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.

In addition to the ITV doc accompanying its dramatisation I can recommend the one hour special BBC Panorama doc referred to upthread. Very good - no probs watching after the drama - in fact anyone who saw the drama may well be very interested to see the real people.
Particularly interesting is the bit on Project Swallow, effectively the PO's mechanism for getting rid of Second Sight. Project Swallow had a government representative though as the reports made available to the doc are heavily redacted (you really can't make this up - one would think we are dealing with state nuclear secrets) it isn't explicitly stated who this was.
Jo Swinson was of course around at the time in charge of the PO.
There is footage of her in the doc.
Heartily recommend - it went out first in April of last year - available on iplayer.

Yes they showed footage of jo Swindon. Did she sack second sight?

No. She was the minister at the time, but it was Post Office that sacked Second Sight and then thoroughly misrepresented their report.

there was someone from the government of the time on Project Sparrow. At the moment I believe we don't know who that was. If the enquiry is worth anything it should surely say who that was if an elected MP? If a civil servant it should uncover what they reported to the elected person. I had the idea that it was someone from government, not a civil servant.
So much in this case has been redacted or destroyed. Second Sight were of course told in no uncertain terms to destroy all of their evidence. This was covered in both the drama and the panorama doc. Swinson it seems to me as the elected member in charge of the PO at the time has questions to answer. Will she be called by the enquiry?

Ah ok. Thank you.

It was Richard Callard, a civil servant who was an Executive Director of UK Government Investments - the company that owns Post Office and various other public sector and state-owned enterprises on behalf of the government.

I don't know if Swinson will be called to give evidence. She hasn't made a witness statement. I suspect that, like most of the ministers involved, she simply accepted assurances from Post Office and civil servants.

thanks for the info - got to ask how you know the name - I thought civil servants tended to benefit from a certain veil of discretion in such cases.
Will he be called? It is surely relevant what he knew and what he reported to his political masters? presumably he did report?

Nick Wallis, a journalist who has been covering the case for over a decade, got the minutes to Project Sparrow sub-committee meetings in 2021 and wrote about it on his Post Office Trial website. I don't know if Callard will be called by the inquiry. He doesn't appear to have given a witness statement yet. He must have reported to someone, but I don't know if he reported directly to a politician. I suspect not since UKGI is intended to keep the various state-owned enterprises at arm's length from government, so I suspect he would have reported to civil servants, but I may be wrong.

Stephen Bradshaw was questioned today, one of the Post Office investigators.

He seems like a blubbering idiot.

Yet this arrogant man is still employed by the Post Office !

Unbelievable these people are still working for them.

I’ve signed the petition for Ed Davey to lose his knighthood.

Good to see Kate Middleton and her parents support their local post master Hasmukh Shingadia, when he was accused of false accounting by the PO. She and Prince William invited him to their wedding h in 2011 again showing their support. His Story is the Sun not sure how to link it. At least that’s one establishment organisation which didn’t believe POs lies (looking at you Ed Davey!)
Appalled it’s been revealed the PO investigators and Prosecutors were incentivised with bonuses to find and convict the SPMs it’s the equivalent to incentivising the police to do the same.

Apparently most of the problems with Horizon occurred in rural post offices a SPM who was convicted has said in his opinion the manufactured problems with Horizon only happened in some post offices and it was a way for the PO to get rid of the non profitable post offices without having to pay compensation to the SPMs. Everyday there seems to be another terrible revelation about this scandal which has shown how corrupt and self servicing politicians and most of the establishment is. Absolutely rotten to the core.

According to Lord Arbuthnot the MP of Jo Hamilto who has been helping the SPM from the start he said on the Nick Wallis programme last night the 3 key people he thinks should be quested at the pubic inquiry are Alex Chisholm a civil servant in the business department, Paula Venells and Susan Crichton who was a PO employee and featured in the drama and mysteriously disappeared from the organisation at a crucial time of second sights investigations

That’s really interesting about Kate and William, Mycatsmudge. I knew they had invited the local shopkeeper they used to buy snacks from but I assumed it was just friendliness (with perhaps an element of wanting to make a statement about the royal family not being snobbish) but clearly it had more to do with showing their support. It must have been of great value to his mental health and might have even saved him from being another subpostmaster suicide.

It's nice the Middleton's supported the Bucklebury subpostmaster but I think the suppliers to their business felt very let down when their bills were not paid.

