Mr Bates vs the Post Office

Prestwich_Blue said:
I'm currently listening to the BBC podcasts on the affair and one of the independent investigators said the same thing.

You have a level of fraud/theft which presumably is low, then introduce a new system which sees suspected theft/fraud reach a significantly higher level. You'd think someone might make the connection.

The podcast says that when the suspicion that Horizon WAS the problem finally dawned on the Post Office, instead of holding their hands up, they actually doubled down and started dragging their heels, witholding documents and generally reducing cooperation. Anyone who knowingly took part in that should be going to jail.

They've also effectively stolen money off those sub-postmasters who they forced to repay non-existent shortfalls. They're no better than scammers, who would certainly go to prison if caught and convicted.
Click to expand...
On Five Live yesterday it was stated that the number of prosecutions of SPs in the year before Horizon was ten. The year after it was introduced it was over 100.

Any reasonable person stepping back and evaluating that would have had cause to question the overarching reason behind it. Those numbers simply did not make any sense in relation to people of previous good character who had been heavily vetted for their roles in the organisation.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
On Five Live yesterday it was stated that the number of prosecutions of SPs in the year before Horizon was ten. The year after it was introduced it was over 100.

Any reasonable person stepping back and evaluating that would have had cause to question the overarching reason behind it. Those numbers simply did not make any sense in relation to people of previous good character who had been heavily vetted for their roles in the organisation.
Click to expand...
As a software engineer for 34 years, I find it ludicrous that the police, the government and the CPS have so much faith in the fact that a computer system is infallible that they’d rather convict 100s of innocent people than consider the obvious explanation.

It beggars belief.

I notice that Fujitsu execs are up before the inquiry next week, so it will be interesting to see how they defend their system and their actions.
 
I wonder how many more sub postmasters weren’t in the nearly 800 prosecuted but who gave the post office their own money to make up shortfalls that weren’t there, potentially thousands of them with thousands of pounds each handed over to the post office? This could be a lot bigger than currently thought?

Also is Horizon still in place or has it been replaced?
 
Last edited:
Johnny Mars Bar said:
I didn’t know anything about the bicycle thing but now you mention it I’ve not seen a postie on a bike for years!

What was the possible rationale behind that?!?

Bikes are cheap, reliable, zero emissions and are mostly immune to traffic. I can’t think of a single better vehicle for local posties to use for deliveries.
Click to expand...

They used to have one bag that they could throw over their shoulder or stick on the front of the bike. And a round that took them maybe an hour or so.

Now they all seem to be dragging some huge truck around with them from the crack of dawn until early evening.

Couldn’t fit one of those fuckers on a bike.
 
RobMCFC said:
As a software engineer for 34 years, I find it ludicrous that the police, the government and the CPS have so much faith in the fact that a computer system is infallible that they’d rather convict 100s of innocent people than consider the obvious explanation.

It beggars belief.

I notice that Fujitsu execs are up before the inquiry next week, so it will be interesting to see how they defend their system and their actions.
Click to expand...
I've got a similar length in the IT industry to you, as a project manager and business analyst, and I'll go further.

In my 35 years, I've been lucky to work on some great projects. Six or seven major IT/Business transformation projects including two of the biggest and most ambitious in Western Europe. Never once have I seen a system implemented that didn't have initial problems of some sort.

Those might be bugs, requirements that were specified incorrectly or weren't specified at all, requirements that had to be dropped from scope in order to meet cost or time constraints, things that worked perfectly in the pre-production environment then failed in production. All sorts of reasons.

This week at my current company, we've just loaded the first mortgage case on our new platform but there's problems in a couple of areas, plus we need a host of manual processes to support that mortgage application through to completion and disbursement of the funds.

Last year I worked for the DWP, and was working on their payment system, one of the biggest in the world, when the Queen died. I wasn't involved in the 'London Bridge' operation but the colleague I worked with very closely was. They'd practiced that relentlessly, particularly as the late Queen got older. Because of the bank holiday being declared at short notice, we had to bring forward all payments that were due on that day or would be in BACS for payment on the next two days. When they finished and things got back to business as usual, she said there were things that had not worked that they hadn't considered in practice runs.

I've implemented a new system at 9am and had to take it down at 9:15am, as we still had a test table in there, rather than the production one. City's launch of digital tickets was another example that had loads of issues until they got on top of them.

I don't know what the implementation strategy was for Horizon but I'd expect a pilot roll-out to a small number of sub-post offices and careful monitoring, involving recording all transactions manually and reconciling those to the system. Partly because you're never sure what real users, who won't have the same experience, training or knowledge as the people who worked on it, are going to do.

There's no way a system as complex as Horizon was ever going to be perfect first time.
 
Last edited:
bluethrunthru said:
Jake Berry is a dick

Click to expand...


Jess Phillips seems to have been enjoying that.

I cannot fathom why Berry doesn't think 'hang on, Hislop's been going on about this for donkey's years, maybe I shouldn't try to flannel at him'. It is very rare that anyone goes up against him on one of his specialist subjects and gets the better of him.

The anger when Berry said that Hislop 'claimed to love' the series was palpable.
 
MillionMilesAway said:
Jess Phillips seems to have been enjoying that.

I cannot fathom why Berry doesn't think 'hang on, Hislop's been going on about this for donkey's years, maybe I shouldn't try to flannel at him'. It is very rare that anyone goes up against him on one of his specialist subjects and gets the better of him.

The anger when Berry said that Hislop 'claimed to love' the series was palpable.
Click to expand...

Jake Berry is a prick with zero political nowse - the fact that he has risen so fat in the Tory Party just indicates how shit their "talent" pool is. Looking like an epic loss at the GE then a R/W move to oblivion
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top