But it is not just Sir Ed Davey. It is the political equivalent to Murder on the Orient Express. All the three main political parties did it. They are all guilty.
From the Blair administration which brought in Horizon and overrode concerns about Fujitsu. Then there was Jack Straw's wife, Alice Perkins, who was Chairman of the Post Office when this matter started to come to light. After Ed Davey, there was Jo Swinson, who was useless (No surprise.) Then the Conservatives, who awarded Paula Vennells her CBE. Not to mention Education Secretary Gillian Keegan's husband with his Post Office IT background and then head of Fujitsu in the UK. Now Rishi Sunaks' in-laws'company, it is alleged, have business dealings with Fujitsu.
Indeed. And notice the classic NU10K silence about it - it could mean a swathe of Proper People catching it in the neck.
The guilt parties here are -
1) All the ministers responsible for the Post Office through the period in question (All three main parties). 2) The senior civil servants who went along with the bullshit. 3) The management at the Post Office 4) The legal unit at the Post Office 5) Fujitsu - from the developers who coded shit, to the managers who sold shit.
That list is Too Big To Fail.
Bit like the vast list of prosecutions & firings over Rotherham.
Yes, it's a systemic failure. The best thing is to help the victims and ensure this kind of thing can never happen again.
The politically-motivated witch-hunt achieves nothing and does nothing for the victims.
It depends what sort of failure. Being generally useless is not mostly a crime though it is quite common. What ordinary folks like us are finding hard to credit is different.
Is it really true that the PO went through all these hundreds of cases with all relevant parties in every case genuinely believing that the appearance of the evidence actually matched the reality claimed of criminal conduct? Did no-one even wonder, smell a rat, ask why hundreds of exemplary people were stealing thousands and all these cases were suddenly emerging.
Did no auditor ever spot that non-existent cash was being generated by a system which they couldn't locate in the actual world.
The point was they became aware. And became ever more desperate in converting it up. And carrying on the prosecutions.
If it was just a simple - "The software is shit. Right, stop prosecutions." - then the PO would be (mostly) in the clear. But they lied and lied and lied. Then lied some more.
Long ago, I had a job which involved investigations not dissimilar to those the PO conducted. My investigations would start with some sort of trigger, usually a piece of information which indicated the possibility of financial impropriety. But that was just the start of the matter. You then had to do a heap of hard work to build up a case and demonstrate the initial concerns were justified.
What struck me about the PO investigators was that they simply assumed that if Horizon said there was a shortfall, that was it. No more work necesssary - SPM guilty - job done. That is wholly out of order, of course, but then the investigators were underqualified, and undertrained. For them, it was just a box-ticking exercise. There was no real investigation. Guilt was simply assumed. Apart from the inhumanity, it was all so amateurish.
Yes, you'd think someone somewhere in the organisation might have said ' Hold on, this is not passing the smell test.' This I think is where the Board is criminally at fault. You'd think that by the time of, say, the 200th prosecution somebody would have said 'This doesn't feel right. All these people of previous good character...and no obvious evidence of where the money is going - lavish life-style, gambling debts, drug-taking or the like - so what is going on?' Nah, they believed what they wanted to believe and didn't dare contemplate the consequences of being wrong.
I don't see how the Board avoids chokey, but then comparable scandals in the past suggest they might.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
Whoever is involved there are always two views about this fairly universal phenomenon, which in the case of Starmer was written up in detail and admiringly by the Economist a few months ago.
Those who support where he currently is will draw no attention to it and ascribe it to political reality. Those who don't (the DM etc) will draw attention to the fact that successful politicians appear sincere but are in fact in perpetual zigzag.
Starmer: totally compromised but going to be (OK) PM; Rory: principled but totally outside the corridors of power.
Politics is a dirty game.
Rebecca Long-Bailey was the Corbyn continuity candidate. Starmer was the 'change to win' choice.
His (broken) pledges were all quite Corbyn friendly though - The ‘change to win’ candidate won, then changed!
