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.,

And the shocking thing about the pregnant lady (forgotten her name, I think she was the one in West Byfleet) was that the judge involved appeared to think she was innocent (or at least that the evidence wasn't there to convict) and certainly gave the jury a steer in that direction.

So why on earth didn't he give her a suspended sentence when she was found guilty anyway?

So many judges not using their noddles too. I know that the early cases were before the internet and social media had really taken off, but they must have been aware of the cases as time went on. The defence lawyers were a bit crap at times too, although I know they were largely trying to keep their clients out of jail.

@HPLikecraft do you know where the podcast you listened to it on is?

Haven't watched this yet but the Irish village I live in, around 30 odd years ago, the local postmistress got found out for using deceased person's pension books to line her own pockets. And what happened? there was a collection taken up by the community, even promoted in church by the priest, to raise money for her to return what she had stolen so she got away with it. I don't know what excuse she came up with, what she did was wrong.

Most likely the BBC sounds one

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000jf7j?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Thanks @CatPancake

Which has absolutely nothing to do with this at all. I'm really not sure why you've posted?

In the last few days there have been hopeful signs.

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

There was this story in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/28/post-office-horizon-inquiry-enough-evidence-for-police-investigation

and I think I may have seen similar in The Times.

It's also a huge fraud case by the Post Office on those they basically scammed money off when no money had gone missing in the first place.

I have read the Wallis book - it is brilliantly researched. I am looking forward to binge watching the series this week. I am so sad for those who took their lives over this. It is truly heartbreaking 💔

The question also arises as to where the money has gone that the postmasters paid to the Post Office to try to cover the losses from their own pockets. All of that money should be refunded.

But I guess a lot of postmasters had small losses, covered them and the system didn't go too haywire for them, so we'll never know the extent of the problem.

Also, why was the system always against the postmasters and mistresses, not in their favour?

There was some suggestion that the systems were being manipulated by Fujitsu (something both they and the Post Office denied for years), so have some of their employees made off with the cash? This is an angle which I've not seen discussed.

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.

"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.

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.

Yes, I want to know this.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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 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.

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!!

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

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.

Watching it now.

Heart wrenching

I can barely watch this. Utterly horrific