MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE - mon to thur ITV 9pm - tv pace no spoilers

[Blondeshavemorefun]

Mon to thur

Mr Bates vs The Post Office is an ITV drama based on a true story of injustice starring Toby Jones, Julie Hesmondhalgh, WIll Mellor and Monica Dolan.
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Mr Bates vs The Post Office is a hard-hitting ITV1 drama starring Toby Jones, Monica Dolan and Julie Hesmondhalgh among others.

The series details one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history, where thousands of Post Office sub postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to a defective IT system.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office follows Alan Bates (Toby Jones), a sub postmaster who decided to fight back against a scandalous miscarriage of justice.

He was one of thousands of sub postmasters and postmistresses who between 2000 and 2013 were falsely accused of theft due to financial discrepancies thrown up by the flawed Horizon computerised accounting system.

More than 700 were prosecuted and several went to prison while others lost their homes and life savings trying to pay back the money the Post Office claimed was missing.

Many were unfairly ostracised from their communities, who believed they were criminals.

In 2009 Alan Bates decided to form the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance (https://www.jfsa.org.uk/), uniting thousands of his colleagues to
fight to clear their names.

Nadhim Zahawi played himself!

i was a bit confused.

thus series is just shocking. And frightening that it happened. Especially as we hand over more power to AI and that the assumption is that computers aren’t wrong.

It is so shocking that the compensation & money has still not been paid - absolutely shameful. As others have said, it is sobering how powerless ordinary people are against the establishment, eg Grenfell, Hillsborough. Sends a shiver down my spine...there but for the grace of god are all of us.

And that’s why I hate hearing “if you have nothing to hide” when yet more powers are given to the government departments like dwp. It is frightening. Even more so in the context of this scandal.

Yes that threw me!
He was good. I wonder if he was on the original select committee?

I do want to know if that was a true transcript of what he said. If so well done. He handled her well.

Corruption is everywhere, but now everyone knows what happened, and the fact the victims STILL havent received full compensation is truly sickening.. its taking so bloody long, heads should be rolling by now to say the least!

Calls for Paula Vennells to hand back her CBE is really gathering momentum today. Lying low and a pathetic apology is not good enough.

Sorry to sound stupid but we're the people at Horizon fiddling the money on purpose or was it a tech problem? If on purpose what would be the motivation?

I wondered this too! I thought it was more just computer errors but the PO head office didn’t want to admit that it was the system.

Yes and in episode two it was revealed almost by accident by the man at horizon that they could gain remote access...

Boycotting Fujitsu and holding the Post Office to account are not mutually exclusive.

Everyone should calling for a boycott of Fujitsu in the public and private sector,

What the programme showed they did was a total disgrace.

So what if they're big.

We just saw determined 'little people' win a fight against a juggernaut.

Albeit further to go - but there always is.

Is the bit about the union guys wife being prosecuted the night after his visit true?

If so then fujitsu must have been in on it too.

I wondered that

It's on bbc breakfast now

Public inquiry starts 11 Jan

I saw a clip on the news afterwards of the actual select committee and he did appear to say the same thing.

I'm 'enjoying' the series and looking forward to the final episode tonight. I have found it very harrowing though. It has portrayed the anguish of the sub post masters very well. I wonder if the decision to air it in January was deliberate- in a month when most of us are worrying about money to some extent. The sheer frustration of dealing with corrupted power is hard to stomach. Im afraid I am cynical enough to believe that media interest will die back down again in a week or two (probably because a ceo or politician will ask a media owner to drop the story while theyre at a dinner party), Paula won't hand back/ be stripped of her honour, the sub postmasters will never be properly compensated, Fujitsu will continue to be awarded massive government contracts www.computerweekly.com/news/366560655/Controversial-Fujitsu-contract-with-Post-Office-extended-again, CEOs and bosses will continue to be paid ridiculous salaries and bonuses even if they are worse than useless, lawyers will continue to be paid vast amounts to develop obtuse arguments about minuate on all sides, politicians will continue be corrupt and award honours to their supporters and donors (see Liz Truss's resignation cash-for-honours, despite a tiny flurry of negative press, theyve still gone ahead), and the little people will continue to be treated like dirt by our leaders because there really isnt anything we can do about it. 😡

From what was portrayed to me it appeared to be a tech problem I.e. the system had either not been configured correctly or needed customisation.

