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.

THIS!

Closest thing we have had is Three Little Birds which was on before Christmas.

John Boughton (author of Municipal Dreams The Rise and Fall of Council Housing) on the welfarisation of council housing.

//www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/the-rise-and-fall-of-council-housing-56139

Inthe 1980s, residualisation may have been a partly unintended consequence of housing policies pursued with varying ideological intent

Since 2010, and more so since the return of single-party Conservative government in 2015, we’ve seen something further: welfarisation – ‘a conception of social housing as a very small, highly residualised sector catering only for the very poorest, and those with additional social “vulnerabilities”, on a short-term “ambulance” basis

The 1953 White Paper stipulated the continuing of promotion by all possible means the building of houses for owner occupation.

In 1954 private housebuilders were freed from the obligation to secure building licences one of the main ways by which local authority housing had been prioritised in the immediate post war years.

The big change came with the 1954 Housing Act which required that future council efforts be concentrated on redevelopment RATHER THAN general needs.

Where we are now is the result of decades of changes going further back than 1980.

That's such an excellent book @JenniferBooth . The documentary 'The Great British Housing Disaster' (1984) is a compelling watch on this subject.

I remember years ago seeing a piece about "the best council houses in the world". IIRC, they were in Vienna. Hang on, Googling...

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=882710878767919

YY @TheLogicalSong It is, as is the documentary you mention

@duc748 I bet they have laundry rooms

This is about litigation funding agreements. This was used by the subpostmasters to fund their action against Post Office. The agreement provided for the funders to get a percentage of any damages awarded to the subpostmasters. The Supreme Court has decided that such agreements are Damages Based Agreements and must therefore comply with the regulations that apply to such agreements. Most current litigation funding agreements do not comply with these regulations. This suggests they are unenforceable, i.e. the funder cannot force the litigant they have funded to pay them. Clearly, a litigation funder isn't going to provide funding if they can't collect.

A subsequent case is wending its way through the courts which, so far, suggests that the courts will adopt a more sympathetic approach to litigation funders than was feared after the Supreme Court judgement, but many feel that the best way to address the situation would be to either rewrite the Damages Based Agreement Regulations or for parliament to pass new legislation to overturn the Supreme Court's decision.

Call the midwife this evening had a plot that wasn't far from this as far as the mould and the unconcerned building/housing departments were concerned...

Does anyone remember Our Friends in the North? There was a storyline about corrupt councillors and building contracts and dreadful flats. Quite a hard hitting drama.

I remember it, but for some reason I didn't watch it, although I recall it was very well spoken of at the time. Googling, it looks like you can see it somehow via Evil Amazon Prime and Britbox.

@londonmummy1966 Ive just watched it. I watch CTM anyway but thanks for the heads up
Hopefully it will educate some of the SH haters.

@Tallisker - I actually watched Friends of the North recently. It has Daniel Craig and Gina Mcakee in it. Yes - it had a storyline about defective tower blocks and the horrendous damp. It was making the Gina McKee character and her kids sick. A great series if anyone has access to it

I was going to mention OFITN. Daniel Craig's first major role,I think. I have it on dvd.

Place marking

Yes. I thought this age of TV had passed with an apparent concentration on **offs/celeb competitions/house makeovers etc.
Cathy Come Home was somewhat before my conscious time but am wondering if this is possibly the most influential prog since that - in terms of the effects on the public consciousness/influence.
Also encouraging that it's from ITV, though the beeb has of course covered the subject factually. It's for sure going to get mega awards and I can imagine the cast feeling rightly proud of their involvement.

Yep a great great series (though the folks I was working with in a "trendy" company at the timeit went out didn't clock it - ended up nattering about it with a secretary from that bit of the world at a client.
Last time I looked it was on iplayer.

The Private Eye tv reviewer is making the same point.
It really could be the start of a new era of campaigning tv, we have some fabulous writers these days and there are vast wells of public anger and frustration to tap into.
The astonishing viewing figures this has got will encourage tv companies to commission more.

I have a question
I get that Fujitsu were interfering remotely in the post offices accounts to try and resolve technical issues but when Martin's wife (Shaun Dooley's character) was accused of fraud immediately following his visit to the Bracknell HQ it seemed very convenient. As if it was deliberate and they were trying to scare him off. Was it just a coincidence?

I don’t think anyone has said either way - in public at least. The facts you mentioned have been stated and I think we’re left to draw our own conclusions.

It didn't say anything outright, but I think there was an implication that it was intentional to stop him in his tracks. The fact that they attempted to hide all signs of him having visited the company headquarters was condemnatory IMO.

Yes, that's what i thought.
Surely that is a much more serious offence

But you could only prove it wasn’t coincidence if you found some secret messages plotting to put the frighteners on him and given how shamelessly they have destroyed and held back evidence I doubt you could ever find that.

Wasn't Toby Jones brilliant as Mr. Bates.