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The Cheque is in the Post – politicalbetting.com
The Cheque is in the Post – politicalbetting.com
Remember the De Lorean fiasco? To provide jobs in Northern Ireland, the then Tory government paid the bouffant-haired car designer to set up his factory there. It collapsed a few years later amidst missing money and fraud. Arthur Andersen, the auditors, who admitted missing obvious fraud signs, were banned from government work and sued. It was only when Blair won that the ban on AA was lifted and a risible settlement agreed. (Doubtless entirely coincidentally, AA had provided free advice to Labour in opposition. A “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” approach to favours has never restricted itself to one party.)
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It seems the board/senior management have been paid bonuses they are not entitled to based on false information. The CEO will repay it but they are still considering whether the others should. I wonder if there will be a fraud investigation.....
It is the worst scandal of my long lifetime. Cyclefree is absolutely right. Those responsible must be held to account for it, and now - not some distant time in the future.
Anything we can do to put pressure on the culprits, which she has clearly identified, should be done.
People hate admitting mistakes, more than probably anything else, unless those mistakes have very little real consequences.
As the Post Office failure happened under both Labour and then the Coalition, the big three parties have no incentive to take up the cause for the Post Masters, as it would make them look bad. If there is one thing they can't have, is them looking bad.
So unless the SNP are going to do it, there isn't another major party in the UK that will be willing to take up the fight.
Oh, there will be an apology, and probably 'compensation' eventually. But we do love to leave these things far, far too late so that we can finally say, "Yep we got it wrong." and take credit for that, without the nasty of the blame sticking to us or the compensation really getting paid out as everyone is long dead anyway.
The Prime Minister who will apologise for the Post Office Scandal is currently in Year 7.
Plus I’m not the only one who thinks the catholic faith bit could have been written a bit less ambiguously.
And this year‘s annual report said that it had been approved by the chairman of the enquiry, when, in fact it hadn’t. Apologies, were given but it was still a deliberate lie.
No one will serve time for this shocking miscarriage of justice.
And leaving that aside, an utterly unfit person to be an MP.
Edit - what puzzles me is that this is far from the only time Fujitsu has messed up a government contract, although given the crimes they committed during it it is undoubtedly the most egregious.
And yet they still get these contracts.
It's like accepting Boris Johnson's word when he says 'this time I won't cheat on my wife' or believing Dominic Cummings when he says 'this time I know what I'm talking about.'
The National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP) exists for precisely that purpose. And Colin Baker, its General Secretary at the time the scandal began to emerge - now retired - has publicly confirmed the NFSP's, and Baker's, complicity in helping the Post Office, and Labour and Tory governments, lie about the system's inadequacy.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252527837/Subpostmaster-federation-deliberately-kept-public-in-dark-over-computer-problems-secret)
Baker, like many senior Post Office managers, thought Horizon was so essential to the future of post offices that propagandising for it was more important than the risk of false imprisonment.
A quite remarkable piece from @Cyclefree which as you read it brings emotions of anger, despair, and frustration
Just what is wrong with our country's politicians, lawyers, and others from across the political arena that allows such a disgraceful situation
I hope justice is delivered quickly but I will not hold my breath
Officers in Derbyshire said the 69-year-old had managed to fool insurance companies to cover his car.
But, they added, "the flaw in his dastardly plan was bragging".
The law caught up with him in a Derby retail park, where his vehicle was seized and the culprit reported for a number of offences.
'Abrupt end'
Derbyshire Roads Policing tweeted on Saturday: "The driver of this vehicle has never passed a test despite being 69 years old and having been driving for over 50 years.
"He has systematically provided details to insurance companies indicating that he had a licence but the flaw in his dastardly plan was bragging.
"His long reign came to an abrupt end once we found out.
"Vehicle seized and driver reported for numerous offences."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-65512734
Undoubtedly a Brexiteer. 😂
It also highlights the other problem with British political society - longevity. On one hand we have planning windows which are far too short. Need results before the election or it doesn't get approved. On the other hand where it is a long term scandal it gets ignored because it is always Someone Else's Problem. blame the previous lot.
