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.

One thing that got to me about this, the PO and Fujitsu management bear the ultimate blame but on the bottom rung there are helpline employees telling flat out lies about nobody else having problems.
I don’t want to be unsympathetic to people who (unlike the bosses) may be in precarious financial positions but why do we not expect and allow people at all levels to be honest? The subpostmasters are expected to have total integrity, after all.
I want to live in a world where junior staff are not ALLOWED to be made to lie at risk of losing their jobs. The guy in the drama who ultimately whistleblows for Fujitsu clearly believes he has a lot to lose by doing so.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel
One thing that got to me about this, the PO and Fujitsu management bear the ultimate blame but on the bottom rung there are helpline employees telling flat out lies about nobody else having problems.

I've been there - following the script. This was at a major energy supplier. In the end I wouldn't be made a liar and I walked.

If the drama is accurate it would seem the helpline staff had little more idea than the SPM. Turn over was likely high, training poor and a lot will have been desperate for the job. There were probably many staff so they may not have had to trot out the 'no one else' line all that often. And it is likely back then that they had no idea of what befell the callers whose issue they failed to resolve.

Also there are some pretty draconian clauses in call centre contracts regarding confidentiality - ostensibly to protect the customers but really to cover employers from every angle. Few would stand up to judicial scrutiny but who would risk it and break ranks? I can imagine many just leaving, knowing their concerns wouldn't be listened to.

And just to be clear I'm talking about the helpline staff. Not the team in the boiler room trying to fix issues through the backdoor they were denying existed. They were rather more culpable.

Thank you Laughingravy, that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about staff turnover and confidentiality clauses.
Well done for walking when you found yourself in that situation.

question - are Fujitsu involved in any banking/payment systems (in addition to the PO thing which clearly came under that) ?
un-logged external changes to account details/transactions surely wouldn't be permitted?
On the evolving situation, I sure hope no-one in government thinks that pardons, some tiny compensation and some waffle about how terrible this was/must never happen again/lessons learned/moving forward bla bla is thought appropriate.
Am not sure how much compensation could possibly compensate for this - lives ruined/deaths/mental torture/effects on not just the individuals but their partners/relationships family children.
Can't think of any precedents.
Surely it should be megamegabucks.
I understand that the Post Office is effectively owned/controlled by the government.

>>I've been there - following the script. This was at a major energy supplier. In the end I wouldn't be made a liar and I walked.

at the risk of a divert, npower by any chance?

Musing - I know marches are maybe somewhat degraded in this twatter age, but since Joe Public is clearly getting enraged by this, maybe a citizen's march would be in order in support of the innocent - to concentrate the minds of the authorities as they waffle and waver.

Carrying on the divert, my eye still twitches looking at that name and the issues I had when they 'upgraded' their billing system!

A new thread for wayward billing systems maybe as don't want to divert from the suffering of the postmasters (suffice it to say I had major major issues, managed to find the direct phone line for head of "customer services", left an interesting message, soon after got a call "by chance" from some heavies asking if I was a journalist. Maybe that team is now working on "damage limitation at Fujitsu.
Personally, if some SENIOR people from Fujitsu and the Post Office don't end up in jail (NOT SUSPENDED) for this I will consider it a whitewash.
Or maybe take up petty housebreaking - being crap at such things I will inevitably be caught and can then compare and contrast the authorities' somewhat differential attitude to crime.

[email protected] - from Twitter - this apparently is the address to email to ask that Paula Vennells' CBE be removed

Given it's almost 1.1m signatures now, why isn't she doing the decent thing and handing it back instead of waiting to be stripped of it? Considering she was an Anglican priest too, you'd expect decent morals from her.

Maybe she fears that this would be taken as admitting responsibility and be used against her in court.

If you think about it she must be in a scary place right now with the possibility she might be prosecuted and end up in prison.

TBH I was struck by the line spoken by the elderly man postmaster character in the drama who went to prison for it, when he is asked at the end if he wants to see people go to prison and he replies prison doesn’t do any good and he would rather see them hit where it hurts, in the pocket.

Trouble is right now given the outcry against Paula Vennels in particular and the number of people involved it would be all too easy to get her prosecuted as the main scapegoat and everyone else get off scot free, even though she is only one of the many people responsible.

Ed Davey also in the frame he’s being blamed too…lot of high up people have a lot to answer for …despicable!

Paula V should be in court and Angela what’s her face …

Do uou have a link @Superlambaanana

But yes a good list and starting point for all those who suffered

Yes this

Why do they need to look into every case

All the cases surely would be the same

They didnt steal the money

They were all robbed via an programme that was faulty

It’s despicable ( I nearly said laughable which it clearly isn’t) that a TV drama had to get politicians talking about this. Appalling absolutely appalling.

Well done to the programme makers for doing such a good job of drawing attention to this, but disgraceful that it had to come to this to get things moving along.

It's funny now to see the 'real people' on TV and think 'oh there's Lee, and Jo... etc'

It's absolutely outrageous and I really hope that they get the compensation, and more, that they deserve.

Reading the witness transcripts in the inquiry is telling - the PO staff all trying to shift blame; no ownership.

Like the Grenfell inquiry.

Which has changed nothing.

@TokyoSushi
Well done to the programme makers for doing such a good job of drawing attention to this, but disgraceful that it had to come to this to get things moving along.
It is a very complex situation and though it has had a great deal of publicity since the story first broke in 2009 it mostly only reached a certain section of society.

A brilliantly written and well made TV drama can reach a lot of people who don't read Private Eye, never heard of Computer Weekly or bother much with Radio 4. It has helped hugely that the central characters in the programme are as charismatic in real life - we are a fickle lot when it comes to rooting for the good guys.

Given the length of time this has dragged on it is shameful that it isn't yet sorted but unfortunately politics is increasingly a revolving door and it's likely a few ministers were frustrated at not getting anywhere, as well as ones relieved this hot potato was off there desk.

We can only hope this government get a decent and fair scheme in place before a general election, when it could get lost in all the noise and yet another change of ministers.

Whenever people like Rees-Mogg talk about a bonfire of red tape this is where we end up.

agree with this. And this is why they wanted Brexit to take away those protections.

Yes agree that it has had a great deal of publicity (I was well aware of it) but for some reason it was quite niche it's never really had the 'cut through' that it thoroughly deserved, until now...

please - this has nothing to do with Brexit.

You’re misunderstanding me. I quoted a pp about Reece mogg quote re red tape bonfire

Where’s the petition anyone? I’m signing it

Also did someone mention that there was a real life documentary on the real Mr Bates ? Where can I find it ?