Post Office scandal

[Weston Super Saint]

3 hours ago, Fan The Flames said:

No they are not. There are people who bear the most responsibility, some of it criminal, and there are some following corporate/government orders and some minor part players.

This notion that they are all to blame is the same as the 'they are all at it' bollocks that the tories float out through their media mates, when they are trying to obfuscate for their latest indiscretion.

Don't fall for it WSS, you're better than that. 

All parties, except the Greens, have been involved in one way or another.

All parties have had the opportunity to "fix" the issues.

So far, none have. In my view that makes them all responsible / incompetent.

[badgerx16]

13 minutes ago, Weston Super Saint said:

I believe the DPP would be accountable for the actions in the same way that a CEO is accountable for what happens in a private company.

Being accountable and being "'involved"' are not the same thing.

[Weston Super Saint]

1 hour ago, badgerx16 said:

Being accountable and being "'involved"' are not the same thing.

Maybe a poor choice of words first thing in the morning, but that's how I meant it - I don't believe he was personally involved in every case, but, as the head of the CPS he would have been more than aware of the cases.

[badgerx16]

3 minutes ago, Weston Super Saint said:

Maybe a poor choice of words first thing in the morning, but that's how I meant it - I don't believe he was personally involved in every case, but, as the head of the CPS he would have been more than aware of the cases.

Relatively minor fraud cases, I doubt it.

[Weston Super Saint]

8 minutes ago, badgerx16 said:

Relatively minor fraud cases, I doubt it.

Relatively minor fraud cases that were being prosecuted (over 10 years after the scandal started) and had already been flagged to the Minister for postal affairs as well as being published in a number of publications.

The fact that the CPS is still struggling to work out how many cases it prosecuted might suggest a lack of control / interest during that timescale, but doesn't recuse those in charge of 'not knowing what was going on'.

[Lord Duckhunter]

3 hours ago, Fan The Flames said:

You're all Blair, Blair, Blair, Davey, Davey, Davey. Then you don't know who was responsible when the Tories were in power.

You don't know because that info is not included in the shit you're spuing from your timeline. What a joker.

You’re all Tory Tory Tory, don’t seem to understand or accept other parties we’re just as responsible, if not more so. Blair was in charge at the start and even stood up in the HoC praising this new system. The victims, including Bates have heavily criticised Davey some calling for him to resign. Fuck me, if the victims called on Sunak to resign, you’d be cumming in your pants. What a joker. 
 

I don’t know who the Tory responsible was, perhaps if he’d behaved like Davey I would do. 

 

 

Edited January 9 by Lord Duckhunter

[egg]

The political scapegoating here is pathetic. What we don't yet know is which politicians knew what and when.

At the end of the day, some post office masters have been on the take for ever and a day so a minister becoming aware that masters were alleged to be on the take can't be criticised for doing nothing about action being taken against said post masters. The DPP ditto. The CPS ditto.

There's only a case for a minister to answer if he or she had knowledge which merited action or an investigation that could have prevented miscarriages of justice. 

[Fan The Flames]

27 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

You’re all Tory Tory Tory, don’t seem to understand or accept other parties we’re just as responsible, if not more so. Blair was in charge at the start and even stood up in the HoC praising this new system. The victims, including Bates have heavily criticised Davey some calling for him to resign. Fuck me, if the victims called on Sunak to resign, you’d be cumming in your pants. What a joker. 
 

I don’t know who the Tory responsible was, perhaps if he’d behaved like Davey I would do. 

The point of my post wasn't a critique of your content, it was an observation that you haven't got any tory content because you just regurgitate the shit from your anti-labour timeline. You don't know the tories involved because The Mail or Andrew Tate hasn't told you. And the fact you couldn't work work out my post shows what a dull muppet you are.

I haven't mentioned any politicians at fault in the thread, like Egg I think they aren't the major actors in all of this. It's you and your muppet mates scrabbling around trying to pin it on Blair and Starmer, it's pathetic.

[Lord Duckhunter]

14 minutes ago, egg said:

 

There's only a case for a minister to answer if he or she had knowledge which merited action or an investigation that could have prevented miscarriages of justice. 

That’s a ridiculous pov. Parroting the post offices’ line when you’re a minister or MP, leaves a lot of questions for you to answer. What did you know, when did you know it, and who lied to you, are legitimate questions for every single  minister. 

 

What if a shadow minister claimed the issue wasn’t raised with him when he was a minister, but it actually was? 

