Off Topic NETFLIX and Box Set series Thread.

A columnist in the Mail brought that up when the series was first aired. And it gets mentioned again in this article. Worth reading to see how all 3 main parties had people involved, from appointments by Blair, people now connected to Sunak and Ed Davey of the Lib Dems. Disgusting the amount of money those involved were paid and how organisations like the NHS, BBC, football associations and of course ITV took them on at high salaries.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12932027/post-office-scandal-itv-drama-gilded-lives.html

 

Unfortunately with public (or ex) bodies like utilities, transport, local authorities and NHS - people tasked with buying and implementing the IT systems are generally out of their depth, sold by very good salespersons and very rarely ask IT experts who would actually know, the more it goes wrong, the deeper they dig in / blindly move on at the expense of individuals and us the public.
E.g (which is used by 2 of out local NHS trusts). https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/am...-records-blunder_uk_5b9f7c33e4b04d32ebfa268e/

 

Maybe true to some extent, but it obviously goes way, way beyond the buying & implementing of the IT system. That wasn't really the issue, and to be fair, similar often happens in private organisations too.
It was the cover ups, the incompetence of investigators and management generally, the inability to join the dots, etc etc that was absolutely astounding.

 

Just signed it, it’s almost doubled since you signed nearly 660,000. That’s 25% of Sheff weds fan base.

 

As all the prosecutions were in house, didn't one of them think it was a tad odd.
Solicitors, barristers, oooh how odd thats the umpteenth one this week.
Judges, Good Lord in seventy seven years on the bench I have never sent a postmaster down, you are the twentieth this month alone.

Seemingly, nobody stopped and wondered what the hell was going on.

Except maybe Vennels predecessor. This new system isn't working. Oh no, all is well, works perfectly. Feet don't fail me now, I'm out of here.

 

Loads of ****e IT in the private sector too mind you.

 

I’m such a hipster I got in under 100,000* before it got fashionable…

*or the equivalent of one SW coachload

 

I’d not really twigged before that the Post Office were the prosecutors. I’d assumed it had been normal criminal proceedings.
This link explains it, but even just one bit rings alarms bells for me. Why the **** is a private company not only a prosecutor but even given access to the Police National computer system?!

https://insights.doughtystreet.co.uk/post/102gtzh/private-prosecutions-after-the-post-office-debacle

 

Years ago when this miscarriage of justice first hit the news, I wondered why nobody in the police force queried the numbers. From humble plod asking a custody sergeant why his cells were full of posties, right up to a chief constable reviewing his annual crime figures. How many? Ehhh?
Aha, in house. Plod absolved. (never thought I would type that)

 

I did jury duty many years ago, prior to any privatisation, and 2 of my 3 cases were Royal Mail theft. The RM had their own investigative branch with similar powers to the police, so the comment above about prosecution powers doesn't surprise me.

 

Yeah I didn’t realise either.
Odd arrangement

 

I don’t just sign owt, had to do my due diligence.

 

Interestingly someone did take the case to Humberside Plod in 2008.
It was a subpostmaster (in Brid I think) who claimed he was the victim of theft because the Post Office system didn’t tally with the cash, and he was having to pay the balance and so the theft was in practice from him.
All he wanted them to do was investigate but according to him he got nowhere.

https://x.com/castletonlee/status/1743683591991685316?s=46&t=DAxwWj15XaMBwCrrY9gKFQ

 

A lot of heads need to roll over this, and I don't mean just losing a job or losing a gong. Criminal charges need to be investigated and brought upon those that clearly lied, tried to hide or turn a blind eye to what was happening. I think one of the standout points for me was all these postmasters being told when they called to the PO, was no one else was experiencing problems, only you. This was clearly a lie. Shameful.

 

Seems to have been some lying to parliament committees too, which I think is the same as perjury? (seem to recall they swear an oath there same as in court?)

EDIT - Perhaps it’s Inquiries where people swear an oath actually. Maybe some have lied during the one which is still on the cards though.

 

The other standout point was the lack of support from the NFSP which seems to sit outside the TUC so they had no workers support, in fact they seemingly worked in another dimension to us, outside UK law and outside UK trade unionism? Mindblowing.

 

The last paragraph of this report for me is one of the biggest questions to ask, have the post office actually made money from this fiasco ? It was all phantom money made up by the computer system itself or was someone behind it all…..Bastards the lot of um…

Second Sight reportsedit

1. Interim Report dated 8 July 2013;[67]
2. Briefing Report Part One dated 25 July 2014;
3. Briefing Report Part Two version 1 dated 21 August 2014;
4. Briefing Report Part Two version 2 dated 9 April 2015.[68][33]

Vennells, who stood down from her Post Office role in 2019, said in 2020, of the 2013 report, that "it concluded, while it had not found evidence of system-wide problems with the Horizon software, there were specific areas where Post Office should consider its procedures and operational support for sub-postmasters".[66] Ron Warmington of Second Sight had said in 2019 "if the Post Office Board had believed ... and acted on ... what Second Sight reported ... instead of being led by the nose by its own middle management and in-house and external legal advisors, huge amounts of money, and human suffering, would have been avoided."[69] In July 2013, Second Sight issued an interim report and Post Office Ltd admitted that software defects with Horizon had indeed occurred, but said that the system was effective. The review discovered problems in 2011 and 2012, when Post Office Ltd discovered defects that had caused a shortfall of up to £9,000 at 76 Post Office branches.[67] The BBC reported that the Post Office later made good those losses and the sub-postmasters were not held liable.[23]However, more than 150 sub-postmasters continued to raise issues with the system, which they claimed had, by error, put them in debt by tens of thousands of pounds, and that in some cases they lost their contracts or went to prison.[23][70] In 2019, Warmington said,[69]

the Post Office has improperly enriched itself, through the decades, with funds that have passed through its own suspense accounts. Had its own staff more diligently investigated in order to establish who were the rightful owners of those funds, they would have been returned to them, whether they were Post Office's customers or its Subpostmasters. When is the Post Office going to return the funds that, in effect, belonged to its Subpostmasters?" and "It also seems to be clear now that some of those funds could have been generated by Horizon itself, or by errors made by the Post Office's own staff, or by those of Fujitsu. They weren't "real" losses at all. They were phantom discrepancies.