I'd also challenge the idea that Vennells (or anyone else found to have 'done wrong') should be hounded out of every voluntary position they have.
One of the issues this raises, is that if you are the leader of a large organisation, there are inevitably going to be problems coming up, potentially of this magnitude. If as leader you become a lightning rod for all criticism and then get ruined when it goes wrong; whilst other people below you who are responsible for the problems plod on anonymously and protected by employment law/trade unions etc, then competent people will be put off becoming a leader.
Unfortunately, the same pattern of behaviour is replicated across almost all institutions, such as the NHS, child “protection” services, police forces, political parties, churches, etc.
The instinctive response to wrongdoing is to cover it up, and to punish those who reveal it.
The problem, as with so many others, is that faced with the complex realities of a ministerial brief she now realises she can’t just witter about What Is A Woman or grammar schools and expect the problems to go away.
I guess this is what happens when patronage and ideology matter so much more than ability. It’s how we got PM Truss.
I take the point, too, about defences being provided to members of trade associations, trade unions etc., but if they are guilty, then down they go.
We (and I suspect this is fundamentally human but worse in Britain) don't like external checks and balances. So the Post Office, Ofsted etc get to mark their own homework and don't pick up on small fixable issues.
Then there's the "off with their heads tendency", strengthened by the (fairly unique) British press. To admit getting anything wrong is to invite ridicule and career death. No wonder people clam up.
Goodness knows what we do about it.
If you can't look after your own, who can you look after?
Somehow, and I have yet to read an account of this that makes much sense, the system created "holes" in the accounts, deficits that did not actually exist but which the sub-post masters were held to account for. And that is where it gets absurdly complicated because it surely should have been obvious to anyone who looked at the results that the service did not actually have these deficits. Put it another way, had those deficits been paid the service would have been performing quite exceptionally with highly unlikely levels of turnover and profit. But somehow the rubbish out of the systems was not identified, no one would accept that the system was making it up.
The other thing that was odd about it is that the sub-postmasters were not naïve fools about business or accounts. They, largely, ran their own discrete businesses with their own accounts, profits and losses, bank accounts etc. It should have been obvious to them that if these deficits were real the post office counter was running at a ridiculous loss. And where was the accounting for these deficits? Where were the counterbalancing surpluses, who got them? Presumably the Post Office. Did they not understand their own accounts well enough to realise something was going wrong?
I think @Cyclefree may be being a little harsh with the lawyers. They would have been told very little, that there was a deficit on the accounts and that the explanation was that the sub-postmaster had dipped into it and stolen money that they held in trust but did not belong to them. What more does a prosecutor need? But the accountants must surely have realised that something was not right, that there were deficits with no corresponding surpluses, where was the evidence of the money actually hitting the accounts of the sub-postmasters? And yet, concerns expressed were disregarded because so much had been invested in the system that it was impossible to accept that it did not work. There are many lessons to be learned here as well as an injustice to be made good as soon as possible.
Same story for social workers, customs officers, medics, etc.
The biggest sin of all is to bring the whole f*cking sh*tshow into disrepute. In such circumstances, some poor b*stard who didn't understand the (real) rules and went "too far" (e.g. Harold Shipman) can get disowned and left to swing (eventually).
@CycleFree - you are naive.
I still haven't come to terms with the idea (courtesy of PB a couple of days ago) that Oliver Dowden is even a vague consideration for future Prime Minister.
At least 41 lives could have been saved that day if the authorities hadn’t screwed up and then covered it up.
Nothing has changed, nobody has served time for the deaths of 97 people.
I am all for a free press but not one that lies egregiously, self regulates, and applies minimal sanction to itself.
As someone who works on IT projects for a living, everyone involved in this scandal gives the industry a bad name, and they all need to be held accountable for their actions.
