Soldato
So, this post office palaver then
- Thread starter Diddums
- Start date
Michael Keegan served as Fujitsu's UK CEO from May 2014 to June 2015, the sub-postmasters did not commence their litigation against the Post Office until 2016.
Only 10 of the sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the CPS (the rest were prosecuted by the Post Office) and of those 10 only 3 were prosecuted during Starmer's tenure as DPP, and of those 3 only 0 had any personal involvement by him.
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What I really cannot understand, apologies for my ignorance in the matter, I may just be completely missing the point, there are just so many factors that complicate everything. Then could all these complicating factors cause mitigating circumstances?
How did all these postmasters received criminal records, fines, even prison sentences and so on. Perhaps if it was one or two instances of "theft" then it would probably not go to a full investigation as theft would be the most obvious reason.
What happened to the missing funds? Presumably these would have gone into various post office accounts that would ultimately have some sort of paper trail taking them outside of the Fujitsu loop.
When it is the same issue happening across the country then surely it would be obvious that theft was not the reason to blame. I just think with some of the areas of retail I have worked in, if in one store there was various amounts of cash missing from the safe, or on company credit cards then it would be looked into and it would be obvious that it was one individual taking money from the safe, if every store (500+ stores) was routinely missing money from the safe or on credit cards then it would cause concern across the business. Whilst perhaps it was being covered up by the people I don't understand how it could be covered up enough to get the money out of the business.
How did all these postmasters received criminal records, fines, even prison sentences and so on. Perhaps if it was one or two instances of "theft" then it would probably not go to a full investigation as theft would be the most obvious reason.
What happened to the missing funds? Presumably these would have gone into various post office accounts that would ultimately have some sort of paper trail taking them outside of the Fujitsu loop.
When it is the same issue happening across the country then surely it would be obvious that theft was not the reason to blame. I just think with some of the areas of retail I have worked in, if in one store there was various amounts of cash missing from the safe, or on company credit cards then it would be looked into and it would be obvious that it was one individual taking money from the safe, if every store (500+ stores) was routinely missing money from the safe or on credit cards then it would cause concern across the business. Whilst perhaps it was being covered up by the people I don't understand how it could be covered up enough to get the money out of the business.
That bit makes some sense to my previous question where there was limited investigation from the CPS, but still that still, that should have stood out as there being something wrong. The only reason from this that I can think is were there so many mitigating factors that it caused every case to look completely different, and over various periods of time?
Were the CPS failing to properly look at all factors, or investigate properly? Or were the CPS acting in a corrupt way with the Post Office and/or Fujitsu?
The CPS don’t investigate anything, that’s not within their remit. They are handed evidence by investigatory units like the police or in this case the Post Office.
If they deem the evidence that they are presented with as likely to secure a conviction then their job is to perform the prosecution and put the evidence before a public jury.
In this instance, the evidence that the post office provided to the CPS happened to be, for all intents and purposes, fraudulent.
When presented to them, that same fraudulent evidence convinced a jury of the accused’s guilt.
Yes so 3 miscarriages of justice - Starmer previously said the 'buck stopped with him' whilst in charge of the CPS - all people are asking for is an apology but seemingly this is too much. Shameful.
Regardless as far as he is concerned the damage is done as he appears to the public to be part of some establishment cover up.
A lot has been mentioned here (and in the media) about what happened after Horizon went live, and what happened to the SPS's, and what should be done. But it seems something not getting as much attention is just how Horizon turned out to be such a **** show in the first place, so I thought I'd add a little prologue to the story for people (I initially wrote that as TLDR prologue haha).
Back in the 80's Fujitsu group wanted to make roads into the UK IT industry and rather than trying to come in under their own name and build a reputation they instead bought a controlling stake in British computer giant ICL (for those too young to remember the name think of them as our IBM). Tthey then used the well known and trusted ICL name to sell rebranded Fujitsu PCs in the UK (leading to a bizarre situation where you had "British" ICL PCs that had been manufactured in Japan competing for market share with "American" IBM PCs that had been manufactured in Scotland) however they didn't really take much interest in ICL's software business (something they are no doubt kicking themselves over today). Part of this software business was ICLs EPOS systems (Electronic Point Of Sale, tills/etc).
