only actually meaningful alongside the wide public knowledge of what the person has done to deserve it.

Like with Blair and many others, I reckon the existence of the honour forces their disgrace above the public parapet. As we know, millions of decent hard-working people - many of them truly outstandingly great, like Alan Bates - will never be given honours, and this is not in any way considered a slight on their character, work or abilities, not to have an honour; it is the norm.

That CBE will go everywhere with her and haunt her, for as long as she has it. It shines sunlight on the fact that she has acted astonishingly shamefully and disgracefully. It is a perpetual mocker and an open-goal gift to everybody who chooses to bring it up with her, or when talking about her, or when booing every time she is introduced/announced along with it - it's a poisoned chalice, like filthy, soiled laundry that she's forced to carry with her everywhere she goes.

Currently, Alan Bates doesn't have an official honour, and he may never have one; but there are now millions and millions of British people who know exactly what he has done and what a hero of the people he is, and he will carry that public reputation with him for life, and even beyond as he goes down in the history books. Whether or not he has also had a letter from Buckingham Palace is completely irrelevant, really.

She's handing back her CBE!

Good!

Good. Now she needs to be criminally prosecuted, and her compensation as head of the PO recovered from her. Treat it as the white collar crime that it is.

Well exactly. The 'holier than thou' types who often are, in practice, deeply unpleasant!

You don't have to look too far in to the history of all the major religions for evidence of horrific behaviour amongst its 'stewards of the lord'...

The risk is, as with Fred Goodwin, that honour is handed back and then nothing else happens

It annoys me she was able to hand it back. She should have been stripped of it.

This independent expert's report on Horizon was buried in 2003.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974
Jason Coyne, who worked for Preston-based Best Practice Plc at the time, was instructed to examine the computer system called Horizon in 2003.
He said he notified the Post Office the data was "unreliable" but he was ignored, sacked then discredited.

Gillian Keenan’s ( education secretary) husband is head of Fujitsu UK and Ireland.

Would that explain why the government is still giving contracts to the firm ?

Its gets worse doesn’t it ?..

That's about it really. This scandal has been known about for years, so innocent people have been left to suffer all this time. It is really appallingly cynical for the Govt to suddenly and belatedly say they are going to do something about it. I just cannot believe that this has been allowed to drag on for decades, evidently they hoped this would all just go away.

I am really glad that Paula Venables has handed back her CV and the public petition worked. But this barely scratches the surface of what needs to happen, so I hope it doesn't assuage public anger.

What urgently needs to happen:

Compensation for everyone who was affected, without any further delays;
The repayment (with interest) of all the money individuals were forced to repay ie was stolen from them;
Justice - a criminal investigation into this, prosecutions of all those who were party to it and prison sentences for the guilty. Although I have no sympathy for Venables I hope she is not made a scapegoat to allow other guilty parties to escape justice.

Sorry I meant Paula Vennells - it seems to have auto corrected.

It was a brilliant drama btw. Yes - these people wouldn’t have have those sorts of discrepancies over such a short time period in small rural villages. Yet - the systems were deemed correct.

Like Peking I have also been involved in government contracts and she is spot on regarding hand over of government contracts to a new supplier. Having said that government depts are a nightmare to work with. Hang onto very old technology and despite warnings of no maintenance choose to ignore the risks. I did a very large handover government project a few years ago and it was truly shocking what we had to do to get the government dept to take this all seriously.

It's a good news story for them in an election year, nothing more. Truly scandalous that they didn't care before and are only now rubbing their opportunist hands in glee! 😡

Yes I agree!

Yes, that's the maddening part. In theory, it makes it look like it was her choice (although it's interesting that she never thought to make that choice for over a decade before it finally became untenable) and, fwiw, belittles the idea of what an honour actually is, if it's seen as something you can just take and keep for as long as you fancy.

Being allowed to 'decide' to hand it back potentially puts her in the same category as people who have turned them down for noble, just reasons - not unlike Alan Bates, in fact - or handed them back as a legitimate protest against government decisions that they feel strongly about.

Even the way she's framed it, you can just tell that she doesn't really see what the 'fuss' is about; it wouldn't surprise me if she thinks that giving back the honour is sufficient punishment and that her slate is now all clear.

And I still would like to see an inquiry as to how she ever came to be given it in the first place. Either the people in charge are seriously corrupt and/or morally bankrupt; or there was gross incompetence in their execution of the most basic due diligence. At least with the likes of Savile, it was given to him decades ago - long before it emerged publicly what he was really like (as if it wasn't very well-known by the establishment all along); but Vennells was given hers in 2019!!! It was the equivalent of giving Nick Leeson an honour 'for services to banking' in 2002!

Yes, they can get some great PR for their response to the scandal now; but when it comes to apportioning blame for what happened at the time, they can just hold their hands up and blame the previous administrations.

It is indeed disgusting that nobody in government cared enough to do much about it until the ITV drama. Does nobody do right for the sake of simply doing right anymore? Is it all just about appearances and making it look like you actually care about whatever 'hoi polloi' have had brought to their attention - and even that only in an election year?