To recap, we've had: Sparse, but dogged, media coverage. A few successful appeals. An absolutely woeful compo scheme (where the money just about covered the huge legal fees). A TV series. Met Police announcing it's opening an investigation. Our PM is all over the airwaves: Post Office scandal: Rishi Sunak considers measures to clear all victims I hope head will roll over this, but I really doubt it. Take Fujitsu who are at the centre of this fiasco. They were at the centre of a number of failed govt IT projects, notably one for a crucial "joined-up thinking" system for the NHS. They delivered, behind schedule, a non-functional suite of programs. So the NHS tried to walk away, but Fujitsu started brandishing their contract saying they had to be paid, in full and took the NHS (aka the govt aka 'us') to court and won (a week later Fujitsu were a massive presence of the various party congresses). I highlighting this one because I have an 'acquaintance' who 'looked at' that contract in great detail. She was convinced that the stipulations of Fujitsu's T&C's were such that it was more about Fujitsu getting paid regardless of what they produced...
Yes, having worked for a major US IT provider on government contracts, it is very much about ensuring payment regardless of the "quality" of the service provided. Unfortunately some of the blame lies with the government departments that agree to such provisions. Naive doesn't even begin to cover it. The other scandalous revelation from an IT point of view is the claim that Fujitsu accessed and made code and data changes to a live environment. I have about 30 years experience in IT and never once came across a system that allowed developers to do anything directly in the live space. That should never, ever, happen.
The original report from ComputerWeekly from 2009: https://www.computerweekly.com/news...pted-livelihoods-Postmasters-tell-their-story
I think we can all agree that the blame for this mess and the Government's pitiful response to it over the past decade lies with Ed Davey. RESIGN DAVEY! On the plus side, I thought Nadhim Zahawi was excellent as Nadhim Zahawi in the ITV programme.
I wasn’t overly sure Nadhim Zahawi was terribly convincing in his role as Nadhim Zahawi. There was a brief demonstration of rigour, tenacity and a desire to get to the truth.
But he still wasn't able to fully pull this impersonation off by demonstrating his sheer and overweening hypocrisy as a dual-faced b***ard in his starring role. Very surprised given his litigious nature when threatening tax specialist Dan Neidle and then later meekly settling a CGT tax bill plus penalties of £4.8m with HMRC. Well done Dan from Watford, 3 cheers for an Old Fullerian who isn't Grant Shapps (or whatever his name is today, tee hee).
So without the ITV drama being shown over the holiday period this would still be dragging along? It's a f***ing disgrace of epic proportions and I'm so happy someone is finally acting on it. Good job it's an election year too eh? I work with software deployed across the globe that has accounting parts to it, (small scale stuff compared with Horizon). Sometimes we have to do live updates for software component upgrades and these are never even started without a verified local and remote database backup, (held away from the live server). From what I've read the Horizon system was "fiddled with" live, no logs downloaded or backups taken, no paper trail that has ever been produced that proves it was a postmaster error One more thing, did any error ever go in the SPMs favour?
I think it would be a masterstroke for Davey to resign. Lib Dems don't really matter in the great scheme of things, but what a contrast it would be to years of ****ing Tories not resigning over anything no matter how egregious.
Hoooo! The great Skedaddle! Nothing to do with me, guv. I wasn't there. It wasn't me. You want to ask those others. They are going to put the great Sir Gary Hickinbottom - retired judge - in charge of sorting it out. Sir Gazzabottom is the Knight Principal of the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor. So he's bound to make sure there's no establishment coverup.
Given that, apparently, he seems to spend half his time on Twitter calling for others to resign I think it's the very least he can do. But, as you say, politicians of every stripe are utterly shameless so no doubt he'll just keep a low profile until this blows over or come up with some bull5hit excuse why it was nothing to do with him
No worries, Oberleutnant Farage has identified the real culprit. Handily, it is Keir Starmer. No matter that these were private prosecutions, Nigel thinks the DPP should have intervened. The DPP does have the power to intervene in private prosecutions, on the basis that evidence appears unlikely to gain a conviction.
