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.

On itvx along with the drama - I watched the doc first.

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/strip-paula-vennells-of-her-cbe

But rich Starmer is now pontificating about this.
He was Director of Public Prosecutions 2008-2013 and could have intervened in the PO prosecutions scandal but didn't.
Indeed the CPS ran some of the prosecutions for the Post Office including one ending in a pregnant woman being sent to prison.
Amazing hypocrisy!

Please don't forget the part (or lack of it) played by Ed Davey, Leader of the Lib Dems, when he was minister with responsibility for the Post Office.
The Guardian notes -

Ed Davey
Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, has come under increasing criticism for his lack of action when he was postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012, during the coalition government with the Conservatives, when the software issues started coming to light.
In May 2010, Davey refused to meet Alan Bates, the post office operator who led the campaign to expose the scandal and whose story has now been told in an ITV drama, saying he did not believe it “would serve any purpose”.


Ed Davey has claimed that Post Office executives had blocked him from meeting campaigners. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
Bates has described the Lib Dem minister’s 121-word response as not just “disappointing” but “offensive

You can sign a pet ion for him to have his knighthood removed here

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/post-office-scandal-strip-ed-davey-of-his-knighthood

Sorry that was a bit disjointed . It seems wrong that senior ministers such as Ed Davey who was the Government minister responsible for the smooth running of the Post Office, chose not to investigate growing concerns about the prosecutions of the post masters. He received a knighthood for his services to the Post Office.
He should accept responsibility and be held accountable

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/post-office-scandal-strip-ed-davey-of-his-knighthood

I'd like to know how a CBE for that woman was ever approved in the first place. The problems were known when it was awarded. The people who approved it are as corrupt and immoral as the post office.

Im watching Newsnight Ed Davey has got the right hump apparently

I’m watching it now though I’d listened to the rad 4 programmes.

Will anyone investigate Fujitsu???

I can't imagine any senior managers at the Post Office or Fujitsu ending up behind bars nor either organisation suffering the heavy financial penalties which they deserve.

But at least the drama has made the scandal a national talking point and encouraged more wrongfully convicted people to come forward. They know now that the public believes in their innocence, I think all convictions will be overturned and am hopeful about compensation finally being sorted.

This drama could be this century's equivalent of Cathy Come Home.

It wad interesting listening to Toby Jones and the drama's producer talking on PM on radio 4 this evening.

The producer warned ITV bosses that they wouldn't get high viewing figures initially because of the slot (January and against 2 big programmes on BBC) but it would find more viewers over time. They were completely unprepared for the reception it had.

He also acknowledged the work of journalists who had been reporting on the story for a long time, especially Nick Wallis.

I FOUND THE OLD THREAD Here is the attitude i got when i originally posted about SAP

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2978114-URGENT-Do-you-rent-from-a-HOUSING-ASSOCIATION-Do-you-claim-HB-Then-please-READ-THIS?page=3

Im still watching the programme. What I don’t understand is , how was anyone prosecuted when the money wasn’t traced ? Surely the police and CPS needed proof that the post masters had indeed taken the money ?
Where was the money? What account did it go to ? Where was it transferred to ? It must have gone somewhere surely ?
Sorry for being dim, I just don’t understand how anyone could be charged without proof they had taken the cash. The cash didn’t exist as such did it ?

The police and cps weren’t involved. That’s one of the huge points of this case. The post office has the powers to investigate and to prosecute criminal cases without involving the police and cps. I think the rspca also has this power. The PO are also the body involved in the appeals which is why so few have been successful. The PO just outspends the victims on legal processes until the victims give up. Many of the victims are campaigning for the PO to be stripped of this power.

@Blondeshavemorefun do you want a link to the article? The comment I posted below was a comment made on an article about the scandal - the comment was made by a member of the public. You would need a times subscription to be able to read the article and the public comments made below it.

Well it seems bloody obvious to me that the Post Offoce should have the power to prosecute its own staff. Surely in light of this this is just common sense?

Have you lost a ‘not’?!

It strikes me that while it was always an anomaly there might have been reasons once but it sits very uncomfortably with the culture and agenda of privatisation. For an organisation that is supposed to be making a profit to have this power is dangerous, and this has shown exactly why.

Morning Nigel, no he couldn't. The CPS couldn't intervene unless asked. NF is trying to turn this into a Savile type smear against Starmer. I'm sure some of the mid will stick.

The Post Office managed to put the frighteners on several to get them to accept a charge of false accounting. The consultant brought in to look at things found at least one postmaster where the Post Office's own auditor said that there was no proof of theft at all, so the PO just pushed for the terrified postmaster to plead quilty to false accounting.
The "where did the money go" question was asked in the drama. The answer was that most likely it sat around in a separate account for a while ("till the heat is off" is the phrase used by the PO's fellow crooks I think) and then just went into the PO's profits. Incredible I know.
Maybe we should just all be grateful that in this medieval scenario the Post Office doesn't have the monarch given power to burn folks on the village green after an expedited trial where the "judiciary" bow down before their superior technical knowledge/book of runes.

This guy used to be a Chief Crown Prosecutor.

On the computer/tech issue, I believe Lee Castleton is on record as saying that this is not a computer issue but a people/human issue.
So in my view this is why PO and Fujitsu folk need to swing for it. It cannot be blamed on a rogue computer system.

I hope there is a "not" missing in this post. Post Office acted as victim, investigator and prosecutor in these cases and treated the criminal prosecutions as a means to collect money from subpostmasters. Completely unacceptable.

short potted article here on folks who have questions to answer.
Note the Libs responsibility for the patch over an extended running period - remember Jo Swinson, the woman who was going to make the world a better place for little girls? Then disappeared. No longer an MP.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/08/paula-vennells-to-ed-davey-the-people-with-questions-to-answer-on-the-post-office-scandal

So Kier Starmer was DPP from 2008 to 2013 and didn’t even ask a question about all the Post Office prosecutions?

Asking a question behind the scenes is not interfering. What did he know and when?

There are a lot of politicians who are also getting dragged into this. Along with Fujitsu.

It's amazing that this drama has brought this to the forefront of peoples minds . Things generally only change with public pressure hopefully now those poor people will get what they deserve. Compensation and exoneration.

A sub postmaster in my families community was sacked for stealing. It was assumed by the community that she either stole it or made errors. She became a recluse, sold up and moved away. It's awful to think what she was going through and nobody knew.

Inspite of that until the court case a few years ago I had no idea about any of this and until I watched the tv drama a few weeks ago I had no concept of the impact . It's had to believe this has been ongoing for 20 years and most people had no idea.

Here is a link outlining the DPPs powers to investigate.
It is clear these are wide ranging.
But did Starmer use them to see if the SPMs had a case?
No just stuck his head in the sand.

www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/directors-investigatory-powers

Yes I didn’t add the ‘not’! Thanks for the correction

The post office absolutely shouldn’t be able to prosecute anyone.