To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

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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.,

Yes. Where is her integrity?

Surely an application for the forfeiture of her pension can be made? Should be made.

And yes, corporate manslaughter should also be looked at.

There is - the National Federation of SubPostmasters (NFSP). It has been funded entirely by Post Office since 2016. Even before that, it failed to defend subpostmasters. They seem to have been concerned that acknowledging problems with Horizon would damage the value of subpostmasters' businesses. Subpostmasters experiencing problems who turned to the NFSP got little or no help.

I've just started watching and am raging and horrified in equal measure.

Those poor, poor people.

The petition has gone through the roof thankfully.

One thing that needs to be addressed is the god-like status some senior managers seem to be accorded in their organisations.

She stepped down as CEO of Post Office in February 2019. At that stage the board of Post Office still seemed to think they could win the group litigation. And no, she did not report to the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State. She reported to the Post Office board and the chairman, Tim Parker.

Did it go deeper into government? Yes - Tony Blair carries some of the responsibility for what happened. And the civil service definitely wanted the whole thing to go away. They resisted any form of inquiry. I could be wrong, but I don't think Vennells was being given a thank you for taking the fall.

We binge watched all the episodes the other day.
Absolutely heartbreaking- and shameful. The acting was brilliant, it really made you feel what they were going through. Those poor people went through hell, and still haven't come out the other side.
And Alan Bates needs a knighthood!

Alan Bates was offered an OBE and turned it down. Good man.

We just binge listened to all the BBC Radio 4 podcasts 'The Great Post Office Trial' and it's even worse than it appears in the drama.

What an absolute disgrace.

Thank you for that! I'm going to listen!

Both DH and I shed a tear at the end. The figures shown at the end were even more shocking!
Alan Bates is an absolute legend.

It was very emotional. Alan Bates is a remarkable man.

It hits home that not everyone in Prison is bad and guilty just like not every Priest is good and innocent. Yes, I am staring right at you Paula Vennells.

Remember hearing an interview with an educated middle class woman who killed 3 friends in a car accident. She went to prison and was glad to. She found the other women prisoners were largely kind and sympathetic and most had appalling backgrounds hence ending up committing crime and prison.

Thank God for people like Alan Bates.
The nightmare continues for these people.
They deserve proper compensation, though for many even that will be too little too late.
Makes my blood boil how they are being treated even now.
All involved in the Post Office should hang their heads in shame.

I first became aware of this injustice at least 2 years ago. The only part that interests me is how many people were unfamiliar until now. Or how much people want to feel outrage, maybe.

Way too sad & upsetting for me to 'enjoy' the dramatisation.

On PM on radio 4this evening they were saying it’s taken this tv prog to get the public involved - but I’ve been sickened by the whole carry on for years, since it first came to light - but what can a member of the public do -we assume our MPs are dealing with it.
I could have emailed my MP I spose .

I've always wondered about the amounts involved. They were so huge. Wouldn't the PO have to document that there was a huge drop in takings, that there was a history of taking £20k/day or whatever the huge amounts were, that were supposed to have gone missing? In order to prove the seemingly missing amounts weren't a software glitch.

I never perceived that any PO I've been in had turnover anything close to the amounts that were supposed to have been stolen.

There’s a documentary about this scandal on ITV1 now.

@Whydowomendothistothemselves - this documentary is a harrowing watch. Those appalling newspaper headlines!

Private Eye has kept on reporting on it for over a decade. It really should be required reading to alert the public to all the scandal that goes on daily by our so-called leaders.

So often PE is way ahead of the rest of the media in exposing stuff, the Cyril Smith scandal was reported by the Eye years before it became generally known.

it also illuminates how many financial barriers to justice there are in this country.

It's absolutely astounding (or maybe it isn't really) that it's just accepted that justice is usually available for anybody who is rich enough to pay for it.

The law of this country seems to be based wholly around the desires and conveniences of the wealthy and powerful, and the only interest in involving the ordinary little people is when they can put them in the dock and convict them, whether justified or not.

There really should be some kind of legislation to prevent very rich people and corporations from wearing down their much poorer opponents by simply making them spend all of their money, and then swooping in and stealing a march on them once they're broke. Once it's very clear that somebody is trying to buy the result that they want, this should be severely punishable; not just accepted as the way it is.

This reminds me of at least one case I know of (and I'm sure there must be loads more), where Tesco were determined to build a controversial new store in a small town where the council were keen to stop them, for various reasons. Tesco got their way in the end, as the council were honest about the fact that Tesco could and would just keep on appealing until the council was skint and they would win anyway, so the council said they may as well just give in at the start. I believe this is what's known as 'British justice'.

I couldn't agree more.

I also detest the way that, just because a great number of so-called conspiracy theories are crazy and ridiculous, most people then take that to assume that any belief in or accusation of conspiracy whatsoever must also be hogwash and not be considered or entertained for a second.

If the very concept of 'conspiracies' doesn't exist - basically just two or more people secretly planning a crime, which surely can't be that far-fetched - then why do the police successfully prosecute many people for 'conspiracy to X' on a very regular basis?

It strikes me that this country would be a much, much better place for us all to live in if people like Alan Bates were in charge of the big national institutions and in government and the likes of Paula Vennells were sent out to run sub post offices in remote areas - ideally not so remote that they don't have two sub POs, so that everybody can use the other one instead.

I know there's the old chestnut about 'isn't it funny how everybody who best knows how to run the country is out in the streets driving a taxi?' - but maybe there's a lot more actual truth to it than we may have thought. It's not like there aren't a great many people who are high up and in charge who are utterly incompetent, corrupt and/or thoroughly untrustworthy, even criminal.

I also find it interesting how smugly proud of themselves the perpetrators are - eventually - that they actually make a point of announcing how many millions of pounds they have agreed to pay in compensation.

As was made clear by Lee Castleton in the drama, it's an absolute insult and a tiny fraction of what anything approaching true compensation could possibly be, when split between all of the people that the PO ruined and stole from. He himself was ripped off to the tune of hundreds of thousands - you can well see how getting a measly £20K back would hardly leave him jumping up and down in delight that he had seen proper justice.

Something that Jo said in the drama really brought this home to me in its essence: people who have deliberately and shamefacedly stolen from you are then getting you prosecuted and heavily punished/destroyed for allegedly stealing from them.

Tearing that CBE from PV in public disgrace is only the tiniest start of it (never mind 'asking' her to give it back); how on earth are all of these deeply guilty people completely escaping what they cheerfully put the innocent people through?