Some background that’s missing from the piece, is that one of the key justifications for the Horizon system, as far as the PO was concerned, was to better be able to identify internal fraud. When the “fraud” started to be identified, everyone was cheering that the system was working as planned, and no-one was questioning whether the numbers added up.
I am on record as saying that non-violent criminals shouldn’t really end up in prison, but the decision-makers here are an exception. 59 deaths so far, many of which were suicides related to the prosecutions.
Organisations such as the Post Office (and the RSPCA, and other such quangoes) should not have powers to raise prosecutions themselves. An independent CPS looking thought the evidence, might have realised the problems much sooner.
The conclusions of the piece are spot-on, the machinery of government needs to speed up compensation efforts, and MPs need to keep on at ministers until this happens. We’ve seen in recent years, just how quickly government can actually get sh!t done in an emergency.
No-one else shares this level of bitterness and rage against the world, no matter how grave the injustice. They're not the only people who've been wronged in the past.
It's just become part of their identity. One they're only too happy to indulge in.
Like most scandals of this type there is a simple calculation going on
This is happening and it shouldn't be but if I raise the issue I will be shunted out the way and ignored, whereas if I ignore it then either a) it will never come to light or b) it will come to light but I will be looked after for not rocking the boat.
The calculation should be....I know about this, I should raise it else when it comes out I will be held culpable for saying nothing and lose my job without a golden goodbye and possibly serve jail time for the cover up.
Until we make it too costly for the individual to join in a cover up then they will continue to happen.
Currently assisting the cover up is the sensible thing to do for most people
1. Did the relevant Minister in the Business Department know of the Post Office bonus scheme?
2. Did they approve it?
3. Why and on what basis?
4. Was anyone in the Business Department made aware of what was being said about it in the Accounts?
5. Did they ask about the judge's approval and, if so, what was said?
6. Has legal advice been obtained or is it being obtained about whether or not any offence has been committed contrary to either s.2 (fraud by false representation) or S.4 (fraud by abuse of position) of the Fraud Act 2006?
7. If not, why not?
I am a little surprised that the judge has not referred the issue of a possible offence against the Fraud Act for further investigation. Of course that would mean that the Board would need to resign but why would that be a bad thing?
Every system exhibits this behaviour; it's a group loyalty thing where it's simply not in the interests of anyone inside the institution to carry the can, because they fear they might all be damaged, and no one individual wants to volunteer for to be the scapegoat, so they don't.
Incentives for the right behaviours inside the insitution, and checks and balances outside, need to be put in place.
One can only conclude that being wronged against has become part of their culture, probably to avoid having to face up to their own failings, and they channel a secret hatred of themselves into rage at others.
Because it is a legitimate grievance "Hillsborough" is enough of a justification for it to last several generations.
The problem the Sub post masters had was that their contracts made them liable for any losses, regardless of fault. They were told not to keep personal records because the software was more accurate and would be the only accounts accepted by the Post Office (some continued to keep shadow books). So, when the software started throwing errors it looked like there were huge deficits in the accounts of many sub post masters. The sub post masters then came under huge pressure to make good the losses and were unable to, nor could they account for the losses.
The software gave sub post masters the option to 'zero' their discrepancies so that they could submit the accounts to the central system, and they did so on the advice of Fujitsu tech support. These accounts were false, and their submission a crime. This was used by the Post Office, acting as prosecutor, to leverage confessions to other crimes, promising that if they did so, there would not be any custodial sentences (not in their power to gift, of course).
All in all, it's a perfect example of that saying that a tragedy happens when one thing goes wrong but a disaster happens when everything goes wrong (including the callous behaviour of, as Cyclefree details, the Post Office, Fujitsu, the Government etc).
This scandal evolved over a number of years, it wasn’t (cf. Hillsborough) an event that happened, where decisions needed to be made in minutes. There was plenty of time for the senior PO executives to ask the right questions.
I will keep calling out their bad behaviour (not all) - and I don't retract a single word of what I've said.
I think I've got the culture bang-on; they can't brook a single word of criticism, and the whole rest of the country is utterly turned off by it. No-one else who's been wronged behaves in this way.