Just finished the whole thing. Exceptionally good TV in terms of what it aimed to do: explain a horrible injustice, make you feel angry, tell the nation what happened
I reckon Davey is terminally damaged. Will struggle on but this now hangs around him. All the post office bigwigs are in danger of going to jail
On the upside this shows that - slowly, belatedly - British democracy and justice still kinda works. The 4th estate did its job. Journalists listened to a story and wrote it. Then tv came alone and shamed the powers that be (via a brilliant scriptwriter)
That’s something to cheer amidst what is still a pretty bleak tale. I apologise to all subpostmasters on PB for yawningly belittling this story
You owe me a drink or two when we meet.
You still have that visit to West Cumbria to do and the picnic on the beach I promised you.
I recently visited your beach. Some funny rules in the Gents...
And you didn't say hello?! How naughty of you.
I wouldn't know about the Gents, what with me being a woman and all. I'd have thought the urinals might be quite a convenient place to wash boots, what with them being nearer to the ground. Depends what is on the boots, I suppose.
Further up the coast there was a sign at a petrol state politely asking people not to turn up in their dressing gowns. When I asked the lady behind the counter, whether this was for real she said:
"Oh yes. We get men in their dressing gowns. We've seen it all."
"I do hope not!" I replied.
She laughed.
We have to make our own entertainment here, you know.
Here is the sign:
What about people who turn up with no attire at all? Is that permitted?
(Not asking for myself or anyone else, by the way!)
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
I doubt it would make much difference, there isn't a great deal in this PO story other than Davey was a bit slow off the mark in noticing the Horizon problems alongside everybody else in government and the PO and lawyers at the time.
Davey is also more heavyweight than Cooper
The other thing is... how much of a national campaign are the Lib Dems doing?
If they have any sense (and I think the current management do), they're doing ca. 40 very local campaigns of the "Yourtown's Voice At Westminster" sort. All-in in those constituencies (to the extent that you can probably identify them from the uptick in paper being recycled, thanks to all those Focus leaflets), but minimal elsewhere.
There's always a national campaign of sorts, but Davey's strategy is clearly focused on 40-50 targets.
I predicted 25-35 LD seats at the GE the other day, and still sounds about right.
Ignoring the Starmer line being spun by some Tories on here (which to be honest I find a little tasteless as well as pointless), surely the bigger point is that we need to have a change of the law to prevent anyone but the CPS launching criminal prosecutions. The system has been shown to be utterly corrupt and running counter to the basic principles of justice.
I don't know which other organisations are still able to launch their own private criminal prosecutions but I would suggest it is long past the time when this practice ended.
Start with the RSPCA.
They don't do private prosecutions any more, as a matter of policy. Too many judges told them to stop being litigious twats or stealing puppies (that is, removing them without lawful authority) from people they didn't like.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
I’m not an IT person like I think you are.
But that failing sounds pretty fundamental
So the PO should go after them for commercial failure
(In your analogy the PO is the car manufacturer and the SPM the dealers. Fujitsu is a parts manufacturer . It’s Ford that gets blamed not Vistion (?)
Yes it is a fundamental failure.
The horrible phrase "Not fit for purpose" is right here.
They sold faulty goods.
The dealers (PO) carried on selling the faulty cars, prosecuting people for the inability to drive round corners etc, after *they knew* the cars were faulty.
The manufacturer is liable *and* the PO is liable.
It's a poor analogy, since Fujitsu had - and still has - an ongoing role. It's nut like they just sold a box and walked away.
But it is not just Sir Ed Davey. It is the political equivalent to Murder on the Orient Express. All the three main political parties did it. They are all guilty.
From the Blair administration which brought in Horizon and overrode concerns about Fujitsu. Then there was Jack Straw's wife, Alice Perkins, who was Chairman of the Post Office when this matter started to come to light. After Ed Davey, there was Jo Swinson, who was useless (No surprise.) Then the Conservatives, who awarded Paula Vennells her CBE. Not to mention Education Secretary Gillian Keegan's husband with his Post Office IT background and then head of Fujitsu in the UK. Now Rishi Sunaks' in-laws'company, it is alleged, have business dealings with Fujitsu.
Wasn't Horizon also supposed to be the Government's social security system engaged by Major's Government but due to roll out during Blair's. Due to teething problems Horizon was binned by the Government but not by the Post Office?
That suggests Blair Government culpability. Ed is innocent!
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
The LDs would pick up one on a good night in Scotland. Two in a truly exceptional one.
