Overturning all the convictions in one swipe is difficult because it would involve 'interfering with the courts'. So what? Just get on with it you useless bunch of w ankers
When it’s daft enough to use private contractors and believe what they say. The private/public debate was settled years ago in respect of public services. Almost every sector with private involvement, from energy to water to prisons to infrastructure, an expensive shambles that makes the old British Rail look like Apple.
Can you imagine the CEO of a privately owned Post Office standing up at a shareholders' meeting and explaining that despite the absolutely calamitous impact that Fujitsu had had on the business, Fujitsu remains the Post Office's IT supplier?!
I laughed, but sure I can. Companies go through radical changes and then often do the same old until something breaks. Just made of people like the public sector.
Nick Wallis, co-author of the Special Report has 2 websites/blogs covering the scandal. The past one is here: https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/01/articles.html The current one is here: https://www.postofficescandal.uk/ Thank the fark that there are journalists like him and others such as the In The Back Team at Private Eye who try and shine a light on some of the crappier things going on in the country.
Ian Hislop dismantling Jake Berry on Peston was quite something. Berry's opportunism was ruthlessly exposed and he simply couldn't think quickly enough. He tried to deflect by accusing Hislop of interrupting but, actually, Hislop exposed one of the major flaws in so much political interviewing. Far too often politicians are allowed to just deliver their word salad to avoid answering questions. They fill the air with nonsense and expect to be listened to. This sort of rubbish (more Lynton Crosby tactics, I expect) should have been shut down by journalists and presenters years ago.
Meanwhile, I know Lloydy is on the wind up, but it takes a special kind of mental gymnastics to blame the public sector when the issue at the heart of this scandal was the ideology of unfettered privatisation. Fujitsu (private company) was awarded a contract. The postmasters (the only people actually serving the public and the public interest) were handed contracts which made them responsible for a system they did not implement or control. Post Office did this because pointy-shoed executives knew they had the power and autonomy to do it and to hell with the little people. The perfect metaphor for Tory ideology. Post Office is Government-owned but operated like a private company, prioritising the bottom line over service and paying huge salaries and bonuses. Vennells was paid approx £3m in performance-related bonuses. Seems to me, a certain type of simpering Tory bootlicker (not you Lloyd, for the avoidance of doubt, but Beverley Turner on GB News springs to mind), loves to kick the public sector and defend come-what-may the pursuit of profit.
The disregard shown to the "little people" is disgusting . This is the new Hillsborough. A cover up . It will take time , lots of time , but those responsible will be held accountable.
And his whine about being interrupted was easily rebuffed by Hislop saying ‘well, it’s what you’ve been doing all programme.’
These people *waves hand in the general direction of Berry and his ilk* seem to think their half-thought-out nonsense ought to be respected and listened to. Hislop's magazine has spent the best part of 20 years covering one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in modern British history. And he pointed out the most uncomfortable truth that the money that was stolen from the postmasters went to Post Office which then paid huge bonuses. The criminal behaviour here was by Post Office, Fujitsu and a Government that did next to nothing until an ITV drama gave them an opportunity to sail in as the righter of wrongs. As Hislop said, the Government spent years saying how difficult and expensive it would be to do anything and all of a sudden the Government now says it can sort everything out tomorrow. Berry is a lazy opportunist, like so many of them. Look at the way he boasted about looking forward to appearing on Peston before the show was recorded. Wonder if he felt the same as he hobbled off set with his own arse in a carrier bag.
All this talk of ‘compensation’ is tosh in a lot of cases. The £75k being ‘awarded’ to the 555 in the GLO often barely covers (if at all) the sums with which they ‘reimbursed’ the PO for fictitious shortfalls. It’s NOT compensation, it’s refunding money stolen from innocent people by crooks masquerading as executives of a ‘cherished national institution’. Any compensation has to be way above the sums stolen from each subpostmaster/ subpostmistress to which should be added all of any costs incurred in defending themselves against malicious allegations and prosecutions as well as the requisite amount of interest accruing over the intervening years. Pay all that back THEN we get into the sphere of ‘compensation’. But as Grenfell has shown, this government has no real interest in resolving such scandals, just in making as many vague ra-ra-ra promises until such time as it is no longer the main topic in the news.
