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.,

I guess we should be grateful that they weren't using WhatsApp or they'd have to be telling us how their texts have mysteriously disappeared and can't be found.One less thing to lie about.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c88z431n2v5o

The widow of a sub-postmaster who took his own life had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the Post Office in exchange for staggered compensation payments, an inquiry has heard.

I'm not sure that many terrible decisions don't have the common root of responsible individuals 'going with the flow' in corrupted organisations

They do. You know better than to put your head above the parapet. If you have the wherewithall you leave and find another jobs, but it's not always that easy so you put your head down and get on with your own work and hope you won't be asked to do anything too heinous.

However, that doesn't apply to top brass who should absolutely say "this is unacceptable, sort it out" and act with integrity.

It struck me that there are a fair number of people who've given evidence to the Inquiry who would struggle to find employment elsewhere, at least at a seniority level and salary level they have/had at the Post Office.

Institutionalised in a corrupted organisation into accepting people doing the bare minimum and doing it badly and where going outside the path of least resistance would get you into trouble.

It struck me that there are a fair number of people who've given evidence to the Inquiry who would struggle to find employment elsewhere, at least at a seniority level and salary level they have/had at the Post Office.

Yes, this has really leapt out at me. They've climbed the greasy pole within the organisation by being very good at the internal politics (sucking up, punching down), and saying and doing exactly what their superiors at each point want.

Van den Bogerd struck me very strongly as being sharp enough when she wanted to be (had no trouble adopting court language and talking about business concepts in the language she must use in high-level meetings), but flicking between that and presenting a dense, woolly facade with lots of "little ol' me" bullshit that it had all been too technical and difficult for her to grasp the import of remote access.

I've often pondered the fate of those who find themselves constantly promoted upwards, not as a reward for talent but because they are difficult to work with and can't be moved out of the way by sacking them. Now I know.

I mentioned before about how some of those post office staff didn’t seem particularly intelligent or articulate.
Infact earlier on during he enquiry one of them , Stephen Bradshaw seemed a total
dim wit.
Probably spent his entire career bullying people and just generally unpleasant.

I remember thinking that there was no way this go would have made it through to the Police , yet this guy had the power to prosecute people.

I imagine some of these prosecutors were police rejects so did this job where they had some authority over people.

Whether in schools, workplaces or outside, bullying gets amplified once it's deemed acceptable. Organisations that bring private prosecutions invariably reflect this RSPCA, councils, Post Office, parts of HMRC have all 'gone rogue' at various points.
Stephen Bradshaw demonstrated a crude 'getting even' attitude that made the results of his interviews a foregone conclusion. He and van den Bogerd both behaved duplicitously in interviews; he by saying that nobody else had experienced issues - which he says meant nobody in the room/branch, she by saying Post Office couldn't change records - because Fujitsu did so on their behalf.
I can't find the exact quote, but IIRC, in answer to a question as to whether an investigation could be paused, the lead Ofsted inspector told Ruth Perry's inquest that he probably could, but had never had to. He was wrong before and after the fact.
I would advise anyone facing the possibility of an investigation to study these tactics to understand the style and nature of questions and to the self-serving nature of many people who enjoy this line of work.

This week:

Tuesday 30 April - Hugh Flemington - former Head of Legal at Post Office Ltd, Harry Bowyer - Barrister and former employee of Cartwright King Solicitors

Wednesday 1 May - Martin Smith - Solicitor and former employee of Cartwright King Solicitors

Thursday 2 May - Martin Smith - Solicitor and former employee of Cartwright King Solicitors

Friday 3 May - Jarnail Singh - Solicitor and former lawyer at Royal Mail Group and Post Office Ltd

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Jarnail Singh, you're in for a "treat". He's one of those witnesses where as soon as he starts responding to questions you go "ahh, I can see how the scandal happened".

I've just looked up Jarnail Singh and found a piece on Nick Wallis' "Post Office Scandal" website from Dec 2023:
https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/more-singhd-against-than-singh-ing/
Giving evidence over two full days, Singh revealed himself to be an exceptionally dangerous man, inhabiting a fantasy world manufactured by a priceless combination of the Peter Principle and the Dunning-Kruger effect. He was also self-defeatingly slippery to such a degree that when he was asked if he was the Head of Criminal Law at the Post Office, his answer was:
“I wasn’t head of anything, to be honest with you. I just went in as a challenge, as an opportunity and I can reassure you I was not Head of Criminal Law. I think the outside world did, probably did [think I was], because I was the only criminal lawyer and I think originally they wanted Rob Wilson to go in, and at the last minute he dropped out, and I was put forward and I think in the last minute, in the last… I think this post was on 1 April 2012 and I think I was more or less told the end of March, probably the middle of March, “Do you want it?” And I considered it, went to see Cartwright King, I liked it and I knew it would be tough, so I took that opportunity as a challenge and that’s what I did.”