I think they'll make decent gains against the Conservatives in England next year, because their vote share will be flat, a quarter of Tory voters will stay home, and there will be some crossover Lab-to-LD tactical voting.
26 seats would be my midpoint for them, with all but one coming from gains from Conservative.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
We will know more about Fujitsu's position when Gareth Jenkins gives his evidence to the Inquiry. He was the man Fujitsu put forward as expert witness for PO prosecutions, and later became a whistleblower. His scheduled appearance has twice been delayed because of very late submission of documentation by the PO. There is little doubt that the production of such documents was timed to cause delay. I think he is now due to appear in March.
I suspect the PO won't dare delay matters again. When he does appear, his testimony should be riveting.
But it is not just Sir Ed Davey. It is the political equivalent to Murder on the Orient Express. All the three main political parties did it. They are all guilty.
From the Blair administration which brought in Horizon and overrode concerns about Fujitsu. Then there was Jack Straw's wife, Alice Perkins, who was Chairman of the Post Office when this matter started to come to light. After Ed Davey, there was Jo Swinson, who was useless (No surprise.) Then the Conservatives, who awarded Paula Vennells her CBE. Not to mention Education Secretary Gillian Keegan's husband with his Post Office IT background and then head of Fujitsu in the UK. Now Rishi Sunaks' in-laws'company, it is alleged, have business dealings with Fujitsu.
Indeed. And notice the classic NU10K silence about it - it could mean a swathe of Proper People catching it in the neck.
The guilt parties here are -
1) All the ministers responsible for the Post Office through the period in question (All three main parties). 2) The senior civil servants who went along with the bullshit. 3) The management at the Post Office 4) The legal unit at the Post Office 5) Fujitsu - from the developers who coded shit, to the managers who sold shit.
That list is Too Big To Fail.
Bit like the vast list of prosecutions & firings over Rotherham.
Yes, it's a systemic failure. The best thing is to help the victims and ensure this kind of thing can never happen again.
The politically-motivated witch-hunt achieves nothing and does nothing for the victims.
It depends what sort of failure. Being generally useless is not mostly a crime though it is quite common. What ordinary folks like us are finding hard to credit is different.
Is it really true that the PO went through all these hundreds of cases with all relevant parties in every case genuinely believing that the appearance of the evidence actually matched the reality claimed of criminal conduct? Did no-one even wonder, smell a rat, ask why hundreds of exemplary people were stealing thousands and all these cases were suddenly emerging.
Did no auditor ever spot that non-existent cash was being generated by a system which they couldn't locate in the actual world.
The point was they became aware. And became ever more desperate in converting it up. And carrying on the prosecutions.
If it was just a simple - "The software is shit. Right, stop prosecutions." - then the PO would be (mostly) in the clear. But they lied and lied and lied. Then lied some more.
Long ago, I had a job which involved investigations not dissimilar to those the PO conducted. My investigations would start with some sort of trigger, usually a piece of information which indicated the possibility of financial impropriety. But that was just the start of the matter. You then had to do a heap of hard work to build up a case and demonstrate the initial concerns were justified.
What struck me about the PO investigators was that they simply assumed that if Horizon said there was a shortfall, that was it. No more work necesssary - SPM guilty - job done. That is wholly out of order, of course, but then the investigators were underqualified, and undertrained. For them, it was just a box-ticking exercise. There was no real investigation. Guilt was simply assumed. Apart from the inhumanity, it was all so amateurish.
Yes, you'd think someone somewhere in the organisation might have said ' Hold on, this is not passing the smell test.' This I think is where the Board is criminally at fault. You'd think that by the time of, say, the 200th prosecution somebody would have said 'This doesn't feel right. All these people of previous good character...and no obvious evidence of where the money is going - lavish life-style, gambling debts, drug-taking or the like - so what is going on?' Nah, they believed what they wanted to believe and didn't dare contemplate the consequences of being wrong.
I don't see how the Board avoids chokey, but then comparable scandals in the past suggest they might.
They avoid it by virtue of being Important Senior People. And Important Senior People - at worst - get a wrap over the knuckles and possibly lose one of their day-a-week non-exec/quango positions.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
I doubt it would make much difference, there isn't a great deal in this PO story other than Davey was a bit slow off the mark in noticing the Horizon problems alongside everybody else in government and the PO and lawyers at the time.
