Pretty interesting to watch them turn the screw and watch her completely slip-up on basic responses. This is the kind of scrutiny -plenty- of the inner circles of the political class need to be put under. All those involved with COVID contracts for example.
So, this post office palaver then
- Thread starter Diddums
- Start date
Pretty interesting to watch them turn the screw and watch her completely slip-up on basic responses. This is the kind of scrutiny -plenty- of the inner circles of the political class need to be put under. All those involved with COVID contracts for example.
That only matters if they can force a criminal case. If not then this is all pointless.
Commissario
IIRC there was also a "bug" where it accounted for foreign currency held in the post office in English pounds as if it was a non variable stock, but it assigned it a value based on the exchange rate in another bit of the software.
So if a post office had $1000 in USD it might be valued at £750 one day then £500 a few days later and count the difference as a "unaccounted loss" when the subpostmaster did an exchange for a customer at the then current and correct rate the system told them to use.
I think it also had issues with not accounting for what was happening with various of the other subsystems such as lottery and VED related transactions reliably.
IIRC a lot of the "general" issues with it came from the system basically not having proper unique transaction ID's and any form of two way "transaction acknowledged" system, so if the system was too busy it would log the same transaction repeatedly or not log it.
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plausible deniability seems to b e a real thing with her.
she doesn't know things, but doesn't know why no one told her...
I'm guessing thats as per her instructions.
shouldn't be managing the "friends of local park volunteers" never mind a national company
she doesn't know things, but doesn't know why no one told her...
I'm guessing thats as per her instructions.
shouldn't be managing the "friends of local park volunteers" never mind a national company
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Associate
- Joined
- 10 Sep 2008
- Posts
- 1,625
Not having a clue what is going on is a well paid job apparently.
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Nov 2005
- Posts
- 12,468
if only...... line them up
Soldato
Ian Hislop/Private Eye have been staunch supporters of the Postmasters since the Horizon "anomalies" were first mentioned.
Fair play to him.
Caporegime
I think you are mistaking incompetence for intentional evasion.
Oh it very much is. The burden of proof is on the prosecution as it were. You can be the smartest man on earth and claim not to have realised that 2+2=4 as long as the other side can't prove you did.
Same thing happens every time something like this happens. Magically, very intelligent and high powered, well paid people become imbeciles who wouldn't be trusted to run a mud kitchen in the local nursery. Its ******* embarrassing that people like this get away with (in this case, borderline) murder simply by claiming ignorance.
Man of Honour
One of the things I'm surprised hasn't been talked about more is revoking the Post Office's ability to bring prosecutions. Whilst that wouldn't have necessarily prevented this miscarriage of justice, or does at least involve the CPS.
One of the questions I've been trying to work out is whether the CPS can take over a prosecution brought be the PO and discontinue it, like it can with private prosecutions.
One of the questions I've been trying to work out is whether the CPS can take over a prosecution brought be the PO and discontinue it, like it can with private prosecutions.
They *are* private prosecutions. It's not like the FCA or HMRC in that respect which have statutory powers to investigate and bring prosecutions within their respective domains, more like say the RSPCA. It's a private company that chooses to investigate and bring private prosecutions (that was the case before privatisation too). Likewise, some retailers have chosen to explore this option too as the police/CPS aren't as interested in dealing with shoplifting, or even burglary, recently (unless the shoplifter were to misgender someone):
M&S burglar first jailed by private prosecution after Met fail to investigate
Thief caught on CCTV stealing £500 of meat and 20 bottles of Prosecco from supermarket in Streatham, but Scotland Yard declined to investigate
www.standard.co.uk
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Looks like the police are looking seriously into potential wrong doings. Be a while for any results though
amp.theguardian.com
Post Office scandal: Police to deploy 80 detectives for criminal inquiry | Post Office Horizon scandal | The Guardian
Exclusive: Investigation will dig into potential perjury offences and perverting the course of justice by senior leaders and Fujitsu
amp.theguardian.com
Soldato
I don't think this will go too far, the inquiry (sadly and IMO) shows negligence, belligerence and incompetence right to its core, I've watched a fair bit of last 2-3 phases of the inquiry (some 12 days so far) and whilst the media focus on Vennells, she probably has the least to worry about because the main evidence shows the information was highly filtered the higher up it got, her main downfall IMO all has to be inferred, I'm sure she hid it from the board and I'm sure she was more key than the evidence suggests in binning off and limiting the Second Sight investigation and of course no evidence of what was not emailed or minuted in meetings..Looks like the police are looking seriously into potential wrong doings. Be a while for any results though
Post Office scandal: Police to deploy 80 detectives for criminal inquiry | Post Office Horizon scandal | The Guardian
Exclusive: Investigation will dig into potential perjury offences and perverting the course of justice by senior leaders and Fujitsu
I agree with Alan Bates and other SPMs in the best way to stop this is by hitting their wallets hard, including Fujitsu IMO, because if this goes to a criminal prosecution, this may not end as well as we'd all hope for.. I've watched 12 days of the last two phases of the inquiry along with various other interviews, mainly as the media like their soundbites and as usual not being great at portraying the actual information coming out, but where as the Post Office needed strong and authorative leadership all it has was this female centric laissez faire bunch of mid-wits that seemed to care more about making HR notes on conversations with staff out of work than actually (as Edward Henry put it) banging desks and demanding answers in the strongest way possible..