McFadden has claimed it wasn’t raised and he was unaware of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[egg]

7 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

That’s a ridiculous pov. Parroting the post offices’ line when you’re a minister or MP, leaves a lot of questions for you to answer. What did you know, when did you know it, and who lied to you, are legitimate questions for every single  minister. 

 

What if a shadow minister claimed the issue wasn’t raised with him when he was a minister, but it actually was? 

McFadden has claimed it wasn’t raised and he was unaware of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's ridiculous is the assumption that people in the right places had the right information to act. Assuming, with hindsight, that they must have does not mean that they did.

This needs proper investigation. I agree that asking relevant ministers what they knew and what they did or didn't do is absolutely necessary. What isn't necessary though is all this lurching to conclusions that people knew enough to do something. 

I'll save my condemnation until we know who to condemn. 

Edited January 9 by egg

[CB Fry]

Has Kier Starmer handed back his knighthood yet? 

[badgerx16]

At the time this was going on only 2 groups of people knew what was really happening, FUJITSU and the Post Office, and both lied to hide the truth. Anybody else peripheral to the prosecutions at the time would have been basing their judgement on their trust of these 2 ( lying ) organisations to be providing honest accounts and evidence.

The CPS would have been provided the evidence for the prosecutions they undertook by the PO, who swore that it was true and accurate. On what grounds would the CPS have felt the need to query to any greater extent what they were told ?

[egg]

6 minutes ago, badgerx16 said:

At the time this was going on only 2 groups of people knew what was really happening, FUJITSU and the Post Office, and both lied to hide the truth. Anybody else peripheral to the prosecutions at the time would have been basing their judgement on their trust of these 2 ( lying ) organisations to be providing honest accounts and evidence.

The CPS would have been provided the evidence for the prosecutions they undertook by the PO, who swore that it was true and accurate. On what grounds would the CPS have felt the need to query to any greater extent what they were told ?

Yep. Nobody can reasonably expect ministers, the CPS, DPP, police, etc to have assumed that there was a mass cover up going on and that people were being stitched up left, right and centre. It was perfectly reasonable to take the complaint and evidence at face value and leave the defendants to challenge the case against them if they denied it. That's how a justice system works. 

[badgerx16]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974

"An IT expert has criticised the Post Office for ignoring his report which found "concerning discrepancies" in its software more than 20 years ago.

Jason Coyne, who worked for Preston-based Best Practice Plc at the time, was instructed to examine the computer system called Horizon in 2003.

He said he notified the Post Office the data was "unreliable" but he was ignored, sacked, and then discredited.".......

"An IT expert has criticised the Post Office for ignoring his report which found "concerning discrepancies" in its software more than 20 years ago.

Jason Coyne, who worked for Preston-based Best Practice Plc at the time, was instructed to examine the computer system called Horizon in 2003.

He said he notified the Post Office the data was "unreliable" but he was ignored, sacked, and then discredited."

----------------------------

I love the way that the reporting is constantly referring to FUJITSU as a Japanese company, as if the account managers, system architects, analysts, programmers, testers, and installation engineers were not British, working for the Brirish based subsidiary that was formerly ICL, and working out of ICL's old premises. Whilst technically, on the surface this might be true, it does seem to give an unnecessarily xenophobic tinge to the affair.

[moonraker]

2 hours ago, Weston Super Saint said:

Relatively minor fraud cases that were being prosecuted (over 10 years after the scandal started) and had already been flagged to the Minister for postal affairs as well as being published in a number of publications.

The fact that the CPS is still struggling to work out how many cases it prosecuted might suggest a lack of control / interest during that timescale, but doesn't recuse those in charge of 'not knowing what was going on'.

The thing is these prosecutions were private prosecutions totally in the gift of the post office.  The CPS had no involvement in making the decision to prosecute.  Given that the the evidence against the individuals came directly from the PO and the Software house and has been shown to be unsound and unsafe I fail to see how one can point the finger at the CPS.  There are a number of "Organisations" who can bring such prosecutions, a hangover of Victorian public bodies charters,  somewhat belatedly the Gov are talking about removing these arcahic rights.  

[Tamesaint]

23 minutes ago, moonraker said:

The thing is these prosecutions were private prosecutions totally in the gift of the post office.  The CPS had no involvement in making the decision to prosecute.  Given that the the evidence against the individuals came directly from the PO and the Software house and has been shown to be unsound and unsafe I fail to see how one can point the finger at the CPS.  There are a number of "Organisations" who can bring such prosecutions, a hangover of Victorian public bodies charters,  somewhat belatedly the Gov are talking about removing these arcahic rights.  

