So, this post office palaver then

[Werewolf]

Didn't one of the major investigation shows show exactly what has gone on years ago?...IE Royal Mail top people knew, people that work for Fujitsu knew, and did everything the could to cover it up? How where they getting away with this for so long and no one was held accountable?

Yup

IIRC the post office had an investigation and when the results showed it was computer error they ordered the company doing it to destroy all their work.

They not only knew it was a problem they lied to judges, they lied to parliament, they lied to the defence, and they actively destroyed evidence in the cover up.

There should be a whole host of people in jail for perverting the course of justice, perjury and fraud, and not the subpostmasers.


I remember reading about issues with this system in Micro Mart? (small computer paper, IIRC every two weeks and you had to go to a "specialist" news agent like WH smith to get it), way back in the very early 00's if not the late 90's.

 

[Werewolf]

Finally this is coming to the front of the news and peoples minds.

Whats more alarming to me is that you have top management of Fujitsu who have pleaded complete ignorance to this and refused to admit their software is at fault and has resulted in numerous;
convictions
jail times
bankruptcies
suicides

Whilst also allowing their support team to directly access a post office's system, using the SPM's credentials which allows for all of their activity to be hidden.
Speaking as the nephew of a previous SPM who gave up their post in 2002.

This is before we even speak about the CPS who have prosecuted hundreds of individuals against a faulty system and allowed for false information to be used in a court of law.

IIRC it wasn't the CPS.

The post office has it's own ability to prosecute.

 

[tonys]

The trouble is this will happen in any organisation large or small, probably not to the same extent.

 

[Pants]

Pathetic from government that they are only being seen to act now that it would benefit them in the public eye. They were well aware before the documentary.

We need to see execs being held accountable for their dishonesty rather than just being able to hop to another executive role, where past mistakes seem to be instantly forgiven because your face fits and you have the right contacts.

Prosecutors need their powers stripped and to be made accountable for pushing cases with no real evidence, and dishonestly suggesting they ever had a case for theft to push for guilty peas on lesser charges.

Judges need hauling over the coals for accepting cases with a lack of real evidence.

Drives me mad that those with power can walk away from this stuff unscathed.

 

[cu3ed]

Pathetic from government that they are only being seen to act now that it would benefit them in the public eye. They were well aware before the documentary.

We need to see execs being held accountable for their dishonesty rather than just being able to hop to another executive role, where past mistakes seem to be instantly forgiven because your face fits and you have the right contacts.

Prosecutors need their powers stripped and to be made accountable for pushing cases with no real evidence, and dishonestly suggesting they ever had a case for theft to push for guilty peas on lesser charges.

Judges need hauling over the coals for accepting cases with a lack of real evidence.

Drives me mad that those with power can walk away from this stuff unscathed.

Willing to bet only because of election year they will face any pubic stuff head on to look better.

 

[jaybee]

Did alarm bells not start to ring after a bit? Maybe after a decade and a few hundred cases?

 

[tonys]

Did alarm bells not start to ring after a bit? Maybe after a decade and a few hundred cases?

Of course it did but nobody wanted to deal with it correctly. Ostrich and sand spring to mind

 

[sidimmu]

IIRC it wasn't the CPS.

The post office has it's own ability to prosecute.

Ah you are correct.

They not only knew it was a problem they lied to judges, they lied to parliament, they lied to the defence, and they actively destroyed evidence in the cover up.

Fujitsu did the exact same thing as the provider of the system.

 

[JonRGV250]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1745055050974605741

Let’s hope so.

 

[Werewolf]

Pathetic from government that they are only being seen to act now that it would benefit them in the public eye. They were well aware before the documentary.

We need to see execs being held accountable for their dishonesty rather than just being able to hop to another executive role, where past mistakes seem to be instantly forgiven because your face fits and you have the right contacts.

Prosecutors need their powers stripped and to be made accountable for pushing cases with no real evidence, and dishonestly suggesting they ever had a case for theft to push for guilty peas on lesser charges.

Judges need hauling over the coals for accepting cases with a lack of real evidence.

Drives me mad that those with power can walk away from this stuff unscathed.

IIRC it turned out that at least in some cases the barristers doing the prosecutions for the Post Office had no idea there were other cases with the same circumstances, the Judges didn't know what was going on because the evidence as presented by the prosecution and their experts was shown as solid as many other cases.
The start of any attempt to prevent this happening in the future is that the post office should lose their ability to bring such prosecutions, in the same way that we split the police and the prosecution apart 30 years ago.

The problem was that the Post office and Fujitsu were actively lying and denying important information from both the court, and the defence and IIRC they took action against any of their staff who tried to speak out about it or raised questions.

It was basically what happened with the police back in the 70's, but done for profit and to save face at the companies involved.

 

[JonRGV250]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1745004605006606718

 

[Werewolf]

IIRC the CPS had little or nothing to do with the bulk of the prosecutions and it's exceptionally unlikely Starmer had any active involvement of them as head of the CPS (these were not "major" crimes), this sounds like another desperate attempt to smear him.
He wouldn't even have likely had easy access to information on the number of cases and the increase, as that would have records at the home office/ministry of justice (CPS is the "country vs" prosecutions, it doesn't run the courts etc).

Also the information the CPS would have had if the cases that they had no involvement in would have been extremely limited and little more than any court records as they wouldn't have even been party to any of the Post Office prosecution files.

 

[adam cool dude]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1745055050974605741

Let’s hope so.

Only doing that to get votes come election. Why did he wait until a television drama came out to act?

Cretin.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

You're thinking of a Greek balaclava.

Pavlova ftw

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Brexit bingo card ticked off.

Can't resist, I know I shouldn't mock the afflicted.

We can certainly blame Kier though

Back on topic.

As an accountant I could never work out why one of the defenders never really engaged a proper forensic accountant, or hell, even a decently experienced one.
If I was looking into something like this now I would take regular snapshots of data and run a parallel paper system along side for a week or so.
The system was in effect from what I can tell performing an automated daily till and stock balance. As such at the end of the day when you entered the till balance and details of electronic transactions the system would go "error does not balance, your short £xxx"

I think part of the point of the rollout of the system was however to detect fraud (It was deemed there was fraud within the post office). The post office went from highly manual, and I suspect basically with no real ability to really reconcile sub post offices to in effect a system that they thought would give them full visibility and instantly start detecting the bad eggs who were stealing.
I think it was very much thought to be working as intended at the start. Then you get confirmation bias. We detected 100 people, 98 gave in and "admitted it" so its working. Thumbs up everyone!

 

[fez]

What do we reckon. The tax payer will pick up the monstrous bill for this and the people/company involved will get away scott free?

 

[JonRGV250]

I think that’s a given.

 

[Pipe & Slippers]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1745004605006606718

I'm no fan of Starmer, but to hold him responsbible for these 27 is a bit of a stretch - he probably had 10,000's of cases that ultimately fell under him
On saying that, I'm surprised someone in the CPS wasn't going "Hang on a minute, we had one of these last week" and "We seem to be prosecuting a lot of Postmasters nowadays"

 

[tonys]

What do we reckon. The tax payer will pick up the monstrous bill for this and the people/company involved will get away scott free?

This seems to be how our justice system works now, victims get dumped on and the culprits get away with a handshake

 

[Kelt]

Binge watched it last night, absolute disgrace that this happened.

And how many P.O. or Toshiba employees who actively enabled this witch hunt that ended up in prosecutions ans suicides are getting prosecuted themselves?

You guessed it, a big fat zero.

Hell, they even gave one of them a CBE!