Spot on. Sir Jake Berry (presumably for services to Johnson and Truss, ye gods!) tried to open up with Ian Hislop by referencing ITV's Mr Bates v Post Office as "a programme you claim to love" (or similar words) and was taken aback when IH immediately sprung on Berry's poor choice of wording and demolished him in seconds. Watching that odious creep and no-mark Berry with mouth open having failed to finish his opening gambit was a sheer delight. Berry had, earlier, of course tried to appeal to Peston's nice side in praising ITV's role in shining light on the scandal which Peston largely ignored and Jess Phillips had also sprung into life latterly to remind Berry of his earlier assertions that Labour did not wish to 'stop the boats' and several other downright lies he had listed. I'm sure Berry had a lovely old time on the Peston show sticking his chin out and it being thumped over and over again. "Thanks for defending us so well Jake" is unlikely to be the feeling around the Tory benches today on that particular car crash. Here he is in happier times; a thorn between two a***holes roses. Ah bless!
The investigator tasked with looking into this computer system debacle "wasn't technically minded" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67941754 Couldn't make it up could you. Chap has the look of a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming juggernaut. Consequently a peice of roadkill muight well have done a better job.
Heads should roll. People should be in jail. We have had people commit suicide because of this or lose their health. That is simply unconscionable. Did the PO at any time not think it slightly odd that several hundred of it's postmaster and mistresses were all being accused of theft. In any large organisation it is expected there will be a few ne'er dowells. But several hundred ? And this at a time when the top brass knew there was an issue in rhe accounting software too. As we've discussed in space exploration instead of listening to experts those up the chain ignored the analysis and as with the Coyne chap on the BBC News site tried to ignore,sideline then sack him. It's the same old story. Those responsible for the fiasco in asking Fujitsu to develop the system wanted to divert the blame from themselves and sought scapegoats. While at the same time enriching themselves with bonuses that were not only obscene but undeserved. The likes of Vennells and Crozier need to be in the dock and in jail along with other senior management and the chief weasel investigator Bradshaw. Not to mention that the current top brass seem happy to award themselves more bonuses while the postal service deteriorates further around the country. It was staggering to see the audacity of Bradshaw today. If you don't understand the technical issues that are being used as a defence why prosecute your staff ? But it's clear from the testimony he did know and the prosecutions were an attempt to pin the blame on innocent human beings. The hierarchy all knew but carried on regardless also trying to obfuscate at every turn defence attempts to get the information on Horizon. What is also quite sad is that it should not take a TV drama well made as it is to have forced the hand of the PO and government. The general public must involve themselves more in the issues that affect all of us and bring pressure on those elected so that they do the right thing. Currently they see us as pliant fools. Politicians no matter their persuasion need to be told that they are our servants not the other way around. And the final point is why are the government still working with Fujitsu ? After all their pratfalls and cockups costing a fortune and untold misery to hundreds why are they still being considered for future projects ? The 555 should also launch a lawsuit against them too. Given the billions politicians squander over ill thought out projects and tenders and sheer incompetence a fair few of them should also be behind bars as they seem to have rocks for brains and never learn.
Excellent thread by Dan Neidle explaining why the "compensation" scheme was never designed to actually compensate: https://twitter.com/DanNeidle/status/1745378990246736177?t=xEU9vVGRpl-SyXrPaDMSKw&s=19
Silly question. Of course he didn't. It's clearly stated in Hornmeister's post that the man wasn't technically minded. You can't expect him to troubleshoot like a seasoned IT professional.
Quite. I read about one chap who spent almost 400k on legal bills, and he gets 75k "compensation". Ludicrous stuff really.
More flannelling from the heads of the PO and Fujitsu. Amazing how little they know considering the positions they are in Fujitsu knew about the issues and told the PO while claiming it to be perfect and robust when innocent victims were being prosecuted. The PO say they were not told. All it boils down to.us no one was willing to accept blame. The PO chiefs for fear of ridicule for buying a very expensive system full of bugs, Fujitsu for fear of what it would do to their sales. The little people were easy scapegoats only this time one of the little people fought back. The thieves that stole money from these victims and all the trauma they have caused need to be punished. Bonuses paid back, performance related oay based on lies and a hefty reduction in their pensions. That means Vennells, Roberts and Crozier. Vennells in particular for having said their were no miscarriages of justice. Everyone responsible for this sorry mess needs to be brought to book. White collar crime needs to be punished every much as blue collar crime. People like Ed Davey and the judge who thought he knew more about computers than computer scientists and software experts. Fujitsu having swindled the British taxpayer over the years thanks to the incompetence of those who procure IT should pay hundreds of millions back without quibble.
