Yeah. Whatever.Originally Posted by A Quiet Monkfish
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Yeah. Whatever.
The moral of the story is simple: the rich, powerful and prominent members of the establishment are anathema to democracy and can and will wreck lives and livelihoods
They will forever rule us as a democracy. They just need to know how much we want that they'll release and that's it.
Added to which the innocent are always adversely effected by the dodgy guilty ones ,which result in new systems and mistakes
Labour Government knew about it. Never trust computers or is it never trust the government. People who question government policies are often called out a lot of the time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67941495
Found the first episode of this a bit confusing. Alan Bates and his wife say they have lost their jobs, home and savings, but then buy a beautiful detached cottage in North Wales?
Justice and compensation can’t come too soon for these victims of the establishment, but trying to put myself in their place, if I knew I wasn’t stealing cash, and deficit amounts were doubling on a computer screen in front of my eyes,and my employers were unwilling to get to the bottom of it, there is no way I would sign off anything involved with it. I would be harassing the police, my local MP, and the local media.
I read yesterday that the Bates cottage was far smaller than the one depicted in the series. I'm not sure about the rest of their finances.
I wasn't keen to watch the TV min-series after listening to the podcast (as dramatisation can be more manipulative of the viewer than the more factual podcast) but the result of it certainly helped the poor victims.
I did eventually binge-watch it last night, however.
Which is what he did, he said it's your stupid system not me, but yes some of them were a bit soft and didn't know how to react.
[QUOTE=Forest Green Bluebird;5480961]I wonder if libel claims can be made against newspapers that ran with "sub-postmistress stole money from pensioners".
It wouldn't be libellous if they ran the same story today against anyone still with a conviction.
They wouldn't though.
The analysis
A plague on all their houses
Rishi Sunak today announced unprecedented legislation to pardon en masse those victims of the Post Office scandal who have spent years waiting for justice. It was a mere day ago that his Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, told MPs that the government wanted to exhaust all other options before taking the ‘radical’ step of overruling multiple courts. It must have been an exhausting 24 hours, then. The precedent set by the legislation is the reason Chalk wasn’t quite so gung ho yesterday: the government has never overruled the verdicts of multiple courts before, and MPs and legal experts are concerned that this could have long-term implications that aren’t ideal. But the legislation that Sunak announced at Prime Minister’s Questions (and that Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake then elaborated on in answer to an urgent question in the Commons afterwards) is going to pass. Labour has been clear that it will support the bill when it comes before MPs because there needs to be unprecedented (that word again) action in response to such a serious scandal.
No political party really benefits from the heat of the past few days, despite attempts from all sides to blame the others. Voters see this as a plague on all houses given the problems with the Horizon IT system started in 1999. The Tories, Labour and SNP are taking aim at Ed Davey, while Conservative chairman Lee Anderson told the Lib Dem leader to ‘clear off’ at Prime Minister’s Questions today. The Lib Dems are arguing that Oliver Dowden has questions to answer – a pretty unconvincing deflection – and are instructing their MPs to send out standard answers to constituents which argue the focus on Davey is unfair as all governments elected since the scandal began had oversight of the Horizon system. Davey’s party, along with Labour, is arguing that not enough was done quickly enough. Sunak is accusing others of trying to politicise the issue. As I say in this review of PMQs, though, the reason the government has moved at pace in the past couple of days is precisely because the scandal became political.
Oh and there was fraud bouncing around hence the need for an IT solution and pen and paper was very difficult to audit, just needed the IT system to be audited at the time by the government of the time
I think they said the people wrongly convicted have been offered £163K interim payment and the ability to pursue a larger payout, or they can take a full and final offer of £600K, others affected but not wrongly convicted £75K.
I would hope Fujitsu would be liable for compensating/repaying back part of their contract, but I'd guess that it was too long ago now, and the software/project was signed off by the customer so no recourse.
Having said that, they may pay the Govt/PO back what looks like a large sum, and get more than that back through other Govt contracts.
The time line and a suggestion of why they seem to have got off lightly so far.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/...ZjmXYvIMU6FYF0
The boss of Fujitsu at the time of the Horizon scandal was useless Tory Minister Gillian Keegan's husband.
HE knew. SHE knew. THEY knew. A criminal Investigation is required.
I saw the Panorama program on the scandal today. I see it was made in 2022 but I missed it then ( due to my health problems that year I don't remember much of it!) but I found it just as powerful as the drama,perhaps even more so as it showed the real people behind the story.
Leaving aside the appalling behaviour of the Post Office the performance of Fujitsu is obviously dreadful. I am a former computer professional myself (with the Civil Service, BT and the Health Service ) and wonder who on earth designed, wrote and crucially tested this system ( I would say Mickey Mouse,but that is probably an insult to Mickey!)
There must've been a moment very early on in this when the Post Office had a choice of trusting the subpostmasters and investigating Fujitsu (and then suing them if the system was found to be faulty) or trusting Fujitsu and going after the subpostmasters instead. I wonder if we'll ever find out who made that call. It puts trusting Runnarsson over Alnwick into perspective.
The post office counters system would have to be pretty good, they do so many services, the platform would have to be very robust, It was a difficult task, but yes if they got the contract it should have had to work and should have been fit for purpose, the government should definitely do whatever it takes to get some of the money back from them.
Nice one I'll look up the panorama episode
There's a link to a Panorama episode from nine years ago below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743
Nice one
Using the Cherry Ghost tune (People) at the end….covered by Birdy 👍
I can’t believe the PO was allowed to investigate its own people with its own internal “police force”., and that one of the things that should change immediately. I appreciate money will never compensate for what the post masters/mistresses have been through but they should get at least £1 million each and Fujitsu, never ever be awarded another government contract.
The Post Office could owe £100m in tax too as they were claiming tax relief on compensation payments which you're not allowed to do
https://twitter.com/DanNeidle/status...20610893434993
£935m was mentioned on the radio this morning but I presume this was the figure that tax was being claimed on.
You’re the only one’ is a common response. Doctors enquiring about thalidomide defects were told that, so were sub postmasters struggling with Horizon.
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