ICL was a big company with it's fingers in many pies, however EPOS was only a small pie and so their EPOS team consisted pretty much entirely of people who had proven themselves not good enough to work on anything more important, or new people who hadn't proven themselves either way (and who would be moved to another team if they did show usefulness). A modern example would be the Lync/Skype teams at pre-pandemic Microsoft. Or for gamers: the Heroes of the Storm team at Blizzard.
And so in the mid to late 90s it fell to ICL's C team of programmers to put together their newest EPOS system, which would be sold to the Post Office as Horizon. Now you're probably wondering at this point how Fujitsu bares the blame for the impending **** storm, well in 1998 Fujitsu bought the remaining stake in ICL and it effectively became their subsidiary (in 2002 it would be renamed Fujitsu UK). One of Fujitsu's first actions in 1998 was to order a bunch of reports on what all the ICL teams/divisions were up to and how it was going, however showing an unexpected level of intelligence for anyone or anything connected to this debacle they decided not to have the teams mark their own work but to have teams report on other teams. This meant that the EPOS team and their Horizon project were reported on by members of one of the more capable teams and it did not go well for them. Generally speaking any report on a programming team's project that includes such sentences as "Whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming" is not a positive report. As a result Fujitsu sent over three high level coding auditors from Japan to go over the code in question, sadly what they reported back hasn't been disclosed but it's fairly safe to say it was not positive.
It's unknown what changes (if any) Fujitsu chose to make before the completion of the project, but it is known for a fact they were aware prior to 1999 that Horizon was a programming disaster so bad it could potentially never be fixed, and not only did they supply it to the Post Office with no mention of this beforehand but also they refused to disclose it or admit any potential flaws even when obvious errors started popping up resulting in prosecutions.
If I had to make an educated guess at what happened, I would say Fujitsu realised they had been tossed a live grenade by ICL, and decided to chuck it on to the Post Office as that would be more cost effective than letting it go off in their hands. There was no chance they could rewrite the majority/entirety of Horizon without overshooting the delivery date by a light year, and they probably figured any financial/reputational blowback from software issues would be preferable to that (similar to how Ford once sold a car they knew would explode if crashed because the wrongful death lawsuits would be cheaper than a redesign).
To end, here's a couple more comments by one of the people who did the 1998 ICL report on Horizon:
Back in the 80's Fujitsu group wanted to make roads into the UK IT industry and rather than trying to come in under their own name and build a reputation they instead bought a controlling stake in British computer giant ICL (for those too young to remember the name think of them as our IBM). Tthey then used the well known and trusted ICL name to sell rebranded Fujitsu PCs in the UK (leading to a bizarre situation where you had "British" ICL PCs that had been manufactured in Japan competing for market share with "American" IBM PCs that had been manufactured in Scotland) however they didn't really take much interest in ICL's software business (something they are no doubt kicking themselves over today). Part of this software business was ICLs EPOS systems (Electronic Point Of Sale, tills/etc).
ICL was a big company with it's fingers in many pies, however EPOS was only a small pie and so their EPOS team consisted pretty much entirely of people who had proven themselves not good enough to work on anything more important, or new people who hadn't proven themselves either way (and who would be moved to another team if they did show usefulness). A modern example would be the Lync/Skype teams at pre-pandemic Microsoft. Or for gamers: the Heroes of the Storm team at Blizzard.
And so in the mid to late 90s it fell to ICL's C team of programmers to put together their newest EPOS system, which would be sold to the Post Office as Horizon. Now you're probably wondering at this point how Fujitsu bares the blame for the impending **** storm, well in 1998 Fujitsu bought the remaining stake in ICL and it effectively became their subsidiary (in 2002 it would be renamed Fujitsu UK). One of Fujitsu's first actions in 1998 was to order a bunch of reports on what all the ICL teams/divisions were up to and how it was going, however showing an unexpected level of intelligence for anyone or anything connected to this debacle they decided not to have the teams mark their own work but to have teams report on other teams. This meant that the EPOS team and their Horizon project were reported on by members of one of the more capable teams and it did not go well for them. Generally speaking any report on a programming team's project that includes such sentences as "Whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming" is not a positive report. As a result Fujitsu sent over three high level coding auditors from Japan to go over the code in question, sadly what they reported back hasn't been disclosed but it's fairly safe to say it was not positive.