From the programme Susan Crichton seemed to be helpful to second sight? Is that why she disappeared?

I thought that too.

Appalled it’s been revealed the PO investigators and Prosecutors were incentivised with bonuses to find and convict the SPMs it’s the equivalent to incentivising the police to do the same.

Indeed - horribly open to abuse. When the PO was privatised it should have lost its right to bring its own prosecutions. It was no longer a government body.

a SPM who was convicted has said in his opinion the manufactured problems with Horizon only happened in some post offices and it was a way for the PO to get rid of the non profitable post offices without having to pay compensation to the SPMs

I can well believe it! The reality is that POs are a public amenity and even when unprofitable are essential in some (particularly small, isolated) communities. Profitability should be secondary in such instances.

Fits in with the bbc panorama stating that the PO was costing £3 million a week.

I'm not sure that Ed Davey should be singled out here. He was PO minister for 19 months and was eventually the first minister to eventually meet Alan Bates.
I'm no particular fan of his but it seems typical of the right wing press to be attacking him and Starmer when it was this government that gave Paula Vennels a CBE in 2019 when the affair was known about and have been in charge for the last 14 years. Look over there tactics.

beguilingeyes it was Alan Bates and some of the other SPM who singled out Ed Davey for blame. Davey was someone who was uniquely placed as postal affairs minister to help them but he only listened to his civil servants and the PO and chose not to do so. All he had to do was meet with the SPMs listened to them and look at their evidence. Then to refer the cases to the CPS for consideration if they warranted it. Contrast this with Kemi Badenoch who was strongly advised by her civil servants not to meet Keira Bell but chose to do so anyway because she wanted to hear the victims side of events on the transgender issue. Ministers do agency have free thought processes and Ed Davey showed a incredible lack of curiosity, judgement and moral compass in this massive scandal which should exclude him from higher office.

Indeed - horribly open to abuse. When the PO was privatised it should have lost its right to bring its own prosecutions. It was no longer a government body.

Is isn't the only non-government body that can bring its own prosecutions. The RSPCA is another example.

Thank you @prh47bridge - I didn't know that.

I think the RSPCA have asked the CPS to take over their prosecution work, although they would still continue to investigate animal cruelty cases. RSPCA say this decision is due to cases becoming increasingly complex and attracting longer sentences, but they have been criticised by MPs for having a conflict of interest between the prosecutorial role and its investigation and campaigning work.

This was a couple of years ago however and I don't think any formal decision has been made on this. There are news stories for a number of animal cruelty prosecutions on the RSPCA website, and several are noted to be private RSPCA prosecutions.

Totally agree the whole establishment sucks.

Just focusing on the CPS for one area. Over recent days we’ve gone from a storyline where the SPM miscarriages of justice were all private prosecutions by the PO ( even though the CPS can intervene in any prosecution ) to the number the CPS prosecuted or were actively involved varying from 3 to 11 to 38.

Now we hear the Post Office is saying the CPS were involved in at least 99 cases!!

The reported CPS response - they can only confirm about 40 as the ‘don’t have/ can’t find the records for the other 60 odd ‘.

FFS haven’t they heard of digital recording. Cheap to store pretty much forever and easy to access.

Even if they keep their records on paper (written with quill pens) and destroy them when it suits them - surely they can review the Post Office records and the associated Court Case records to confirm (or otherwise) their involvement.

In any event there is no massive wall between the PO and the CPS. Here is a moving story of a barrister regularly used by the CPS who prosecuted a case for the Post Office.

bylinetimes.com/2024/01/12/the-post-office-scandal-a-prosecuting-barristers-regret/

Why is this important?

Well if the public enquiry recommends the PO should bring any future prosecutions via the CPS - which it may well and probably should - that’s not good enough unless all the mistakes by the CPS in these cases are reviewed and corrective measures put in place.

Does any know if the public enquiry encompasses a review of the CPS? Or is it just looking at the PO and Fujitsu. I haven’t had time to watch it myself?

Re Paula Vennells CBE This kind of thing happens on a smaller scale too. The housing officer who told DH to get rid of his mobility scooter or he would destroy it was promoted to housing manager.

we need an ITV drama too Its the only thing that seems to work

And we have NO RIGHT to critisize other countries when the level of corruption in the UK is this high.