Exactly. The Post Office  Investigation Department has enormous powers and can prosecute and judge offenders who steal mail as well as those who steal from Post Offices. Whether it should still have these powers after this fiasco should be one of the main questions resolved. 

[sadoldgit]

Nick Ferrari on his LBC show this morning is going after Ed Davey again. As we know, this affair has been going on for some time under Labour, Coalition and Conservative governments. There have been a number of people through those years who have been in positions to do something about it, not just Ed Davey. As he is well aware, the Tories have been in power for the last 14 years but this is still a major issue, but he chooses to focus on Ed Davey and his knighthood.

What is clear here is that there has been a massive abuse of power by the Post Office over a number of years and that Horizon were complicit in the cover up.

It’s appalling that it has taken a TV drama to bring this issue to a head after all these years and a number of people probably could, and should, have done more sooner. It is also appalling that some people are now using this as a political football which is quite evident when you see the effort to drag Blair, Starmer and Davey into it as major players. If you do that you also have to add every other PM since Blair, every other postal minister, every other DPP, every MP from constituencies where sub post office people affected lived.

As mentioned earlier, the fact that the PO can bring its own prosecutions is a major factor here. Parliament, quite rightly, need to stay well away from the judicial system and it is not difficult to see why various ministers were wary about getting involved. Even the call to exonerate en masse the sub post officers is under question as it would bring in the dangerous precedent of Parliament involving itself in the judicial system.

Criminal prosecutions should be taken away from these corporations and put into the hands of the police and CPS. There is an enquiry which will report its findings and if they conclude that is all the fault of Blair, Davey and Starmer, the usual suspects can knock themselves out, open the champagne and have a field day on here.

In the meantime, those from the right who are desperately trying to pin the blame on anyone from left of centre in politics should STFU.

Meanwhile we have Zahawi playing the moral crusader and is revelling in this sorry tale (to the extent that he played himself in the TV drama) calling for Vennells spend the rest of her life working for charity, ignoring the fact that he resigned in disgrace for failing to disclose dodgy tax dealings to Parliament. Any of the usual suspects think that is ok?

While I am at it, what do they think about the fact that this Tory Government continues to give this company millions of pounds in contracts despite knowing perfectly well about their involvement in this?

Yeah, but Blair, but Davey, but Starmer…

Edited January 10 by sadoldgit
Sp

[Lord Duckhunter]

2 hours ago, sadoldgit said:

What is clear here is that there has been a massive abuse of power by the Post Office over a number of years and that Horizon were complicit in the cover up.

 

 

Who are Horizon? 

[Lord Duckhunter]

S🤡ggy
 

Some victims are calling for Ed Daveys head, that’s why it’s news, not some vast right wing pile on. Equally, the bird who first reported this in computer weekly (or what ever it was called), has claimed Blair ignored concerns (expressed by cabinet members) because he was worried about upsetting the Chinese government. That’s why he’s involved. If the victims were calling for Sunaks head, if it was alleged that Boris ignored faults because of Chinese involvement, you’d be unable to control yourself with excitement. 
 

As for you assertion that the police alone should investigate post office fraud, I suggest you listen to the Second sight bloke involved. He said the police haven’t got the time or expertise to do so, and it’s a simplistic answer that won’t led to better results.

There’s a surprise you’re calling for something simplistic. 😂

Edited January 10 by Lord Duckhunter

[trousers]

I've been going back over some of the evidence given to the Post Office public enquiry over the last year or so, plus some other associated reports. What amazes me is  that it's taken a TV drama to bring things to a head when there's been so much explosive and damning stuff already out there long before now....

An example of the evidence that sheds light on how woeful and amateur the whole Horizon IT programme was  .... people at the time reviewing the code saying its "the worst coding they had ever seen" yet, when a total re-write was recommended the senior management dug their heels in..... 

 

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/file/855/download?token=lqWb5Nni

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2021/02/how-much-did-post-office-and-government.html

 

Edited January 10 by trousers

[badgerx16]

7 minutes ago, trousers said:

I've been going back over some of the evidence given to the Post Office public enquiry over the last year or so, plus some other associated reports. What amazes me is  that it's taken a TV drama to bring things to a head when there's been so much explosive and damning stuff already out there long before now....