Lol, the CPS was cut to the bone between 2010-15. It barely had enough people to prosecute cases at all. Let alone embark on some sort of fishing trip to do the Post Office's job for it. Maybe we should look at 'austerity' again?
How often, if ever, would the CPS intervene in a private prosecution? My guess would be, if the prosecutor was another function of the state, like the Post Office or a statutory regulator, almost never ever.
No idea but that's probably a fair guess. The idea the CPS could have gotten involved meaningfully and made a difference is for the birds, especially as they'd ultimately be using the same evidence produced by the PO's investigations. And the presumption, as in their dealings with the police, is that it's being presented in good faith. The CPS has no investigation capacity of its own.
Very rarely and it's usually in cases where the magistrates have been hoodwinked into letting something proceed that really shouldn't have as it was nonsense.
The country is now in grave danger of running out of sick bags... Ex-minister calls to quash 800 post office convictions - BBC News In his desperate attempt to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the electorate Great British Public, the HM Govt's former Tax Fiddler General, calls for the mass exoneration of the innocent post office staff, "we can do something good" he says. And our brave Justice Sec, call me 'Alex' Chalk describes Zahawi's efforts as demonstrating his "customary precision". Where was that precision when he was filling out his tax returns recently I wonder...? Post Office scandal: Governments didn't act quickly enough - Michael Gove - BBC News "Kemi, Kevin and Alex are doing the right thing" says our levelling up midget. Fantastic sunlit uplands to follow for post-masters as the Govt does the right thing. "Gawd bless you Mr Gove, you are a proper gent and no mistake, we didn't understand until you explained what your far-sighted load of your toffs are doing for us. And sorry for giving you a splosh in the mouth earlier", says the Great British Public. Post Office scandal an 'appalling miscarriage of justice' - Sunak - BBC News "An appalling miscarriage of justice, obviously something that happened a long time ago in the 90s...£150m compensation...blah...before my time...blah, blah I've sorted the compensation...I know details...solutions by me..." Fortunately help is at hand. Fatman and Baroness Robbing are available. "How many sickbags do you need hen? I can do you 30 mill at £5 a pop. Just sign here"
Everyone's getting swept up in this, and understandably so, but let's remember, it's a TV drama and an ITV one at that. Sure it's presented this sympathetically as simple black and white, David Vs Goliath situation, but surely some of these post office clerks had their fingers in the till. Let's try to keep a balanced view here and remember that some people in post offices are arseholes.
Are those people "our customers" as ex CBE holder Paula described them when she routinely opened her annual bonus envelope?
Exactly. We don't want to let all these innocent ones get away with it if it means one or two guilty ones get off the hook.
Rather 100 innocents were sent to the gallows than a single small business owner escapes justice for stealing a couple of thousand pounds.
They just need to take a methodical approach to it all. Were any of the accused in Liverpool, for example? If yes, we can assume their convictions are sound. Manchester, probably the same. Use some common sense.
Back in the 90s as a wet behind the ears technical support manager I was looking at outsourceing some of the frontline services for a consumer electronics company. Fujitsu were once of the potential providers we went to see. Impressive modern facilities ready to move into were on show. I asked if I could see the area that was used to support Fujitsu's own products. This was alas not possible as they outsourced this to someone else. Needless to say we decided against using them if they themselves could find cheaper/better callcentres elsewhere. My limited understanding of the post office situation after reading about it a bit, I haven't seen the documentary. Shows what I deem to be a number of serious issues. The initial contract was flawed, with little to no regard to performance or suitibility. The Post office themselves flagged up concerns and didn't want the software yet the decision was rushed through against their wishes. Serious issues were identified with respect to the accouting of the system during operation yet despite this prosecutions were ongoing for some years off the back of known flawed data. There's a whole raft of politicians from all 3 major parties since the 90s who are directly responsible for this fck up. The fact that the situation still has not been put to bed and it has taken an ITV drama to give Rishi a kick up the arse is laughable yet sadly predictable.
9.0/10 on IMDB though. Not far off Chernobyl on 9.3/10 and my hot take on that series was the Authorities did NOT come out of that looking good.
Former Post Office CEO and one time fish out of water at the FA, Adam Crozier was suspiciously missing from the programme. Nothing to do with him going on to be CEO at ITV?