Do keep in mind that the inquiry is not adversarial and so a bit different to a court case. They're being challenged a little bit but they're all trotting out lame excuses whereby they conveniently didn't know, weren't told etc.
A court case is going to be a bit different, the plausibility of those claims can be tested and also some might offer to cooperate with the police/CPS in return for leniency and testify against others within the organisation.
The lame excuses they're trotting out now don't then necessarily work so well when person X says they did in fact brief person Y about Z.
Associate
I hear talk about court cases, but am struggling to understand what these people could be charged with in a criminal sense that would likely result in jail time
Civil litigation (private prosecution - oh the irony) would seem to be the best bet since a loss of some kind is evident, and the bar for proof of a causal link and culpability is much lower
Alan Bates and all should get a war chest together and go after Vennells and drown her in litigation until she runs out of money, or more likely, crumbles and pays up a wodge before that point…not too dissimilar to how many of the PO prosecutions were handled (more irony!). If that happens, they do the same to lower level monkeys who won’t have the resources or appetite to fight, and so get them to pay up without too much effort
The level of individual culpability may be difficult to assess, and I’m not clear on whether any of the ex-PO employees would be covered by D&O insurance. The government backed compensation scheme may also be a complicating factor
In case it’s not obvious, IANAL, though I have read quite a lot of John Grisham
Civil litigation (private prosecution - oh the irony) would seem to be the best bet since a loss of some kind is evident, and the bar for proof of a causal link and culpability is much lower
Alan Bates and all should get a war chest together and go after Vennells and drown her in litigation until she runs out of money, or more likely, crumbles and pays up a wodge before that point…not too dissimilar to how many of the PO prosecutions were handled (more irony!). If that happens, they do the same to lower level monkeys who won’t have the resources or appetite to fight, and so get them to pay up without too much effort
The level of individual culpability may be difficult to assess, and I’m not clear on whether any of the ex-PO employees would be covered by D&O insurance. The government backed compensation scheme may also be a complicating factor
In case it’s not obvious, IANAL, though I have read quite a lot of John Grisham
It says it in the link,
"The investigation will examine potential offences of perjury, and perverting the course of justice by Post Office senior leaders as well as the tech company Fujitsu."
As mentioned above there is the potential for perjury/perverting the course of justice charges - there were serious consequences as a result of that re: stress, loss of businesses, suicide, imprisonment etc.. so custodial sentences for some could be justified.
Secondly, potential contempt of parliament charge for the Boss as parts of her testimony before the select committee were simply not true.
Like look at this muppet - the solicitor. He's presented with evidence that he had seen some documents and he tries to fob it off, claims he wouldn't have known how to save or print them. The problem for him is that it's clearly marked on the document that it was printed, when it was printed and the file path is to his own username/local settings/temporary internet files directory.
They don't dwell on that in the inquiry and he's [redacted] enough not to realise that his excuse doesn't stand up, but it doesn't exactly take much to get someone in court to point out that "no, you muppet, that's literally been printed by someone logged in as you" and they've got him - they can put it to him that he did have that information, he printed that information and he's clearly ignored it/withheld it. No one can sensibly buy his excuses on that one, he's cooked if they pursue him over that.
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Soldato
Just found out one of the managers in my team has used Horizon when his parents had a PO! They had balancing issues and had to make up shortfalls and ended up jacking it in because of the hassle!
I agree some of the minions (e.g. Elaine Cottem, thoroughly unpleasant person) and the legal team may be in the firing line with criminal charges, they lied, misrepresented and acted thoroughly despicably, but as usual the higher up you go in a large org, the less evidence there is...
Look at the VW emissions scandal, even more plausible that a large degree of direct pressure was pushed down to meet targets, but the people in jail? Lower level managers on the technical side..
In terms of the CEO, I think she has the least issues in that she had direct evidence that she was presented information that painted things in the light she presented to the select committee, and plenty of evidence of systematic filtering of data.
I agree some of the minions (e.g. Elaine Cottem, thoroughly unpleasant person) and the legal team may be in the firing line with criminal charges, they lied, misrepresented and acted thoroughly despicably, but as usual the higher up you go in a large org, the less evidence there is...
Look at the VW emissions scandal, even more plausible that a large degree of direct pressure was pushed down to meet targets, but the people in jail? Lower level managers on the technical side..
Let’s hope so.