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.

Watching the real story documentary , Jess, the Asian post mistress ended up in hospital with severe depression.
What shocked me , pardon the pun, was that she received electrconvulsive therapy .
Shock waves to her brain!

They actually still do this ?!

"Where did the money go?"

Surely it just went to the same place that all the money that was legitimately made went- into the Post Office's accounts.

This is how I understand it, in a simple way. Please someone say if my understanding is incorrect:

Sub Postmasters sold a stamp for 20p. So at the end of the day, they would have one less stamp and have 20p. Horizon should have shown this. I assume the Sub Postmasters then had to pay the 20p into the Post Office main accounts.

However, what actually happened is they sold one stamp for 20p, but Horizon said that the end of the day that they had sold 3 stamps for 20p. There was therefore apparently 40p 'missing' at the end of the day. The Sub Postmaster then had to put in 40p from their pocket to balance the account. They then had to pay the whole 60p to the Post Office main accounts.

What I am confused about is what the items were that I have said are stamps in my example - because if they were physical items like stamps, then there would be extra of those in the stock. So I assume they were selling something not tangible. For example, postage without a stamp where a label is printed (franking machine), although I think that is a much newer thing than 2000?

Incidentally how did franking machines in offices work in the early 2000s? Were they connected via Horizon too? If so I wonder if they had issues...

Not sure if they do now but they did then . It was tried as a last resort as nothing else had worked . She was on a programme [can't remember which one] and it worked but she has lost all her childhood memories . So what she gained with one hand she lost with another 😕

Incidentally how did franking machines in offices work in the early 2000s? Were they connected via Horizon too? If so I wonder if they had issues...

No, franking machines didn't connect to Horizon. If you had a franking machine, you buy credits from the machine's manufacturer. That allows you to frank items until you run out of credit. The supplier would settle up with Post Office when you bought credits. That wouldn't go anywhere near any Post Office branch accounts.

And the mud is sticking already...
He may not even have heard about it.
The Post Office were judge jury and executioner in these cases. They did everything they could to keep it quiet and in house. The CPS were not involved.

BBC has just announced that Paula Vennells is voluntarily handing back her CBE….

Good. At least she's done the right thing although I imagine she'd never have done that without the petition pressure.
We've watched the (excellent) drama plus documentary and felt very upset for the affected people. I hope now that Alan Bates can/will accept his OBE? He gave a lifeline to many through his tenacity.
Now for Phillip Green to be stripped of his gong...!

Just on our local news too. I can’t believe it’s taken a drama on TV to highlight all of this.

although I imagine she'd never have done that without the petition pressure.

I would not be surprised to find it was more than just that. I suspect a call from Westminister to highlight how much better handing back the CBE is than having it forcibly removed.

I agree. No one from any political party or any branch of the legislature is covered in glory after all of this. Disgraceful.

Absolute praise for the writer who cut through the noise and bluster and told very simply, a story the nation could relate to.

If Alan Bates, Toby Jones and Monica Dolan don’t receive a knighthood/Dame hoods after all of this, it will be a travesty.

@beguilingeyes Exactly. There is no obligation on a private prosecutor to notify the CPS of any intended proceedings and the CPS does not have the resources to proactively investigate and review all private prosecutions. Interestingly a defendant in a private prosecution may refer the case to the CPS and ask them to either continue the proceedings or terminate them - I don't know if any of the Horizon defendants did this.

Yep I was shocked - I had assumed that this was from the era of ice-pick lobotomies. It was a heartbreaking interview - as you are aware she said that she has lost pretty much all memories of her childhood. And a happy childhood (no reason to think that hers wasn't) can of course sustain folks through many a life challenge.
I don't think I could put a price on the compensation she deserves - multi millions I would say - from Fujitsu.
A real pity I think that as far as I am aware, Fujitsu's products/services are not directly public facing (someone please correct me if I am wrong) so that consumer pressure could be brought to bear. I have a vague idea that maybe some once were but no longer.
I bet the Fujitsu sharks are congratulating themselves that at least their major base is not easily accessible by Joe Public - out in the Bracknell roundabout city.
Do they have a central London office though? For prestige purposes/palm greasing?