It's unknown what changes (if any) Fujitsu chose to make before the completion of the project, but it is known for a fact they were aware prior to 1999 that Horizon was a programming disaster so bad it could potentially never be fixed, and not only did they supply it to the Post Office with no mention of this beforehand but also they refused to disclose it or admit any potential flaws even when obvious errors started popping up resulting in prosecutions.
If I had to make an educated guess at what happened, I would say Fujitsu realised they had been tossed a live grenade by ICL, and decided to chuck it on to the Post Office as that would be more cost effective than letting it go off in their hands. There was no chance they could rewrite the majority/entirety of Horizon without overshooting the delivery date by a light year, and they probably figured any financial/reputational blowback from software issues would be preferable to that (similar to how Ford once sold a car they knew would explode if crashed because the wrongful death lawsuits would be cheaper than a redesign).
To end, here's a couple more comments by one of the people who did the 1998 ICL report on Horizon:
This post office malarkey really boils my pee... Has done for years and everytime I read about or hear it in the sea I get so angry at the injustice and the continued injustice.
People need to be held to account, Fujitsu and the post office need to be found guilty of corporate criminal offence big fines need to be paid.
Those who made the decisions to enact the deception should be held accountable for perverting the cause of justice
Those who lied in trials need to be charged for perverting the cause of justice
The higher ups who were incharge during this time need to have their hefty pensions withdrawn.
Private prosecution should no longer be possible, if any wrong doing is found it must go through the official public channels so that fair and transparent justice can be performed, the task force the post office used has been shown time and again to have been woefully incompetent,
Many of the post masters had to pay back the cash that was supposedly missing none have had these funds returned.
The compensation scheme is a joke and appears the post office are yet trying to twist the knife further into those it wronged
https://www.taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/06/03/postoffice4/
One thing that really annoys me is that the public and government haven't been more outraged by this before now, it took a TV show to make people wake up and see the truth, it's been reported regularly in the papers and on BBC but elsewhere seems to have been brushed aside. Seems the general public was far to busy being offended about being referred to by the wrong pronoun rather than be offended by true injustice, says a lot about today's society really...
People need to be held to account, Fujitsu and the post office need to be found guilty of corporate criminal offence big fines need to be paid.
Those who made the decisions to enact the deception should be held accountable for perverting the cause of justice
Those who lied in trials need to be charged for perverting the cause of justice
The higher ups who were incharge during this time need to have their hefty pensions withdrawn.
Private prosecution should no longer be possible, if any wrong doing is found it must go through the official public channels so that fair and transparent justice can be performed, the task force the post office used has been shown time and again to have been woefully incompetent,
Many of the post masters had to pay back the cash that was supposedly missing none have had these funds returned.
The compensation scheme is a joke and appears the post office are yet trying to twist the knife further into those it wronged
https://www.taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/06/03/postoffice4/
One thing that really annoys me is that the public and government haven't been more outraged by this before now, it took a TV show to make people wake up and see the truth, it's been reported regularly in the papers and on BBC but elsewhere seems to have been brushed aside. Seems the general public was far to busy being offended about being referred to by the wrong pronoun rather than be offended by true injustice, says a lot about today's society really...
I've said before society has an attention span of a gold fish for news but put a tv programme on and just look at the response.
Associate
One thing about this worries me - well, many do - but I think the Tories have found their cause celebre to ram through a precedent-setting piece of legislation - that sets a very iffy precedent.
There was a big stink about government passing a law to state that "Rwanda is safe" thus overruling the courts and breaking the separation of powers - did that actually go through?
They're doing it again with their law to pardon/exonerate all the people convicted of this. That's not the right way to do things.
There was a big stink about government passing a law to state that "Rwanda is safe" thus overruling the courts and breaking the separation of powers - did that actually go through?
They're doing it again with their law to pardon/exonerate all the people convicted of this. That's not the right way to do things.
Soldato
No they are not. This is a specific piece of legislation approved on all sides of the house to break the logjam in the courts so that all the accused sub postmasters can be acquitted this side of 2030 and compensated.