Latest from Private Eye on the Scandal. It's worth taking out a subscription for the quality journalism you get like this, as well as some great satire. It also needs to be seen by as many people as possible.
From a computer sceintists prospective, the Post Office knowing about the "bugs" in their systems they were using is a disgrace when doing nothing about it. Software gets updated to rectify problems and iron out such bugs. Did they not update it? Speak to the developers of the systems they use and ask them to look into the code? I write perhaps thousands of lines of code a week for SpaceX and I am under strict rules to never release it to production until I have tested it until it is almost bomb proof. Exceptions exist in languages to stop memory overrides, leaking memory and divide by zero evaluations. It's either crap, rushed software that is old and not updated, or the people in charge at the Post Office just don't give a damn.
You could be on to something here. It smacks of get a system sorted, sort system. with no regard to cost, efficency or effectiveness. Job is done, no oversight on job. salary and bonus paid. Pretty much repeatable throught the whole of the public/private sector. Private companies take the piss but the government don't have the will or skills to hold them to account, to write the contracts properly in the first place or properly manage them. When we looked at ousourcing and Fujitsu were one of the (unsuccesful) bidders, we had a list of performance demands, customer satisfaction metrics etc and a schedule where certain goals were to be accomplished otherwise penalties and breaks int he contract were possible. All pretty much standard in a service contract negotiation.
So now we have some the leaders of the 'Horizon' database which is the codename for the software they use saying: "System Failures are normal System Occurrences" I'm sorry what? Explain to me what you interperate 'normal' to be then? If you drive a car and it suddenly stops in the middle of the motorway without any human iteraction, does that mean "it's a normal thing" for it to do? Absolute rubbish. But to be honest, it's the exact sort of excuse I would expect to come from the mouths of poor management structure who continue to walk into a fire without wearing any protective clothing. Fujitsu have a lot more explaining to do on this end, and I am sure most of it will come out with more smoke and mirrors. If a system fails, then it fails for a reason. For example: Code: --<snip> function Add_Numbers(N1 : in out Positive; N2 : in out Positive) return Positive is Result : Natural := 0; begin Result := N1 + N2; return Result; end Add_Numbers; --<snip> If I was to compile this I get this: Code: <snip> Errors: 0 Warnings: 1 [ada]-Wall value returned might not match expected argument <snip> Which is correct. Because in accordance to the syntax of the language the code is correct and an object file will be generated. However, most modern compilers (like the one above) and even the ones built around the early days of GCC 1.0 had a limited but informative warning system. Now, I have no idea what language the Horizon software was developed in, but at a guess it was probably C. Fortran and COBOL are bomb proof in detection methods even the early versions. The point I am making is, the management who passed said systems off as "ok" for the past god knows how many years are the real people to blame for the loss of earnings etc to all post masters. If something gets old, replace it. Nothing lasts forever and everything is always going through the process of 'change'. It irks me even more that there were several people who knnew about these problems for years and said nothing, due to being told to "zip it" so-to-speak. I have nothing but sympathy for the people and their families affected by this, and I hope they are rightly compensated not just with money, but a heart felt appology from the higher-ups at the Post Office who have intentionally used crap, buggy software for the best part of a decade.
The simple explanation is culture. The management, especially middle management, right down to coders, will have targets. In these kind of contracts the one thing that no one wants to admit is that there are errors in live code. Much better to fix them in the next schedule release and, in the meantime, cover it up. I never did that in my career, and I'm sure you wouldn't either, but I know people that did. I remember one time a colleague of mine was working on a reconciliation sub routine for payroll. He was taking forever and was under pressure from his manager as it had to be ready for the next release or there would be a penalty under the contract. Anyway, he did it just in time. It was only later, when someone was doing an update to the code, several month's later, that we found that the last line of the code was "move zero to difference" i.e. the subroutine would never highlight any errors in the reconciliation! It's that kind of culture that leads to rubbish systems like Horizon and the cover up of issues.
It makes you realise how badly political journalism has been getting it for years, when one short interaction with a satirist and comedy panel quiz captain shows you how to properly deal with the bluff and bull of the lying MP.