I don't think Toby Jones should get one to be honest, good as he was.
An acting accolade would do.
The writer is I believe a 69 year old woman based in Skipton.
A good fresh air refuge from Fujitsu/PO London leveraging.

💯 he needs to watch the show, but I wonder about the mindset of these people… Do they see this stuff and think: gosh these people are annoying, what’s the best way we can fob them off? I know I sound like such a cynic but this doesn’t come from nowhere!

no doubt to the relief of many a CBE holder.

I too am appalled by this. The depression was reactive (i.e. a response to her (hellish) situation), not endogenous (i.e. arose in patient regardless of circumstances). Presumably the hospital either did not know the full circumstances, or did not believe Jess or her husband.

There is some discussion of this upthread.

Why are people not questioning Adam Crozier's role ?
He was CEO of Royal Mail that owned the Post Office - from 2003 to 2010.
According to the Guardian "....he oversaw the hounding of subpostmasters who were accused of theft and fraud because of the seriously flawed Fujitsu Horizon IT system they were obliged to use. Under his watch people were bankrupted and ostracised as prosecutions were pursued against them........."

@Paul2023
Obviously I don't know anything about the medical decisions for Jess, and on the face of it it seems appalling she went through that, but I do know someone who has has 18 - yes 18 - ect treatments in the past few months. It was a last resort treatment for prolonged psychotic depression and has had a positive effect when nothing else had. But this was after years of severe illness.

So it's not always inappropriate even if it was in Jess's case.

@LadyEloise1 i suspect he’ll be next….i hope he has his tin hat handy.

And the mud is sticking already...
He may not even have heard about it. The Post Office were judge jury and executioner in these cases. They did everything they could to keep it quiet and in house. The CPS were not involved.

Some observations on the suggestion Keir Starmer may not have known about this, and the CPS were not involved.

There were hundreds of prosecutions in the years before Starmer became DPP and in the 5 years he was there. Prosecutions/convictions are in the public domain and there is no way the Post Office could have kept this information 'in house'. Nor were they the judge in any of the cases.

The CPS were involved in 6 cases that went to appeal. The number of prosecutions they were involved in has not been released yet, as I understand it

The Justice for Sub Postmasters alliance was set up in 2009 - a year into Starmer's 5 year stint as DPP. They lobbied everyone who would listen (not Ed Davey unfortunately) in Westminster and beyond about the massive injustices taking place.

The BBC and Private Eye started reporting on the scandal when Starmer was DPP.

So, given this individual is likely to be running the country in a few months I don't expect many people will be satisfied with a 'nothing to do with me guv' defence.

He needs to come clean about what he knew, when and what he did or didn't do about it and why. And prove it all to the country by facing up to some 'Andrew Neil' type interviewer.

For goodness sake, I do believe we have elected PMs in recent times whose integrity is open to challenge. Let's not elect anyone in future without full and rigorous scrutiny.

If i was the editor of Computer Weekly i would be tempted to go with a front page splash with a big red post box on the front and "We Told You So" in huge font

That's basically what was said upthread. Yes, there are some people with resistant depression who have benefitted from ECT. But surely the causation of the depression needs to be taken into account when assessing? Unfortunately, anything Jess might have said about her situation could well have been dismissed as paranoia stemming from her mental ill health, for the sole reason that she was a patient. Once you have a diagnosis, the truth of anything you say is open to doubt by the very people who are treating you

Hence my claim that Jess was misdiagnosed.

I wonder how many sub postmaster employees were let go of due to suspitions of theft ?

SPM pulling their hair out trying to figure out the losses, paranoia must have been rife, how many people accused of stealing and the probable realisation that others wern't to blame as the losses kept occuring.

A living nightmare for all involved, each and every family, I can't imagine how much devastation has been infflicted on all these innocent people since 1999.

Horrific.

I couldn’t sleep at night doing a job where I knew wrong doing was taking place , and people were losing everything and even going to prison for it.
How do these people live with themselves?

Some of these post offices were tiny, in small rural villages.
Some only had a small turnover , mainly older local people just buying stamps now and then.
Literally a few quid a day was being made.

So it’s crazy that these people were getting massive shortfalls, and no one in the prosecution had the common sense to question this ? Even the judges who were impartial ? Supposedly intelligent , highly qualified judges.

Post office management must have wondered what was going on.