An example of the evidence that sheds light on how woeful and amateur the whole Horizon IT programme was at ICL / Fujitsu / PO ....

 

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/file/855/download?token=lqWb5Nni

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2021/02/how-much-did-post-office-and-government.html

 

1)Terence Austin doesn't look Japanese to me 😉

2) A lot of mentions of ICL rather than FUJITSU. 😉

Edited January 10 by badgerx16

[trousers]

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/inquiry-phase-2-star-witness-dave-gives-it-both-barrels/

David McDonnell, a former Deputy Development Manager on the Horizon IT project with Fujitsu/ICL gave evidence during the Horizon IT inquiry on the morning of Wed 16 November.

What he had to say was devastating. In October 1998 McDonnell co-wrote a report on the Horizon EPOS system with Jan Holmes, a Fujitsu/ICL internal auditor (and a very interesting witness in the afternoon of 16 November). The Task Force report was put together to try to address the serious number errors in the Horizon project at the time. You can read it here.

The Task Force report has surfaced already during the inquiry. It was damning, and included this choice phrase:

‘Whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming.’

Over three hours McDonnell gave some extraordinary evidence. You can listen to the highlights on Episode 22 of Investigating the Post Office Scandal (which includes clips from the last four witnesses), or you can watch the entire evidence session on video and read along with the full transcript, by clicking on the inquiry website here. 

McDonnell describes the EPOS programming team as like ‘the Wild West’.

When asked what he meant, he replied: ‘There were no standards in place, there were no design documents. The culture of the development team was – I wouldn’t say it was a holiday camp, but it was free format. There was no structure, no discipline; it was crazy, never seen anything like it.’

Of the code itself, he said:

‘it was so bad. It was beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Even in the 25/30 years since that project, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Some of the stuff that we found buried in the code was unbelievable. There was unreachable code… It was a mess.’

Among techies at Fujitsu/ICL, McDonnell quickly discovered the EPOS team were the ‘joke of the building’, telling the inquiry ‘everybody knew, specifically the test team who, when I spoke to those guys, they would make it very clear that the quality of code that was being delivered was to such a bad, poor level that they’re wasting their time testing it.’

 

McDonnell’s rather obvious solution was to get some better coders in and re-write the cash account from scratch. He was overruled by the Horizon Programme Manager, Terry Austin. McDonnell found the resistance to his solution odd, and believes the way it has been portrayed by other witnesses at the inquiry as too big a problem to realistically deal with, ‘betrayed a basic misunderstanding of how the EPOS system was built or even potentially suggests an attempt to obfuscate the issue.’

He described it using a Lego analogy:

‘if you understood that it was built out of Lego bricks, you could replace the Lego bricks one at a time starting
with the most critical, the most important, which I would argue was the cash account. Here, you could even — because it was a batch process that wasn’t part of the counter client/customer interaction, you could rewrite that as a separate module and have it running as a shadow process on the counter. You could run the cash account twice at the end of the day or whenever, as a secondary confirmation, and use the replacement module to check the validity of the first one. Once you’d proved that it worked, you could take the old one out and just continue with the new one. This was not a large task. It was not something that – I couldn’t understand why they didn’t do it, because it was such a – it’s not a small piece of work but relatively small, and you could have done it without introducing any danger to anything else on the counter.’

McDonnell says matters reached a head when he was called into Terry Austin’s office and offered a promotion. He accepted on the condition the EPOS cash account was re-written. McDonnell says Austin became ‘frustrated’ by his insistence:

‘He wasn’t very happy with me putting a condition on that acceptance. It was clear that the cash account wasn’t going to get written. That conversation was very quickly brought to a halt, and I was ushered out of the office, and I never really spoke to Terry after that again.’

Fujitsu, in its wisdom, chose to try to fix the code, which took a year, and by November 1999, after the system had been accepted, they were getting a similar number of errors and bugs. Fujitsu got acceptance from the Post Office by agreeing to write a new bit of code, known as teh CSR+ release which would monitor the cash accounting discrepancies within the system. McDonnell had been moved off the project by that state, but described the CSR+ release as a ‘big bone of contention at the time.’ The way he saw it:

‘At the end of the Task Force they were given the report that we co-authored detailing what the senior engineers, senior auditing guy, and all of the experienced people around the project were saying, detailing the problems. It’s like the captain of the ship’s been told that there’s a hole in the boat and it’s filling with water by the engineers. Instead of fixing the hole, what they did was they went away and constructed this CSR+ release, which is akin to painting a plimsoll line on the outside of the boat so that they could measure how fast it was sinking.

