To be absolutely aghast after watching Mr Bates v the Post Office

[Vistada]

I binged all of this in one go, no spoilers (although the current state of play is easily findable...)

AIBU to be absolutely aghast that this happened, and happened for so long.
Absolutely dystopian!

Brought me to tears. Not many programmes do that. Devastating. 😢 I don't think anything has upset me this much (on TV) for a LONG time.

THIS was just on the news. Hope it's true. Clear all their names, and then give them 100s of 1000s of pounds in compensation, and then jail that fucking head-honcho woman who became a vicar!

Love and blessings to all the victims. ❤ I cannot believe this was allowed to happen!

Post Office scandal: Rishi Sunak considers measures to clear all victims - BBC News

I'm really surprised this seems to be the first most people are hearing about this. I thought it was quite well know about? It really is disgusting and shocking the post office got away with this for so long. I know there's been some justice for accused people but not all.

I’ve followed this for a long time too and I’m really glad it’s being brought to the attention of the wider public. The drama is excellent. Also sheds some light on how poor our justice system is. A close family member was a victim of a miscarriage of justice (not PO related) and it completely ruined them so it’s quite close to home for me. The individual stories are utterly heartbreaking and many more people died carrying that shame before this all came to light. It’s also quite scary to think of the many miscarriages of justice that go on all the time that we don’t know about.

I also highly recommend the Nick Wallis podcast on BBC iplayer - it has a lot of things in it which were not included in the tv program, such as the Japanese Ambassador having a meeting with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown about the Horizon project when it was looking like it would be dropped.

I read earlier that Gillian Keegan (Ed sec)‘a husband was the Chief executive/chair of Fujitsu at the time! I haven’t seen the tv program, was he mentioned?

I've been in financial software development for a looong time, it was an extremely frustrating watch. I've genuinely never seen such incompetent software released. I kept shouting at poor DH, "what are they doing? Why is there no software examiner involved?". Shocking stuff for our industry. Frightening, really.

well, I guess this shows that Rishi doesn't listen to Radio 4 but watches ITV.

I think the outrage is finally building. I really hope so.

The Post Office, as an organisation, committed fraud on a grand scale. It should be closed down and the brand disappear. The assets and contracts can be auctioned to other companies.

Any bonuses paid to executives should be clawed back, if legally possible.

All convictions should be instantly overturned as unsafe and, if there is a (very rare) case to answer, it should be restarted from scratch.

Finally any executive who knowingly lie or, worse, perjured themselves, should be prosecuted, and quickly. We mustn’t wait until the relevant people are ancient or dead.

Totally agree.

Are you asking?

(What's with ending statements with question marks these days?)

İ don't understand how anyone at the post office could have thought that 750 postmasters were all simultaneously coincidentally stealing from one organisation within the same time period. That just doesn't happen.

Adam Crozier worked for Royal Mail, not the Post Office. They’re two separate organisations.

I don't believe anyone really thought that freshstart. Fujitsu knew, and PO hierarchy knew, and continued in the best tradition of Establishment cover ups "We've started so we'll have to finish". I heard someone on tv or radio today say that they were accused of 'losing' £700,000 or so. In a little post office where their annual turnover was about £34k. Nobody has mentioned that this appears to be a conspiracy of the worst kind. All top brass should be investigated, charged and imprisoned.

He was Chief Exec of Royal Mail when the Post Office came under Royal Mail. They weren't 2 separate companies in the beginning of this whole shit show. He has to take some responsibility. The same as anyone who had manager responsibilities in the 24 years this has been going on.

Oh he's absolutely implicated in this.

And while the programme is great it is outrageous that it misrepresented his role

Agreed, it's so utterly nasty and wrecked so many lives and families. My friend's family have never been the same again. It's monstrous.

There are at least 4 suicides of sub post masters linked to the horizon scandal - can't the powers that be at the post office be charged with corporate manslaughter, as their actions directly led to the deaths of those people?

I am also a software engineer working in financial systems, and DH is a SE, too. Within the first few minutes of the first episode DH and I were just angry about how it happened.

This would absolutely never happen in my company.

And ruin more post masters lives with lack of income?

This. Fujitsu need to be made accountable, they are totally at fault. Strikes me PO could have a very good case against them.

I assume you work in the private sector though?

I don't understand how they can prosecute people for the theft of rather large amounts of money, without any actual stolen money to show? Where is the money showing up in the PM's bank account before being spent? Where is the bundle of notes under a loose floorboard in the PM's house?

Agreed.

And part of that conversation needs to be around the decimation of legal aid which meant a lot of those people were unrepresented.. the popular press encouraged people to support the slashing of legal aid (and court budgets) by presenting it as money going to fat cat lawyers /to help criminals. But as any wrongly accused person discovers, justice without good quality well paid representation is rough justice at best.

There are a lot of other limb's to this story too admittedly (not least the obvious cover up/fraud by post office and the downsides of them being able to run their own prosecutions)

PO would definitely have a case against Fujitsu but, if I recall correctly, PO was aware that Fujitsu had a department staffed for the purpose of correcting Horizon errors. Mr Bates? Or the union rep? Was invited to Fujitsu to see how the department worked and spoke to workers about what they were doing. Later both PO and Fujitsu denied this meeting took place but proof was found in email confirmation from the time. So PO was complicit.

The CPS didn’t take them to court, the PO did. That is the whole f*ing point.