Actually in the enquiry quite a lot has been made of that, a lot of today's evidence has highlighted that being investigator, CPS and prosecutor creates blurred lines and lacks credibility.The one thing that surprised me about the programme, that doesn’t seem to have been discussed much, is that the Post Office have the power to completely bypass the police and take people to court themselves.
Not saying I’ve 100% confidence in the police but their involvement is normally a pretty important step between someone accusing someone else of criminality and that person ending up in jail.
I've followed this scandal since 2003 when I heard about a conviction of a postmaster for theft, the sub postmaster talked about system issues but the article only mentioned this in passing and was generally of the opinion the postmaster was guilty, but it sparked a memory and subsequently lead me to wonder if his assertion was correct:-
In 1997 I worked for a large retailer and was on a team tasked with procuring a new EPOS system. One of the systems we were asked to evaluate was called Pathway. It was a bag of shit! The screen (badly calibrated) would often seemingly freeze but when it recovered you discovered it had accepted every key press. The system would kick you out of sub menu's/applications and often needed re-booting. In an attempt to instil some confidence the ICL rep (later they became Fujitsu) told us that the system we were looking at had been selected as a prototype and was currently being developed into a system for Post Offices, I remember thinking "god help them".
Needless to say I didn't necessarily go along with the 2003 article that the Postmaster was a thief!
Not sure I foresaw where we are today though!
The bit where they said why did you write this sentence in capital letters and he said that's how I write....and you could see all the other sentences had words split with a mix of upper and lower case letters. How can someone who can't write properly be allowed to lead these investigations?Just watching the enquiry. Trying to put my prejudices to one side this scouser doesn’t sound credible at all. I’ve seen people like this so many times before. Made a career by dogma and inertia and get to a level way above their competence. An really imagine him relying on authority rather than investigation and not having the intelligence or professional ability to follow patterns and logic.
I've watched all of the enquiry, none of them are credible. I have also concluded that there was something in the water at POL head office that caused amnesia because the most common answer to questions is "I don't recall"! It's also intriguing the amount of people that told the enquiry they left the post office in 2016, intriguing because that is when the "555" launched their common issues writ to the post office which they had substantial financial backing for. All of a sudden post office lifers in their late 50's early 60's all decided it was time for a career change!Just watching the enquiry. Trying to put my prejudices to one side this scouser doesn’t sound credible at all. I’ve seen people like this so many times before. Made a career by dogma and inertia and get to a level way above their competence. An really imagine him relying on authority rather than investigation and not having the intelligence or professional ability to follow patterns and logic.