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.
(https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-cast-plot-and-everything-we-know) (https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Mr%20Bates%20vs%20The%20Post%20Office%3A%20release%20date%2C%20cast%2C%20plot%2C%20trailer%2C%20interview%20and%20everything%20you%20need%20to%20know&url=www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-cast-plot-and-everything-we-know) (https://pinterest.com/pin/create/Button?url=www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-cast-plot-and-everything-we-know&media=cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/NxQdido3aDgZDeD93geoYm-1200-80.jpg)

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.

All episodes are on ITVX, but not sure if I'm going to watch it.

They always are /like iPlayer

But I shall watch daily as don't have time to binge

I absolutely agree.

For sure the sub-postmasters involved should get compensation, they deserve it. But in many cases that can't make up for the lives ruined, and in some cases lost, because of this scandal. Plus the compensation will likely come out of funds that don't personally affect those responsible.

Really some of those people in charge in the PO and Fujitsu at the time should face criminal proceedings.

I will be watching this programme for sure. It will probably make me angry but I think it is one of those stories that should get more and more coverage.

It made my blood boil at the time.

Yes I look forward to it tonight - after so much dross on tv!!!

Private Eye were trying to expose the truth over 20 years ago.
736 people were prosecuted

So why didnt judges and lawyers seem to notice that there was an unusually high amount of people all being prosecuted for the same thing?! Didnt they think it was odd

DH and I agreed this was a must watch for us, so outraged at how it was handled, those poor people. Hope it does it justice and raises the profile more of the fact that sometimes the computer just isn't bloody right.

I want to watch it, but I know my blood will be boiling before the first ad break...

Dh used to work for the P.O. I asked if he wanted to watch this. He said it would be just far too painful and traumatic watching what happened to those poor people. Paula Vennells, having helped to destroy the lives of the victims of this scandal, was awarded a CBE and became an Anglican priest. Heads should have rolled.

This whole affair makes me so angry, I’m not sure if I can watch this. Not just that it happened, but the feet-dragging subsequently in compensating people affected (not that compensation can make up for what some of the individuals went through). It’s just disgusting. But hopefully this series will put more pressure on where it’s needed.

I find it frightening that we live in an age where a computer can be believed over a human being. I have another good example.

From a review from a HA employee Taken from glass door

"OneSanctuary SAP is the name of a multi-million pound software system brought in by Sanctuary in 2016, designed for use by all areas of the business. It has been an unmitigated failure, and is a huge drawback of working for this company.
The issues caused by SAP are staggering and difficult to keep track of. Because SHA tried to implement SAP in a cost effective manner, they ended up vastly under-investing in critical elements. There is no tailoring of the generically presented system ('vanilla SAP'), which is an issue as social housing is a unique environment from a service delivery and CRM perspective, whereas vanilla SAP is more geared towards providing a solution for manufacturing industries. Thus, the system uses corporate nonsensical buzzwords and methods of handling accounts which absolutely do not reflect industry practice.
Here are just some examples of the more specific issues faced by staff:
No rent statements have been issued since it was implemented in August 2016, and if a resident insists on a rent statement it has to be prepared manually in a spreadsheet.
The rent and calculations for accounts are hard to use, and often completely wrong. Mostly because the system was never designed to understand housing benefit payments, and this has a very convoluted workaround which a computer cannot make sense of.
SAP cannot interface with Local Authorities Housing benefit systems so payments are missed, lost or misattributed
Direct debits do not work reliably, and for a long time following the implementation did not work at all. Front line staff are now preferring standing order.
The front end system of SAP requires far more testing and money spent on it. Each customer account is a total mess of information, with no discernible way to separate notes left between differing departments, with information left by staff often going into the wrong account entirely. This needs looking at as from a compliance (DPA) point of view the breaches are serious.
From a usability point of view, the view of a customers account within SAP CIC does not display appropriate information to the user (as stated before this is likely because the system was never designed to be used by a HA) and the user often has to go trawling around back end systems to find obviously relevant data (e.g tenancy start date, account balance, property type etc). This is a seemingly minor but considerable waste of resources"

Even AFTER i posted this i had the SH haters on here screaming PAY YOUR RENT at me when it had already been paid, So plenty on here believe computers over humans.

I remember all of this being in the news. Firstly people going to prison, then people finding out actually it was the computer system. Apparently the big bosses knew it was the computer system quite early on but tried to cover it up. They ought to be in prison!

They absolutely should! They committed perjury as far as I can see.

Agreed. Paula Vennells' head should definitely roll. She should be prosecuted and she could stand in the dock and repeat her mealy mouthed, patronising comments for all to hear. Disgraceful woman.

The whole thing is a shocking, shocking story which needs as wide an awareness as possible for the scandal it still is.

@JenniferBooth I had a few glancing encounters with SAP systems in the past and what you say does not surprise me.

Generally a SAP-based system needs a great deal of customization to suit a new organisation but SAP consultancy costs squillions so it is not hard to believe some places will try to do it on the cheap.

One organisation I worked for took years to migrate their core system to SAP. They dismissed two consultancies and ended up paying a third millions of pounds per month to get it completed

@5foot5 that was exactly the problem with the HA They tried to do it on the cheap.

I don't think I will.be able to watch it..the whole story makes me want to scream and I've no connection with anyone involved at all.

All I know, from experience, is that people do not turn from honest individuals to criminals in significant numbers. The odd person might if under life stresses and the odd person is just criminal but, by and large, honest people are honest. It was dreadful and someone's head should roll for this. Once upon a time it would have done too.

The thought we have so many untouchables in THIS country drives me nuts.

Our local postmistress went to prison due to this. I don't think the computer issue was common knowledge at the time but the whole thing seemed very odd. Sadly, her whole family lost everything as a result. ☹️

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-66858441

I don't think I will.beable to watch it..the whole story makes me want to scream and I've no connection with anyone involved at all.

This is (almost) how I feel.

I'm going to watch it because I 'trust' Tony Jones and because I think these poor people deserve to have the injustice shouted from the rooftops but the whole story makes my blood boil with rage for them.

What a nightmare for them all.

Yes, I guess you are right.

I'm at work tonight so will watch tomorrow and avoid this thread from 9

I don't R.E.M. this at all

Which is shameful as seems a huge well known story

Another not sure I can face watching it, will check comments here.

Absolutely horrendous!

Excuse my French but the twats at the top from the Post Office should be swinging from a rope for this.

They KNEW there was a problem and just covered it up. The trailer where Mr. Bates states they were just skint little people sums it up perfectly.

This will be a difficult but necessary watch!

Just watched first episode. Absolutely staggered by this, I don't recall seeing it in the news at the time. Also can't believe it's still ongoing.