It's in their interests for this to be pointed out to them, and to shake themselves out of it.
There was both a neat stack of unopened envelopes containing uncashed Housing Benefit cheques. And letters from the council which concluded with a court summons for cashing HB I wasn't entitled to as the landlord had told them I had left.
Summons was 3 days away. So I rang the number on the letter. Very stern person on the other end. I was a Naughty Person. Money I wasn't entitled to. So I asked them how I had had the money if the cheques hadn't been cashed. "We have been paying you HB since you left and you were not entitled to the money".
Yes. Payment by cheque. All of which I now had in my hand. I asked if the cheques had been *cashed*. Voice says they were issued and that means the money was paid. Yes but if you issue a cheque and it is never cashed and the money never left their bank account, how can they be taking me to court for having it?
A longer hold, get asked to report to the council office with the cheques. Do so. Court action stopped. The point is that had I not gone to collect my mail I would have had a CCJ against me for a debt that was never incurred. The council simply assumed that an issued cheque was a payment, without ever bothering to check their own records to see if they had been cashed and a transaction had taken place...
We can then start again. It hasn't worked.
I have been an in-house lawyer in charge of the investigations team. I understand very well the pressures and the fine line you have to tread, the absolute imperative of establishing the facts - not simply accepting what you are told and resisting pressure from senior management to come up with convenient answers. It is not easy. It can leave you a bit lonely and exposed and it can sometimes not be great for your career advancement, bluntly.
Investigators should never be prosecutors.
But the reality here is that from quite an early stage there were IT people and lawyers and others, both inside and outside the Post Office, who were pointing out the problems and were being ignored. They were ignored because the Post Office chose to believe what they wanted to be true. I also understand that the Japanese government lobbied for Fujitsu even after it became apparent that they had cocked up on a grand scale.
Nick Wallis's book and blog on this is worth reading. Paul Marshall and Richard Moorhead on the legal aspects and the role of the lawyers are also worth following.
In most miscarriages of justice there will have been failings by the lawyers. These tend to get overlooked because there is usually also some other more obvious villain. But we should not let the lawyers off the hook - and certainly not in this case.
Anyway off to polish my "flag".
I lived in Demark and Switzerland for over 30 years. Both countries have a very strong ethos of "correct behaviour" (which makes Switzerland in particular open to accusations of conformism). There was the occasional controversy asbout how a particular Minister or agency behaved, but I don't remember anything like this.
I agree with Stuart's analysis, but also I think that politics in Britain is unhealthily driven by what the media seize on, and this scandal is curiously un-newsworthy. People scattered around the country were maligned and ruined, but no one community where you could make a story out of interviewing dozens of victims. People died prematurely - stress, even suicide - but nobody died instantly, unlike a train crash or an explosion. The reasons sound technical and complex - something about a computer system. You can kind of see why journalists mostly move on - but that shouldn't be a reason for the political establishment to shrug it off. There's something called doing one's job, rather than just reacting to the media.
How interesting your commitment to free speech is only skin-deep.
However, I will be cheered up if the Mackems fail to make the playoffs. Bad enough that the Smoggies are there already.
Before you know it you’ll be in the Mathew Street ghetto.
https://twitter.com/forest_fr1ends/status/1655286741551529987?s=46
This article makes it sound like something unique to Cologne, but it isn't:
https://www.welt.de/regionales/nrw/article161682095/Warum-die-Koelner-ihren-Kluengel-so-lieben.html
You truly are deranged aren't you?
I expressed a view. You called me a twat, which actually is offensive. You then demanded I was censored.
The only person who needs to have a "quiet word" is you with yourself.
You wouldn't be this hypersensitive if you didn't secretly know there was something in it.
It’s incredible how much Liverpool FC witters on about Hillsborough (which was undeniably awful) yet NEVER mentions Heysel. It’s not like they were
centuries apart
The difference is Liverpool fans did serve time in prison for Heysel.