‘The whole context of this CSR+ release was about being able to detect discrepancies between the counter and the middle and back office, the APS systems and such, and highlight where there was a difference between the number of transactions or the balance between the two being different. That’s just building a dipstick instead of actually fixing the hole in the boat. They spent a year, an inordinate amount of time and resource, on this release instead of fixing the problem.’

Edited January 10 by trousers

[badgerx16]

And still they went to Court and testified that there were no known problems !

[trousers]

8 minutes ago, badgerx16 said:

And still they went to Court and testified that there were no known problems !

Indeed, beggars believe, doesn't it? Surely there's gotta be a spate of perjury cases in the pipeline.

[trousers]

40 minutes ago, trousers said:

 

 

 

 

I'm only half way through watching this but would recommend anyone who is interested in knowing more about the background of this scandal watches it. Its 2.5 hours long but stick with it. 

Edited January 10 by trousers

[ecuk268]

7 hours ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

Some victims are calling for Ed Daveys head, that’s why it’s news, not some vast right wing pile on. Equally, the bird who first reported this in computer weekly (or what ever it was called), has claimed Blair ignored concerns (expressed by cabinet members) because he was worried about upsetting the Chinese government. That’s why he’s involved. If the victims were calling for Sunaks head, if it was alleged that Boris ignored faults because of Chinese involvement, you’d be unable to control yourself with excitement. 
 

 

Where did the Chinese come into this?

[trousers]

10 hours ago, sadoldgit said:

Yeah, but Blair, but Davey, but Starmer…

Looks like it was Mandelson that had the final say and/or most influence on the go/no-go decision, despite Blair being on the receiving end of several warnings about the reliability of Horizon and despite the Post Office themselves not wanting to go ahead with the ICL / Fujitsu solution at the final hour.... It seems fairly clear to me that if Blair had listened to the somewhat loud warning klaxons, rather than trust what Mandelson was telling him, then Horizon would never have been implemented... and the rest is history....

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11477217/Tony-Blair-says-Peter-Mandelson-reassured-Post-Office-Horizon-reliable.html

("Yes, it's in the Daily Mail, but ...")

Edited January 10 by trousers

[Fan The Flames]

1 hour ago, trousers said:

Looks like it was Mandelson that had the final say and/or most influence on the go/no-go decision, despite Blair being on the receiving end of several warnings about the reliability of Horizon and despite the Post Office themselves not wanting to go ahead with the ICL / Fujitsu solution at the final hour.... It seems fairly clear to me that if Blair had listened to the somewhat loud warning klaxons, rather than trust what Mandelson was telling him, then Horizon would never have been implemented... and the rest is history....

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11477217/Tony-Blair-says-Peter-Mandelson-reassured-Post-Office-Horizon-reliable.html

("Yes, it's in the Daily Mail, but ...")

All that shows is who agreed to going with Fujitsu. There are hundreds of decisions between that moment and 700 people being wrongly convicted.

[CB Fry]

2 hours ago, trousers said:

Looks like it was Mandelson that had the final say and/or most influence on the go/no-go decision, despite Blair being on the receiving end of several warnings about the reliability of Horizon and despite the Post Office themselves not wanting to go ahead with the ICL / Fujitsu solution at the final hour.... It seems fairly clear to me that if Blair had listened to the somewhat loud warning klaxons, rather than trust what Mandelson was telling him, then Horizon would never have been implemented... and the rest is history....

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11477217/Tony-Blair-says-Peter-Mandelson-reassured-Post-Office-Horizon-reliable.html

("Yes, it's in the Daily Mail, but ...")

Jesus wept.

[aintforever]

Surely the more important question has to be over the judicial system that saw so many people wrongly convicted?

Computer systems will always have bugs, big companies will always try to cover stuff up to protect their brand. How come so many judges believed that a computer system was infallible over people with previous good character without knowledge of IT systems or evidence from independent expert witnesses?

Prosecution: “The computer shows this person stole money”. Defence: “the computer system is fucked”. I get how this can happen a few times but 900 times with the same system, mental. Surely the judge on case number 899 might have thought something a bit fishy was going on?

[trousers]

7 hours ago, CB Fry said:

Jesus wept.

