The Post Office has a death wish

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

This week, of all weeks, when there is huge outrage at the way the Post Office has behaved towards subpostmasters over the Horizon scandal, thanks to the excellent ITV dramatisation Mr Bates vs The Post Office - on X/Twitter someone whose bio makes it abundantly clear she's a lesbian tweeted about a patronising and offensive tweet from the Post Office last summer about the word 'queer'. Instead of apologising, or deleting the tweet, or even just ignoring it, some blue-hairded genderist with the password for their social media has doubled down. It's not going down well, I'm pleased to report.

My understanding is a fair few did because it would mean avoiding prison and having the whole ordeal over.

I still don’t have a good enough grasp of the details to understand how all the defence lawyers couldn’t have been aware of the uncanny coincidence of so many people in the same boat and using that as enough to get reasonable doubt in court.

I didn't see it, but she was presumably told that she was going to be found guilty no matter what she told the court, but she'd get a lighter sentence if she pleaded guilty.

Probably correct advice.

Yes, this is what one of them said.

He said his lawyer advised him to plead guilty to have a better chance of avoiding a prison sentence. “He said no jury in the land would believe an institution as cherished as the Post Office could possibly have a computer system that is rubbish.” He added of the prison threat: “Believe you me, I was petrified.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/post-office-horizon-victims-tell-suffering-caused-by-scandal

I didn't hear her particular story but I would hazard that it's similar to many of the other postmasters who were prosecuted - the PO were prosecuting her for theft and offered her a deal, that if she pleaded guilty to a 'lesser' charge of false accounting (which most likely would have been at least several charges) instead of theft, then she would receive a lighter sentence.

Most of these people had already been bled financially dry by having to make good the imaginary 'shortfalls' created by Horizon so had been unable to or didn't even realise they should seek legal advice.

They probably weren't aware for the same reason that all the people being prosecuted weren't aware that there were hundreds of them in the same boat. They were all over the country and didn't know each other.

The Post Office was actually telling each subpostmaster who was accused that there were no other cases of this happening. It wasn't covered in the press at all, so they had no way of knowing about the other victims.

I posted this in another thread but it's probably more relevant to the current discussion here.

My local SBM admitted to making false entries in order to cover up losses of £25,000. Originally charged with stealing it, that charge was dropped after the prosecution accepted that she hadn't taken it.

The false entries were apparently made because the SBM was trying to get the money together to put it in themselves.

This is from the news report at the time:

The SBM "had previously denied doing anything wrong, saying it was the fault of the official Post Office accounting system – known as Horizon – which, she claimed, was flawed and showed losses when in fact none had occurred. But when she appeared in court on Monday she admitted such a claim had no foundation."

She was given a suspended sentence, community work and £1000 costs. She also stumped up the £25,000.

Horrific! You might think that after having to drop the stealing charge, the Post Office might have looked further into why so many SBMs were being pursued for false accounting. Did they just think they'd employed hundreds of people who couldn't add up?

Also- and this may have been already mentioned but if so I have missed it.

I was only half listening, so may have got some details wrong, but on GMB this morning they said that the Post office asked for SBM volunteers to test the Horizon system before it was rolled out. As I understand it, in the pilot test people were flagging the issues with Horizon- and the PO prosecuted some of THEM as well for false accounting.

Did anyone else hear that? I think Richard Maddeley was the one who said that.

It's mentioned in this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/post-office-suspected-of-more-wrongful-prosecutions-of-operators-over-horizon

Whitehall sources have confirmed that a precursor scheme was rolled out in 1995 and 1996 to hundreds of branches in north-east England. After taking part in the pilot, at least two branch managers were prosecuted despite protesting that there was a glitch in the system, a senior Labour MP has claimed.

It's actually beyond belief. The whole thing.

Those poor poor people.

I'd like to see Alan Bates in the House of Lords. He's spent 20 years campaigning for the truth for free. He has shown himself to be absolutely steeped in integrity and not willing to walk away from a fight for an easy life, and we need people like him in positions of power. He would then be in a position where he could robustly challenge the type of institutional and senior public official corruption we have seen here and which we know to be rife in other organisations too. He did everything right - he refused to sign off on the wrong horizon output, for which he was sacked and his life turned upside down. He could have let it lie and just walked away but he didn't, and when he heard the terrible stories of suffering his fellow spms suffered he stood by them.

Vennells has profited from the theft of thousands of pounds of spm money as well as from their suffering (and their friends and family). Is she going to hand her bonuses or salary back? I doubt it. Easy to hand back an honour.

Has the post office paid back the money they stole? I've not heard that they have.

I see Ed Davey too busy trying to locate his cervix to bother turning up at PMQ’s todat despite being the postal services minister who refused to meet Alan Bates at the height of the scandal

Is he hiding? Embarrassing.

The sad truth is that there are a lot of villains in this story and as far as I know, not a single one has been brought to justice.

Whilst I think in principle it's great they're going to overturn the convictions, is just handing out £75k each really helping? For some this will be far less than was stolen from them (if you account for interest over 25 years), for others more than they lost, and it's entirely unclear how much is paying back and how much is compensation. Already Peston's said the current Postal minister has said that people who are truly guilty could be exonerated under these plans which I think is debatable, but it is not fair on the spms that these doubts are being raised.

If it was me I wouldn't want some grand political gesture circumventing justice, what I'd want is speedy justice and a full accounting (including interest) of the money that was stolen from me and appropriate compensation.

This just smacks of solving the problem of the 'big people' (Vennells etc) and the 'little people' with exactly the same kind of thinking that caused the problem in the first place. One rule for 'us' another for 'them'. Throwing public money around with the people in charge not having any sense of what is proper and fair, no robust, fair and transparent process. One rule for Sunak and all politicians (including Labour) and another for 'normal people'.

It beggars belief it's taken so long and that is in part due to our broken legal system - how about pumping this money in there and letting these people be exonerated in a court of law, fully and transparently, and quickly, instead?

And yes as PP says - no-one who was responsible has faced justice. For those whose family members died frankly a pay off of £75k and no convictions of those in charge of destroying their family member's life - with no evidence outside of the made up numbers in the Horizon system - is an insult.

They did say the £75,000 was an interim payment, not the full and final one. I imagine each case will be looked at separately and hopefully they'll get the money they deserve.

As if it couldn't get any worse. The investigators were paid bonuses for every conviction they secured!

Telegraph article "Post Office paid out bonuses"

Out and out corruption, in other words. Once a system has financial incentives to find something wrong, then that's what will happen. And apparently no-one at the PO, from Vennells down, saw anything morally askew with this.

The Post Office was actually telling each subpostmaster who was accused that there were no other cases of this happening. It wasn't covered in the press at all, so they had no way of knowing about the other victims.

And this is why someone high up should face criminal charges.