The Fujitsu staff appeared to know the “bugs “ (problems) in the system and were going in to manually override them to hopefully correct them. This is fine when you do it transparently - yes it happens on all systems I have worked with, including SAP and Oracle. What wasn’t fine is Fujitsu logging in to the individual postmasters’ accounts and changing things without telling them

IT systems should automatically log each change and which user account made the change so it should be relatively easy to track if Fujitsu had made a change to a specific postmasters account.

For me the biggest issue is the email in which Paula Vennells asked if anyone could access the system remotely and the response. If the response was yes Fujitsu, then the date of that response draws a line and anything she did after that date puts her in breach of the Nolan principles and possibly into unlawful actions territory.

For me Angela van Den Bogerd in the programme seems far more culpable because she clearly knew what was going on. What I don’t know is how accurately she was portrayed.

Yes, I think it was pretty much word for word what he said. It was very impressive, but I think maybe the personal cameo detracts from it slightly. “Yes, I will appear on TV to recreate my finest moment so more people can see it”. But I think he’s known to have quite a large ego.

I've just listened to episode 34 of the podcast 'Investigating the Post Office Scandal It's titled Where did the money go. the two contributors are a former Postmaster and CWU rep and the head of Second Sight.

Two connected things stand out. Firstly the contract basically stank - all liability falls on the SPM - even if the fault or theft lay elsewhere there was no way for them to investigate and prove it. Even if a SPM suspected a staff member of theft the PO wouldn't help, leaving the SPM liable. And the police would say it was an internal PO matter.

Secondly and most telling was a comment by Don Warmington - Basically he said the PO put in a system that saved them money and put all the risk on the SPM and those SPM had no say in the matter. Nice trick if you can do it.

What a shame. #sarcasm

We binge watched all 4 episodes the other night. I'm gobsmacked.

I only recall hearing about this in recent years, not at the time. It's utterly scandalous.

Only watched ep1 so far. Have been keeping up with this via Marina Hyde in the Guardian. Her journalism is exceptional I feel. She has not let this lie!
It has gone unreported in the wider press until the recent offers of compensation so it's not surprising to feel you didn't hear anything at the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/18/post-office-scandal-cover-up-justice?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

with regard to Paula and Angela, referred to as the gruesome twosome by one of the characters I believe.
Same scene I couldn't help but leak a wry smile when that same character or another said "aren't there any blokes" in the Post Office?
A post from a great local blog/newsblog on the matter here.
https://insidecroydon.com/2024/01/04/post-office-scandal-i-wept-for-a-few-hours-says-tory-mp/
Has a useful summary of the consequences, and the amount the PO spent on trying to cover this all up.
Heads should clearly roll/be severed.
Each subpostmaster should get a mega amount.
Hard to put a figure on what could possibly compensate for this horror.

Will watch the last episode when I can face it.
ITVX also has a good doc on the matter, though they slightly confused matters by using scenes from the drama. I watched it before starting the drama viewing.
By the by, did anyone catch the fact in this mess that Ed Davey, LibDem leader and in charge of this sector under the coalition refused to meet Alan Bates? But was more than happy to jump on the twatter bandwagon after the covid clapham common gathering.

Ive signed the petition to strip Paula Vennells of her OBE. Although I don’t about taking her OBE off her she aught to be hauled over the coals prosecuted and imprisoned like those poor innocent people were. Not just her mind the lot of them who allowed this hell to go on.

I read about one of the victims recently. He'd been awarded £300,000-odd compensation, but had been taxed £78,000 (WTAF!!!) and had to pay £200,000 as part of his bankruptcy. He was left with £8,000. Why are these sums being taxed?
Also in the news today. By 1pm on Thursday January 4th, the average FTSE100 CEO has earned more than his workers. It's getting earlier every year.

https://globalpayrollassociation.com/blogs/top-posts/uk-ftse-chief-execs-earn-national-average-annual-salary-by-first-week-of-january

Is compensation taxed then ?
I didn't know that

Play Angela was only there for 4mths ?