Davey is also more heavyweight than Cooper
I think you underestimate this story. It has run and run for years, and has a lot left to run. The enquiry will be continuing all year, and now with increased salience and public attention.
If Sunak and Badenoch don't handle it very adroitly there will be a lot more political casualties.
Badenoch has done very well, nothing negative is sticking to her. Getting (undeserved) positive limelight will do her Prime Ministerial ambitions no harm at all.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
The LDs would pick up one on a good night in Scotland. Two in a truly exceptional one.
I think they'll make decent gains against the Conservatives in England next year, because their vote share will be flat, a quarter of Tory voters will stay home, and there will be some crossover Lab-to-LD tactical voting.
26 seats would be my midpoint for them, with all but one coming from gains from Conservative.
Dunbartonshire East the other one? Or whatever it is under the new boundaries?
I would be happy to see LD finish ahead of SNP. 26 would achieve that. Maybe 20 will be enough 👍
But it is not just Sir Ed Davey. It is the political equivalent to Murder on the Orient Express. All the three main political parties did it. They are all guilty.
From the Blair administration which brought in Horizon and overrode concerns about Fujitsu. Then there was Jack Straw's wife, Alice Perkins, who was Chairman of the Post Office when this matter started to come to light. After Ed Davey, there was Jo Swinson, who was useless (No surprise.) Then the Conservatives, who awarded Paula Vennells her CBE. Not to mention Education Secretary Gillian Keegan's husband with his Post Office IT background and then head of Fujitsu in the UK. Now Rishi Sunaks' in-laws'company, it is alleged, have business dealings with Fujitsu.
Indeed. And notice the classic NU10K silence about it - it could mean a swathe of Proper People catching it in the neck.
The guilt parties here are -
1) All the ministers responsible for the Post Office through the period in question (All three main parties). 2) The senior civil servants who went along with the bullshit. 3) The management at the Post Office 4) The legal unit at the Post Office 5) Fujitsu - from the developers who coded shit, to the managers who sold shit.
That list is Too Big To Fail.
Bit like the vast list of prosecutions & firings over Rotherham.
Yes, it's a systemic failure. The best thing is to help the victims and ensure this kind of thing can never happen again.
The politically-motivated witch-hunt achieves nothing and does nothing for the victims.
It depends what sort of failure. Being generally useless is not mostly a crime though it is quite common. What ordinary folks like us are finding hard to credit is different.
Is it really true that the PO went through all these hundreds of cases with all relevant parties in every case genuinely believing that the appearance of the evidence actually matched the reality claimed of criminal conduct? Did no-one even wonder, smell a rat, ask why hundreds of exemplary people were stealing thousands and all these cases were suddenly emerging.
Did no auditor ever spot that non-existent cash was being generated by a system which they couldn't locate in the actual world.
The point was they became aware. And became ever more desperate in converting it up. And carrying on the prosecutions.
If it was just a simple - "The software is shit. Right, stop prosecutions." - then the PO would be (mostly) in the clear. But they lied and lied and lied. Then lied some more.
Long ago, I had a job which involved investigations not dissimilar to those the PO conducted. My investigations would start with some sort of trigger, usually a piece of information which indicated the possibility of financial impropriety. But that was just the start of the matter. You then had to do a heap of hard work to build up a case and demonstrate the initial concerns were justified.
What struck me about the PO investigators was that they simply assumed that if Horizon said there was a shortfall, that was it. No more work necesssary - SPM guilty - job done. That is wholly out of order, of course, but then the investigators were underqualified, and undertrained. For them, it was just a box-ticking exercise. There was no real investigation. Guilt was simply assumed. Apart from the inhumanity, it was all so amateurish.
Yes, you'd think someone somewhere in the organisation might have said ' Hold on, this is not passing the smell test.' This I think is where the Board is criminally at fault. You'd think that by the time of, say, the 200th prosecution somebody would have said 'This doesn't feel right. All these people of previous good character...and no obvious evidence of where the money is going - lavish life-style, gambling debts, drug-taking or the like - so what is going on?' Nah, they believed what they wanted to believe and didn't dare contemplate the consequences of being wrong.