Oh I'm sorry, I'm now laughing at the whole of that Nick Wallis post about Jarnail Singh.

I know it's not funny – really, really not – and the devastation he caused. But... I'm just giggling slightly hysterically because, well, other than screaming what other reaction is there?

One of the comments on the blog has it to a T:
“Mr Singh is clearly as mad as a three-cornered bat. The fact that he has held a senior position at the Post Office for most of his working life tells us something. If we didn’t know it already.”

If you've been watching the hearings you might have noticed that counsel to the Inquiry, especially Jason Beer KC, has asked a number of witnesses who worked with Jarnail Singh what they thought about his capabilities and professionalism. The witnesses have either been non-committal or have changed the subject. This is because if they were to be honest they'd then be asked "So why didn't you speak up and say that he should not be in such an important role?"

Singh gives exceptional testimony. For example, it's common that when he's asked about an email with his name on that he wants to disown he'll claim that a big boy wrote it and ran away.

Shame the BBC isn't updating the examinnations - I can't watch live today..

Just now at the Inquiry:

Counsel for Inquiry: Did you form a view on Jarnail Singh at this time?

Hugh Flemington: No. I just noticed the emotive language used in the email.

See! Again, the legal people at Post Office/Royal Mail are being asked to comment on Singh's competence and none of them want to go there.

Major evasion by Hugh Flemington about the competence of Jarnail Singh. That's another reason why the scandal happened, they'd put Singh in charge of the legal side of prosecution and then hoped to forget about it, and even though they knew he was incompetent and dangerous, they put that out of their minds and let him carry on, and now are acutely embarrassed when asked about them not having acted to control Singh.

Yes I caught that bit of Flemington notably failing notice Singh.

Happily I've had to go off and do other things this afternoon, rather than let these tedious teflon twats drone more of my life away.

I recognise it's nice to have the choice. What life must have been like for the poor bloody SPMs looking up and realising their lives were being completely controlled by arseholes of this (lack of) calibre... <shudder>

Harry Bowyer stating clearly that he doesn't view the word "bandwagon" as being prejorative, in the sense where it was used to refer to the fact that subpostmasters were separately and all over the country arguing that there was something wrong with the Horizon system. He'd sort of been doing OK-ish (relatively speaking for witnesses in the Inquiry) till then but this marks him out as yet another witness who will refuse to engage properly with the part he played in the scandal.

Well, this is a thoroughly depressing day of evidence from the Post Office's external lawyers about holding back documents from trials in which subpostmasters were about to lose everything, with the justification being things like disclosure requests being too broad or the lawyers receiving critical emails but then not bothering to read them and making convenient assumptions that there would be nothing damaging contained within them. Also, when everything came to light not, at an incredibly late stage, acting to notify convicted subpostmasters that there were documents that they should have been provided with for their defence in their trials.

I don't know about perverting the course of justice but these people should be struck off.

Thank you for taking one for the team and watching, nauticant.

I've been overwhelmed dealing with other idiots the last few days, and haven't had any energy left to listen to this life-sapping drivel by self-serving idiots.

I second that!

For me this is an utterly compelling watch.

One of the lowest points in today's testimony (from solicitor Martin Smith) was when the lid was blown off (knowledge of the Second Sight interim report becoming public), the Criminal Cases Review Commission wrote to Paula Vennells asking WTF had been going on and as a result Post Office's external lawyers, Cartwright King, sent a draft response for the Post Office to send to the CCRC to mislead them.

As time went on today Martin Smith hid more and more behind "a big boy wrote it and ran away", the big boy being barrister Simon Clarke. Clarke's evidence on 9 May is therefore going to be fascinating.

More shameful evidence today. There was the standard stuff about lawyers (at the very least) bending the rules to stitch up subpostmasters but two things stood out particularly. One was the attempt to make sure that evidence to exonerate Seema Misra was withheld from her, years after her conviction, possibly because her conviction has been seen as the original "test case" on which the entire Post Office cover-up was based. The other was that lawyers acting for the Post Office held a private meeting with a judge on the eve of a trial of a subpostmaster to obtain public interest immunity for the Second Sight interim report so that the defendant would be unaware of it. I cannot comprehend how they got away with the latter of these.

Strap in for a day of bizarre witness testimony by Jarnail Singh. He was head of criminal prosecutions at the Post Office. Today's it's Jason Beer KC as counsel so there should be some robust questioning.

I have a headache today. Do I dare watch this...?