Mr Bates vs the Post Office

[kenbelly]

I've just been for a longish walk and have been listening to more episodes of the BBC Sounds podcast by Nick Wallis. It just gets worse, the more you hear. The sub-postmasters took the PO to the Commercial Court in 2013. They had to raise a lot of money to do that but the Post Office tried to make things as difficult as possible as they could easily outspend them. In fact the Chief Financial Officer at the PO allegedly told a union official that this was their strategy.

There were about 5 cases in all, as there was too much for one single case. Alan Bates was the first to go, and he won pretty comprehensively. The second case was about the reliability of the system and the PO got shredded in that one. That revealed the infamous Clark Memo, which was prepared by a QC and said that the Horizon system was flawed and that convictions based on it were inherently unsafe. The PO never disclosed that externally (although from a purely technical legal point of view they didn't have to) but they didn't even share it with their own General Counsel or board.

They then held a series of internal meetings reviewing the cases they'd prosecuted but stopped, with their Head of Securtoy ordering the notes from those meetings to be shredded. An anonymous lawyer (who was clearly close to the proceeding) said that was an egregious case of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, as the documents were effectively part of the series of cases that were going on back in 2014.

They've known for 10 fucking years that people were wrongly convicted and while some convictions (the 39 that were the subject of the Clark memo) have been overturned, many others haven't and the innocent victims are still waiting for proper compensation. It made me so angry.

Prison isn't adequate punishment for Vennells and the others involved. They should be in front of a firing squad or dangling on the end of a rope.

I still can’t believe Vennells masqueraded as a priest, nearly making it to Bishop of London. The woman Is quite frankly disgusting and I hope she ends up in jail for what she has done.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

I still can’t believe Vennells masqueraded as a priest, nearly making it to Bishop of London. The woman Is quite frankly disgusting and I hope she ends up in jail for what she has done.

I'll see your Paula Vennells and raise you Paul Flowers.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Telegraph, Mail, Express the Sun et al - all outraged but if Mr Bates vs The Post Office was made by Ken Loach does anyone believe they would be concerned ......../

 

[Bill Walker]

I still can’t believe Vennells masqueraded as a priest, nearly making it to Bishop of London. The woman Is quite frankly disgusting and I hope she ends up in jail for what she has done.

I can. Wouldn't put anything past that lot.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I wonder what Jesus would make of Paula Vennells.

 

[paulchapo]

I still can’t believe Vennells masqueraded as a priest, nearly making it to Bishop of London. The woman Is quite frankly disgusting and I hope she ends up in jail for what she has done.

Ha no surprise to me. Some of the cruellest most inhumane people are the supposed religious do gooders.

 

[heslops barnet]

From that :-
‘In a letter dated 10 December 1998, Lord Mandelson said he believed the "only sensible choice" was to proceed with Horizon‘.

I would guess, with the benefit of hindsight, they’d have opted for another sensible option of ‘let’s just hang on and iron out the creases first, it could cause an absolute shitstorm further down the line if we don’t’’.

Mandelson has always been a dodgy ****……..

 

[doots]

I wonder what Jesus would make of Paula Vennells.

He'd weep

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Not really, his approach was exactly the same as execs at the top of POL years later. They were both told that the system had bugs, errors and defects but rather than accept that they asked people to go away and asked them to come back with positives of the system this then became the narrative they pushed and acted on.

It isn’t fair to compare the two situations, other than they relate to the same computer system.

Systems sometimes don’t work. It happens. Sometimes they do, despite prior warning.

Doing nothing about it/covering it up once the flaws were apparent is the real reprehensible conduct in this. Not picking/authorising the system itself.

 

[Dirty Harry]

Many of you are missing the big picture here, Vennels was sent by God to put these people through trauma and total misery so that when they joined God by his side in the Kingdom of Heaven, they’d be much more prepared for the fight against evil, or something like that.