Source?

[Fan The Flames]

Fuckin Sir Rowland Hill and Charles Babbage are up to their necks in this mess.

[Gloucester Saint]

https://inews.co.uk/news/fujitsu-lobbyist-post-office-scandal-tory-pressure-group-mps-2846557

[Weston Super Saint]

Claw back the bonuses that 'investigators' earned for convictions (Source) and the bonuses paid to the executives of the Post Office, then get the rest of the compensation from Fujitsu for breach of contract (lying about their software containing no errors) and the victims get compensation and the tax payer doesn't foot the bill.

I appreciate this is a harder option than opening the public purse so will never happen!

[egg]

56 minutes ago, trousers said:

Source?

Nails everywhere. You'd have to expect a few tears. 

[badgerx16]

9 hours ago, CB Fry said:

Jesus wept.

 

1 hour ago, trousers said:

Source?

John 11:35

[Turkish]

2 hours ago, trousers said:

Source?

Lacryma Christi DOC - Cantina del Vesuvio, Italy

Make of that what you will

[trousers]

Live feed of the resumption of the public enquiry: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67941754

The first witness up (one of the PO investigators) currently saying that he was told what to put in his witness statement (for the sub-postmaster court case) by his management... "they aren't my words, someone told me what to put in there... in hindsight it shouldn't have been written that way".... and he had "no idea" how the Horizon system worked, but was able to vouch in his witness statement that it was robust and working correctly..... good Lord.... popcorn at the ready.... 

Edited January 11 by trousers

[sadoldgit]

13 hours ago, Fan The Flames said:

All that shows is who agreed to going with Fujitsu. There are hundreds of decisions between that moment and 700 people being wrongly convicted.

Exactly this. Every computer system has glitches. It isn’t the bugs in the system that are the problem here, it is the fact that they weren’t treated as bugs but treated as fraud by the post masters.

Strange that ITV didn’t focus on Blair, Davey and Starmer rather than the PO and Fujitsu. Clearly missed a trick there. 😂

[trousers]

I guess the phrase "the buck stops at the top" only applies when it suits....

[Lord Duckhunter]

1 hour ago, sadoldgit said:

 

Strange that ITV didn’t focus on Blair, Davey and Starmer rather than the PO and Fujitsu. 

Strange that yesterday you were complaining that ITV didn’t focus on Crozier. So following your logic, he’s must be in the clear. 

[Fan The Flames]

1 hour ago, trousers said:

I guess the phrase "the buck stops at the top" only applies when it suits....

That's too simplistic and you know what they say about simplistic ideas. 

[Fan The Flames]

GB News in trouble again 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67943541

Edited January 11 by Fan The Flames

[Lord Duckhunter]

13 hours ago, aintforever said:

Surely the more important question has to be over the judicial system that saw so many people wrongly convicted?

Computer systems will always have bugs, big companies will always try to cover stuff up to protect their brand. How come so many judges believed that a computer system was infallible over people with previous good character without knowledge of IT systems or evidence from independent expert witnesses?

Prosecution: “The computer shows this person stole money”. Defence: “the computer system is fucked”. I get how this can happen a few times but 900 times with the same system, mental. Surely the judge on case number 899 might have thought something a bit fishy was going on?

I heard a very interesting interview with Ron Warmington, forensic accountant, fraud investigator and Chairman of Second Sight, where he addressed this very point. 
 

He said the judicial process is weighted incredibly towards believing computers over people and that defendants just don’t have the means or expertise to prove otherwise. This is in all walks of life, not just the PO.

He claims the PO contracts are the ultimate source of the problem. As you say, other industries have bugs, problematic software etc, but losses mean they are dealt with quickly and sorted out. Because the Post Masters are ultimately responsible for any loss, PO had no real incentive to spend a shit load of money & effort to put issues right. Ultimately, they tended to get their money. Whereas a bank with the same issues would lose all the money. 
 

A couple of examples he gave were;

Staff theft, if a PM thought staff were on the fiddle the PO did nothing, because ultimately it was down to him. They wouldn’t help him prove it and the police wouldn’t get involved with a PO matter. If a bank employee fiddled money, the bank would forensically investigate and prosecute that person. The PO didn’t, because the Post master was liable regardless. He said some post masters covered it up and that then opened themselves up to the false accounting charges. Had the PO been more supportive, the PM may still have lost the money (as he employed the staff), but the false accounting wouldn’t have happened.

