Mr Bates vs the Post Office

[BringBackSwales]

Just been extended until 2025 for an additional £36m.

Computer Weekly report

Fucking hell

 

[BringBackSwales]

You don’t have to be Hurcule Poirot, and nor do you need to be Alan Turing to appreciate that the system was the most likely explanation by some distance, irrespective of what others might be telling you.

Not only should that have been readily apparent, but also at a relatively early stage.

One obvious question should have been (which any reasonably competent FD could have answered) was if the SPs were telling the truth, then where would the money be? A check of the holding account for cash surpluses vs the pre-Horizon period would surely have provided some clue. It’s clear that no senior decision maker stepped back and even asked any question based on the predication of the SP’s innocence.

Senior executives are well rewarded because they are supposed to have the wherewithal, vision and experience to take a wider view of the situations their organisations face - good and bad. This requires them to think in a way that is objective and logical and to ask questions of what they are being told; in terms of both themselves and others. It is important to a certain extent to defer to others who have levels of expertise that you do not, but not unequivocally or slavishly. People will tell you what you, or they, want to hear. To suggest otherwise is pitifully naive.

For whatever reason, no senior executive seemed remote capable of applying this perfectly reasonable and proportionate approach. Not only for the sake of the people within the organisation, but also the organisation itself.

They are all cunts as far as I’m concerned. They completely failed to do their job and have caused extreme misery as a consequence.

I’m not normally one for witch hunts, people make mistakes, but it seems to me that this sorry episode extends way beyond the merely negligent on behalf of large numbers of senior executives at the PO and there should be severe consequences for them in order for justice to be done.

I particularly like your 5 paragraphs of rational logic, followed by “they are all cunts”

 

[MCFC Wirral]

There’s no football on Sky tonight so I think I’ll watch episode three. I can see awards galore for this drama.

 

[BringBackSwales]

I watched the Panorama documentary on this last night - this was aired 2 years ago, so much of this has been out there for years, it’s criminal that it took a dramatised version for this appallingly negligent government to do something. What changed Mr Cameron, Mrs May, Mr Johnson, Mr Sunak (I’ll let Mrs Truss off as she was only PM for half an hour)? This was something that should have been dealt with years ago, you utter cunts

 

[inchy14]

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.

You’re correct, however knowing management like I do their rationale would have been that the new system was now catching the crooks and it was brilliant, they’d have been asking how much went in before the new system was introduced.

Scandalous that nobody was willing to sit back and look at the data analytically and question it.

 

[Blue Maverick]

The whole thing against normal working people is a disgrace, firefighter and public sector services wrongly had their pensions changed due to discriminatio, that case was won in 2018, 1000s have still not received their full pensions, people have died since then. They are now slowly rolling out to people their money however due to tax issues it’s all fucking complicated, I found out yesterday once you receive it you then have to apply to HMRC to see if you owe them any tax or indeed they may owe you if you’ve gone over personal allowance, one person had now been told he’s been fined because he didn’t do this in 2018 and didn’t take personal responsibility for his tax, how the fuck could he it was all out of his control, it was going through the courts and he was PAYE not self employed. Everything is against the individual the world has become that complicated people just give up.
Those people who died in the PO scandal their families will probably not see any as it usually does with you, twats.

 

[Dubai Blue]

This is on multiple governments to be fair, shouldn't be political.

Multiple governments, but largely of the same party. The dragging of heels since the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance was set up should certainly be viewed through a political lens in my opinion.

As Hislop has pointed out, there is simply no excuse for how successive Conservative governments have behaved over this matter. Sunak patting himself on the back yesterday was sickening; he himself has had 14 months to address this issue (plus 13 years for his predecessors), but only now is it suddenly a priority.

On top of all that, they thought it was prudent to honour Vennells at a time when everything that we know today was pretty much already known.

And before anyone comes back with "They're all the same. Do you really think a Labour government would have acted any differently?" we don't know and never will. But we absolutely know what multiple Tory governments did; pretty much fuck all until someone made a TV show about it.

 

[Dirty Harry]

This is on multiple governments to be fair, shouldn't be political.

Indeed, Starmer named this morning whilst head of the CPS apparently.

 

[Dirty Harry]

You’re correct, however knowing management like I do their rationale would have been that the new system was now catching the crooks and it was brilliant, they’d have been asking how much went in before the new system was introduced.

Scandalous that nobody was willing to sit back and look at the data analytically and question it.

True mate, but I’d expect a decent Defence, Prosecutor, and a fair minded Judge, to have recognised it and questioned the before and after.

Just seems they’ve been let down by everybody, every step of the way

 

[Gabriel]

Would imagine the furore generated will have commissioning editors seeking out other such catastrophes to be dramatised for future Christmas viewing. Could become an annual tradition that is awkward for successive governments.