Thinking otherwise is ridiculous.
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Soldato
My understanding was there wasn’t any missing funds to begin with? Any shortfalls shown were fictitious, with any amounts made good by staff ending up on Post Office’s balance sheet or recognised in their P&L (or would it be I&E with them being public?) sooner or later.
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Associate
I'm not the only one being ridiculous then:
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www.ft.com
What would be the implications of such a move?
Lawyers warned that depending on its scope, legislation could impede the ordinary functioning of the courts and set a precedent that might embolden parliament to upend convictions in other cases in future.There is a separation of powers between parliament and the judiciary under the UK’s uncodified constitution that any law to exonerate sub-postmasters would intrude on, lawyers said.The government might be seen as “trespassing on the bailiwick of the courts,” said Marshall. He said a blanket exoneration was “very difficult to envisage”.
Makes sense, I guess it's obvious that evidence provided would have caused the CPS to prosecute, then this would have caused the 10 accused to make it look like a full legitimate investigation was being carried out resulting in a guilty outcome, helping to divert attention away from IT failings, news of 10 people in different areas across a massive company would turn into nothing more than a bit of local gossip. The other people being prosecuted being within the post office & Fujitsu loop allowing for the evidence to be complete manipulated rubbish.
Soldato
I've watched the first 2 episodes and although it has some good actors, some of the acting from the supporting cast is really bad and the production just doesn't feel as good as the subject matter deserves.
As for what happened. People should be in court and then jail for what they did to those post masters. I see our government is suddenly interested now after this series. A few MPs at least did something but plenty didn't. And why in the 21st century the Post Office still had the power to prosecute people outside of the CPS is unbelievable. Like that wasn't wide open to abuse
As for what happened. People should be in court and then jail for what they did to those post masters. I see our government is suddenly interested now after this series. A few MPs at least did something but plenty didn't. And why in the 21st century the Post Office still had the power to prosecute people outside of the CPS is unbelievable. Like that wasn't wide open to abuse
As above, makes sense, the "repayments" being moved elsewhere to look like a standard payment. I need to watch the TV more, all I have heard about this has been from BBC News.
Keir trying to extricate himself form any association as DPP , Ha Ha - when 'good' men do nothing.
Don't remember explanation from deep dive 10 part bbc series.
no - think that's a valid point - what were the services/deposits the post offices were supposed to have sold/received associated with these funds
Don't remember explanation from deep dive 10 part bbc series.
Soldato
Surely it would be more appropriate for the current head of the CPS to apologise for any failures on their part? I don’t hear you calling loudly for Starmers successor to apologise for the prosecutions on their watch? (not that it appears there were any, they like everyone else including the juries were done over by the Post Office with it’s dodgy ‘evidence’)
Well its getting messier for CPS so think you are right that more apologies are due and not just Starmer..
CPS involved in up to 99 Post Office prosecutions, leaked letter shows
Scale of possible Horizon cases outlined in document is much higher than 11 the service has confirmed it prosecuted
www.telegraph.co.uk
Soldato
I'm not the only one being ridiculous then:
Subscribe to read
What would be the implications of such a move?
Lawyers warned that depending on its scope, legislation could impede the ordinary functioning of the courts and set a precedent that might embolden parliament to upend convictions in other cases in future.There is a separation of powers between parliament and the judiciary under the UK’s uncodified constitution that any law to exonerate sub-postmasters would intrude on, lawyers said.The government might be seen as “trespassing on the bailiwick of the courts,” said Marshall. He said a blanket exoneration was “very difficult to envisage”.
No all that is correct however the bill that is proposed will be a single use bill unable to set a precedent such that no court or future government of either main party could use it for another purpose.
The alternative is that the appeal court sits for months or years until every case is decided in law. The post office is not making this easy and rolling over admitting wrong doing.
All parties will no doubt contribute to the bill however it will be drafted under this government by the normal civil service drafters. However written all over it will be a clear intention of its purpose not to interfere with the seperation of powers which it will do just once for this specific purpose.
It is absolutely the fault of the post office management and their contractors Fujitsu UK that this step is necessary to bring an end to this long running saga.