Another one was what he called TC’s (transaction corrections). He said these were sent using a branch number & if somebody in the PO back office inadvertently inputted a wrong digit, the money involved would go to the wrong PO. He said the PO as a whole would balance, but some PM’s would be down & some up. Because the PM contract states they don’t need to pay surpluses back (and they didn’t know where the money was intended for anyway), the bloke with the overage kept it, whereas the bloke with the deficit had to put that in. Again, he contrasted it with banks, where any overage is investigated as throughly as a deficit because they know it’s missing from somewhere and want it tracked down. The PO didn’t care, because the poor old PM with the deficit had to put it in, or again falsify his accounts. 
 

He also said the post office never would have rolled out such a flawed IT system had post masters not been liable for the money. He went into countless examples of loopholes that they just wouldn’t have accepted had they,and not somebody else,  been liable for losses. 

Edited January 11 by Lord Duckhunter

[trousers]

36 minutes ago, Fan The Flames said:

That's too simplistic and you know what they say about simplistic ideas. 

Nope, I'm far too simple to know that. I always bow to those more intellectually superior on here, which is most people to be fair

Edited January 11 by trousers

[rallyboy]

The investigator on the stand today has suffered a right kicking - he's made it quite clear he's not a technical expert, yet he was quizzing people about Horizon and then giving expert evidence in trials where people were convicted.

Headlines so far today seem to be that they withheld evidence from defence teams, persisted with the line that no one else was having a problem, and it's come to light that investigators had statements written for them by Post Office solicitors or Comms teams that they had to sign as their own.

We also now have a direct link between Fujitsu and the government, in the form of Clark Vasey - which might explain the contracts being awarded.

The problem Post Office management might find is that a few of the little people they are throwing under the bus might start chucking shit grenades around.

[badgerx16]

The CPS prosecuted 3 cases whilst Kier Starker was DPP, and they would almost certainly not have required his input or approval. ( For context, the CPS prosecuted over 400 thousand cases last year, so there is no possible way any DPP could be aware of more than a fraction of these ).

Edited January 11 by badgerx16

[egg]

11 minutes ago, badgerx16 said:

The CPS prosecuted 3 cases whilst Kier Starker was DPP, and they would almost certainly not have required his input or approval. ( For context, the CPS prosecuted over 400 thousand cases last year, so there is no possible way any DPP could be aware of more than a fraction of these ).

Do people seriously think that Kier Starmer had any involvement in these prosecutions? Even he did, the prosecution criteria is whether it's in the interests of justice to do so. Where a prima facie (answerable) case is presented, and there is evidence to suggest a conviction can be secured, the prosecution must proceed. It's for the defence to challenge the evidence, not the bloke at the top. 

[badgerx16]

50 minutes ago, egg said:

Do people seriously think that Kier Starmer had any involvement in these prosecutions?

Posted above; "....but, as the head of the CPS he would have been more than aware of the cases".

"Postmasters were hounded by the Crown Prosecution Service during Sir Keir Starmer's time in charge"', what do you think the Daily Mail is trying to imply with this statement ?

Daily Telegraph - "Starmer faces questions over why he failed to intervene in Post Office scandal".

Nigel Farage : "“The DPP has the right to intervene in any prosecution. Where was Starmer?”

 

I don't see the same issue being raised in relation to the other 3 DPPs who were in post during the prosecution period, 1999-2015.

Edited January 11 by badgerx16

[whelk]

48 minutes ago, badgerx16 said:

Posted above; "....but, as the head of the CPS he would have been more than aware of the cases".

"Postmasters were hounded by the Crown Prosecution Service during Sir Keir Starmer's time in charge"', what do you think the Daily Mail is trying to imply with this statement ?

Daily Telegraph - "Starmer faces questions over why he failed to intervene in Post Office scandal".

Nigel Farage : "“The DPP has the right to intervene in any prosecution. Where was Starmer?”

 

I don't see the same issue being raised in relation to the other 3 DPPs who were in post during the prosecution period, 1999-2015.

Newsagents pointed out at PMQs when Lee Anderson opened up with question about Ed Davey going Sunak just ignored. When Stephen Flynn of SNP raised about House of Commons letting people down Sunak goes on attack of not politicising the issue. Comical.

Gammon can be mobilised easily and enraged at very little but whatever the event will desperate try to pull it back to their hate figures. Imagine being such a thick cunt to fall for it?