Today's discussion about the news
Comments
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Re the PO thing, here's an opinion from someone else (no idea of qualification)
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Isn't that a bit tricky, as there could very well be one cynical thief amongst the however many complaints? Or I guess the argument is then better get the act to clear it and then re-prosecute?
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Given the scale of the miscarriage, and how long it's taken to reach this point, I think that risk would be justifiable.
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It's a fairly basic tenet of justice systems that it is better to let a guilty person go free than convict an innocent person.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I watched the 2015 Panorama broadcast about it, and it seemed as clear as day then that the reason the PO was strong-arming subpostmasters with charges of theft was to get them to agree to admit false accounting, so that the cases wouldn't go to court and potentially expose the problems with Horizon under forensic examination. The degree of utterly cynical actions to try to cover up the scandal are breathtaking.
This is also a very good read about the PO's aggressive actions in court trying to cover up its shenanigans.
https://www.thelawyer.com/how-justice-done-in-post-office-scandal/
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Yeah. That was 8 years ago though. It's only come back into the public eye because of the TV programme.
I'd love to get a proper read from the people from the PO but it's unlikely we ever will.
I think you'd need to be a full blown psychopath to be ok with what happened on your conscious, so what was going on collectively to blind all the various PO people involved to behave like that for so long?
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Indeed re the recent programme - remarkably effective.
The corporate arse-covering was indeed quite something, but par for the course on corporate blunders... once you've started to go down that route, they tend just to keep on digging and doubling down (to mix as many metaphors as I can). The slightly unusual element of this case is that to keep the pretence going, they had to prosecute hundreds and hundreds of individuals, case by case, and each one of those relied on corporate cynical dishonesty.
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It was a software error right? Everyone knows software is completely infallible
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No I don't think it is "par for the course". It can't be that and the widest miscarriage of justice in British history.
Most organisations would not do this, not least as there are a lot of people and decisions made for it to go the way it did.
That is the interesting bit and the lesson here; what possessed them collectively to do it. I don't think the "it's just corporate arse covering" is a sufficient explanation. I don't doubt the CEO at the time thinks she is fundamentally a good person and has people's interests at heart, and I'm sure it's the same for all the other people involved.
So what was going on there? For such a myriad of bad decisions for so long.
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It's ridiculous with everything that was known about it already that it has taken a TV drama to get some action from the Government. As the problems happened mainly on Labour's watch I'm surprised they haven't seen an opportunity to make a big deal of it and be the good guys putting things right for the innocent victims. Maybe that's why they are suddenly paying attention now when it is the public eye again and an election is coming.
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This completely broke the subpostmaster in our village.
Nice old boy, who ran the village shop that was reliant on the PO to make the shop a viable business. His mental health issues following the accusation that he had done something wrong meant that he had to close the shop and PO. I really hope he gets some meaningful compensation that will give him what he needs to be able to live comfortably and guilt free.
A far less important but nevertheless significant consequence of this is that we now no longer have a PO or village shop. That's a whole community affected by this scandal and we can't be the only one.
Wilier Izoard XP0 -
My parents ran a village sub PO in the 80's - pre horizon when it was all manual accounts.
I remember the stress in the house each week on Fridays when the books were balanced , they were never happy until it was done and we could then make a noise. If they had been accused of wrongdoing it would have destroyed them. I can only image how those poor people felt.
2020/2021/2022 Metric Century Challenge Winner0 -
can't see why it'd be such a problem
if it turned out there was actually someone guilty who benefitted, it's not as if petty theft is on the same scale as what is seen as acceptable for elected officials and their cronies - taking money for favours, dishonestly in public office, persecuting the innocent etc.
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
This scandal has a while left to run. Legally, one difficulty is that a lot of the postmasters entered guilty pleas, following legal advice to minimise their exposure. And some have since died.
Adding to that is how long the issues were known about before the plug was pulled on further prosecutions. And how many post office CEOs and ministers rubber stamped it.
Now they are trying to squirrel out of compensation.
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Least they could do is clear everyone's name. Quick fix, some relief, and the press could back off a bit.
Sure, compensation is warranted and will be welcome but I guess the legal issues are the most concerning for those involved.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
I don't think they've missed a single opportunity to do the wrong thing.
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Agree. It is astonishing how often the IT system was given the benefit of the doubt.
Computer says no.
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I'm pretty sure that they knew fairly early on that Horizon was probably to blame, but by that time they'd decided to start prosecuting, because they couldn't handle the ramifications of admitting the deep problem. Then all their energies went into the defence of Horizon, no matter what.
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It would have been so obvious surely? A new computer system goes online and suddenly the supposed fraud rates increase massively. The bit I don't understand is how they felt they would be able to maintain a cover up indefinitely. I really hope some of those at the top get prosecuted so they get a taste of what they put innocent people through.
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The big clue that they knew just how deceitful they were being was the repeated lie to each of those they prosecuted was that the person being prosecuted was the only one, and Horizon was working fine for everyone else. There's no innocent explanation.
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This is more like a many headed creature than anything else, I think. You had all of these individual cases with their own momentum and in each case it was a David Vs Goliath. The issue with the IT system was known but not the full extent, and for about a decade the approach was to place the burden on demonstrating the problem on David.
It will run and run, I think. There are still 600 odd postmasters with criminal convictions based on that accounting system.
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But I think that was probably a very conscious decision by the PO, hoping that none of those Davids would be aware that were hundreds of others, and that even if they did, that they'd not have the resources to fight the well-funded Goliath. (That approach carried on even in the big court case where they were trying to get the judge removed.)
My guess would be that the approach started haphazardly, but fairly quickly morphed into a systematic fraud, helped along by the fact (which I'd not appreciated till I saw the John Sweeney Panorama) that the PO was doing the prosecuting direct, not having to go through the CPS.
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I think you are largely correct. But these things do have a legal momentum. If you instruct a lawyer, the lawyer is going to present all options in your favour.
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Though I'd hope that a (good) lawyer would also advise a client if the approach they were following was honest/legal. From personal experience, if a client insists on a course of action which the lawyer considers to be untenable, then they tend to (and should) refuse to act for the client.
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The Post Office has it's own powers to bring criminal prosecutions. It's used those powers in the same way a business might launch a civil claim against another.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Nah. Besides, what a layman consider to be "cricket" is irrelevant to whether it is a reasonable legal angle.
I have analogies in my work, not that it's remotely important and not that I can easily explain. I dont consider myself a bad person for trying anything to win a hearing though.
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Is it wildly different to the Alan Turing law?
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