I don't see how the Board avoids chokey, but then comparable scandals in the past suggest they might.
They avoid it by virtue of being Important Senior People. And Important Senior People - at worst - get a wrap over the knuckles and possibly lose one of their day-a-week non-exec/quango positions.
Pity the poor Important Senior People.
Unless we claw back their pensions, they're certainly not going to be poor.
I agree with @Casino_Royale and @StillWaters that, whatever the rights or wrongs, Ed Davey and the Lib Dems are suddenly looking toasty.
What is perhaps most inexcusable is the pathetic management of the story so far. Michael Crick signalled fired the starting pistol on Ed Davey open season last week, this isn’t just a Tory pile-on. But the Lib Dem counter-narrative barely exists.
Davey either needs to call it a day as leader, or to do a long form interview to explain his position and put up an active defence.
His problem is surely not what he did at the time but whether he has had anything to say about this over the last 14 years when it surely became clearer and clearer that he had been lied to. Why was he not ringing alarm bells a decade ago?
Didn’t he go and work for the company that were fighting the post masters?
I think I read that somewhere as well, a consultancy when he was out of Parliament, but I don't know the details.
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
There must be a number of Civil Servants with blood on their hands, but the chances of finding out who are close to zero.
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
The LDs would pick up one on a good night in Scotland. Two in a truly exceptional one.
I think they'll make decent gains against the Conservatives in England next year, because their vote share will be flat, a quarter of Tory voters will stay home, and there will be some crossover Lab-to-LD tactical voting.
26 seats would be my midpoint for them, with all but one coming from gains from Conservative.
Dunbartonshire East the other one? Or whatever it is under the new boundaries?
I would be happy to see LD finish ahead of SNP. 26 would achieve that. Maybe 20 will be enough 👍
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
Bingo.
Parallel and concurrent and distributed software is really, really hard. But. But! This level of incompetence is not even close to acceptable. The principles which could have allowed this software to work - or mostly work - or even usually work - have been known since the 70s or early 80s.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
I actually expect the Tories to see a bigger swing to the LDs than Labour in seats where the LDs are the main challengers. Certainly in the local elections this year and last year the swing from Tory to LD or Independent has been bigger than the swing from Tory to Labour in most wards.
Davey's LDs are closer to New Labour still than Starmer Labour are and I expect a bigger anti Tory swing in Remain seats (and almost all LD targets are Remain seats) than Leave seats (which are more likely to be Labour targets).
Only the prospect of Corbyn as PM kept seats like Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Cheltenham and Wantage Tory in 2019 and they will likely now go yellow, maybe the likes of Henley and Tunbridge Wells as well. They were never casting a positive vote for Brexit and the Tories as redwall and Leave seats were
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
Well yes, but not just for that reason. The fact that many of them are extremely stupid and ignorant but also unshakeably convinced of their own intelligence and wisdom is also a bit of an issue.
I agree with @Casino_Royale and @StillWaters that, whatever the rights or wrongs, Ed Davey and the Lib Dems are suddenly looking toasty.
What is perhaps most inexcusable is the pathetic management of the story so far. Michael Crick signalled fired the starting pistol on Ed Davey open season last week, this isn’t just a Tory pile-on. But the Lib Dem counter-narrative barely exists.
Davey either needs to call it a day as leader, or to do a long form interview to explain his position and put up an active defence.
The political difficulty as always is in working out whether this is a Westminster village story or cutting through. I think it’s, just, cutting through. Not like partygate or the expenses scandal, but enough.
The Lib Dems have pros and cons as targets for ire. They are quiet and polite types, easily bullied. So an easy target when looking for scapegoats. But not the actual current government, so nowhere near as explosive as something involving them.
From anecdata just chatting to regular folk - it's cutting through. But more in a general 'well, what do you expect? just look at X, Y and Z.' kind of way. Feels a little like what (I think) drove a bit of the Corbyn/Boris/Brexit vote of just 'f**k them all and all their ways'. Which I think adds a little more of a dice-throw into the next GE. But I'm not sure where that anger goes other than hand-sitting or spoiled ballots.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
I actually expect the Tories to see a bigger swing to the LDs than Labour in seats where the LDs are the main challengers. Certainly in the local elections this year and last year the swing from Tory to LD or Independent has been bigger than the swing from Tory to Labour in most wards.
