To ask someone to explain the post office scandal as if I was a small child?

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its been all over the news but I’m so confused and I have no idea what’s going on

All the money the PO obtained from those post master they had claimed been stolen, were counted as profit. Our village post mistress at the time was a victim of Horizon. On top of the £ the PO made from the transactions they also got an extra £20k from her as well due to her having to make up the "shortfall" herself. Times that by x amount of post masters over almost 20 years and it's not hard to see why the PO wanted it kept quiet. The PO was seen as turning their fortunes around, share prices went up, the folk at the top were getting nice little bonuses. Kerfuckingching as far as they were concerned.
The village post mistress otoh was branded a thief and a liar and eventually moved away. The word from those she still kept in touch with is that she died a few years ago, still with her name not cleared.

I think I read that when the post masters registered money coming in/takings, the screen sometimes froze so they'd enter it again or multiple times until it unfroze but by then the system thought multiple amounts had been received and so when the equivalent cash didn't end up in the til they presumed theft. Fujitsu had the ability to log in unknown to the post masters and correct some of these issues which shows someone knew it was a bug at the time.

Why be rude? One way of getting information is by asking other people, as OP has done.

That is so sad. And it happened countless times.

The system was faulty which led to postmasters being accused of theft when Post Office investigated the "shortfall".

Many plead guilty to a charge of false accounting to avoid the more serios charge of theft

However many, many postmasters experienced shortages did not lead to investigation and prosecution but which they made up from their own money and have never been repaid.

I was a subpostmistress for a couple of years and the weekly balance was rarely correct - it was always a small amount "up" or "short" - usually about £10 - £20. My contract with the PO stated I was responsible for any shortfall so if I was £10 "up" - I would keep that aside and put it in when it was "short" - but there were occasions it was more and I'd need to find the cash.

I did have a period of several weeks/months where I was a few hundred pounds "up" - I kept that aside and then over another couple of months it started to show shortages until it eventually balanced out. However it was very stressful because I couldnt explain the surplus or the later shortages and was very worried that it would start to go hundreds of pounds short. One of the reasons I sold.

BBC Sounds - The Great Post Office Trial - Available Episodes

The panorama doc on bbc iplayer exlplains well

Listen to the BBC podcast about it.

Back in 1999 when this started IT and software were just taking off.
Can everyone remember the Millenium Bug worldwide scare - as people thought the coding woudn't cope with the change from 19xx to 20xx - People didn't have a clue really so why it was dismissed when postmasters were having problems with a new system I have no idea as, as I remember it, software always needed tweeks.

The Horizon system was first investigated in 2009 by a weekly technical business magazine called "Computer Weekly". It was a continuous front page story in the magazine as no-one who works in technology particularly on large systems would ever say that they don't have bugs. The story was then picked up by the weekly political satire magazine "Private Eye".

Subsequently other journalists from local/regional outlets including those for the BBC were told the personal stories of sub-postmasters/mistresses.

There were then documentaries on the issue. The Post Office management knowing that they had wrongly convicted people went after the journalists working on them particularly those working on Panorama in 2015. Due to this the journalists kept their whistleblower, who is now a podiatrist, quiet.

When the first person replies with a decent explanation why do dozens of other people then feel the need to repeat the same explanation but word it slightly differently? 😂

does OP pick the best explanation and someone wins a prize?

It’s worth noting that whilst a number of post masters/mistresses were convicted and some did go to jail, there were also others who had to declare themselves bankrupt, who lost their homes, suffered relationship breakdowns and in a few cases committed suicide as a result of this scandal.

I remember it at the time and I cannot understand everyone denying that they knew there was a problem. Tony Blair was advised there was an issue with the accounting software but still signed off on contracts. The general public knew there was a problem how all those involved at the time deny knowledge of the issue is beyond me who is just a member of the general public.

The whole situation is shameful they ruined people’s lives.

Yep, I can explain it in a nutshell. People at the very top of society screw over people at the bottom.

A lot of people really believed that a machine couldn't be wrong.

This. I was wondering when Fujitsu's role would be mentioned. Normally with systems like this, they're piloted in a test environment, isolated from live systems, therefore minimising potential risk. It seems likely that this wasn't the case here and Fujitsu's testers and test environment were linked to live accounts, allowing them to tamper with postmaster's accounts, despite assurances that they were secure and inaccessible to anyone except the postmasters themselves. Imagine that level of access in a 'test' environment linked to the Police National Computer. Fujitsu's fingers are in so many government pies, and the implications are therefore so monumental, that it had to be covered up.

What's more, all the thousands taken from those poor postmasters who had their lives and their livelihoods ruined, most likely ended up showing as profit in the Post Office's legers. They effectively stole that money from those people.

Two things that can, and should, happen immediately (1) repay all money paid by postmasters out of their own pocket to make up 'shortfalls'. (2) Withdraw the power from the Post Office to prosecute, bypassing DPP.

If you look at the times posted the early explanations were all posted within minutes of each other so overlap of responses has occurred. Sometimes you start typing and something takes you away before you return to finish and tap send. Anyway one thing the repetition shows, is that it was such a simple thing to realise if only people had been honest and started to rectify the problem instead of ruining so many many lives.

I agree. My experience in auditing showed me that when the company culture is rubbish, people are inclined to hide any issues because they are scared to speak up (whether the issue was caused by them or someone else). If the CEO comes and ask "send me proof that the system is working", it's unlikely that anyone will admit it doesn't. They will try to fix it in the background hoping no one notices...

This is the bit I don't get, why were they going into people accounts and altering figures in the first place? Was no-one else keeping handwritten records too and those records were balancing but not horizon figures.

So how many people knew and was covering it up, how did they sleep at night knowing what they were doing to innocent people. I could understand if it was a few people but it was hundreds.

Did they never think this would come out? Postmasters would talk or really think they were the only ones. The fact that the post office could prosecute themselves is so wrong, an independent body would have discovered the error.

It's unbelievable really as said watching the tv drama, you'd think it was fiction. I feel so sorry for everyone this effected, there families etc and still not being compensated and justice not been done.

Actually, the various explanations have had different facts in them, which I found really helpful.