Davey's LDs are closer to New Labour still than Starmer Labour are and I expect a bigger anti Tory swing in Remain seats (and almost all LD targets are Remain seats) than Leave seats (which are more likely to be Labour targets).
Only the prospect of Corbyn as PM kept seats like Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Cheltenham and Wantage Tory in 2019 and they will likely now go yellow, maybe the likes of Henley and Tunbridge Wells as well. They were never casting a positive vote for Brexit and the Tories as redwall and Leave seats were
No that was my point. They were very much casting a negative vote for Brexit in 2019 and that is done now and it will unwind.
I don't expect any of those to go LD. Maybe Guildford!
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
Bingo.
Parallel and concurrent and distributed software is really, really hard. But. But! This level of incompetence is not even close to acceptable. The principles which could have allowed this software to work - or mostly work - or even usually work - have been known since the 70s or early 80s.
The first thing that computers were used for, commercially was stock and financial control. Distributed transactionality was solved in the 1960s.
IF yours truly was a UK voter (can hear sigh of relief that I'm not from Westminster to Wick) and lived in a Tory-LD marginal, would be planning to vote LD at upcoming GE. With their Fearless Leader being neither here nor there.
So do NOT, at least necessarily, look up the arguably limited role of Ed Davie in PO Scandal, as a matter of principle (also arguable).
What I do believe, is that the PO Scandal is now making him a non-positive liability as party leader.
With minuses and demerits appearing to outweigh his merits and pluses, at least for electoral purposes.
On the other hand, am NOT inclined to criticizing party supporters from trying to stick with their leaders and not just toss 'em from the troika when the wolves start howling.
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
There must be a number of Civil Servants with blood on their hands, but the chances of finding out who are close to zero.
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
I think that as the responsible Minister she has to be very careful about what she says about this when there is allegedly an active police investigation and probable prosecutions.
She should, however, be doing more to ensure the outstanding appeals are dealt with as a priority and that the compensation scheme is operating as fast as possible.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
Bingo.
Parallel and concurrent and distributed software is really, really hard. But. But! This level of incompetence is not even close to acceptable. The principles which could have allowed this software to work - or mostly work - or even usually work - have been known since the 70s or early 80s.
Software in the 70s or early 80s was expected to work though. It was a crazy era. Now we know that obsessing about vite vs bun, which flavour of React to use and posting meme's to Primagen twitch streams are what really matters.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
The LDs would pick up one on a good night in Scotland. Two in a truly exceptional one.
I think they'll make decent gains against the Conservatives in England next year, because their vote share will be flat, a quarter of Tory voters will stay home, and there will be some crossover Lab-to-LD tactical voting.
26 seats would be my midpoint for them, with all but one coming from gains from Conservative.
Dunbartonshire East the other one? Or whatever it is under the new boundaries?
I would be happy to see LD finish ahead of SNP. 26 would achieve that. Maybe 20 will be enough 👍
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
There must be a number of Civil Servants with blood on their hands, but the chances of finding out who are close to zero.
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
The Plan
In the beginning, there was a plan, And then came the assumptions, And the assumptions were without form, And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers, And they spoke among themselves saying, "It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said, "It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them, "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan And saw that it was good, And the Plan became Policy.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
Fujitsu is a very large, international company. Even Fujitsu UK is large. I’m not convinced they should *all* be damned for the failures of some. Collective punishment is wrong.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
I actually expect the Tories to see a bigger swing to the LDs than Labour in seats where the LDs are the main challengers. Certainly in the local elections this year and last year the swing from Tory to LD or Independent has been bigger than the swing from Tory to Labour in most wards.
Davey's LDs are closer to New Labour still than Starmer Labour are and I expect a bigger anti Tory swing in Remain seats (and almost all LD targets are Remain seats) than Leave seats (which are more likely to be Labour targets).
Only the prospect of Corbyn as PM kept seats like Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Cheltenham and Wantage Tory in 2019 and they will likely now go yellow, maybe the likes of Henley and Tunbridge Wells as well. They were never casting a positive vote for Brexit and the Tories as redwall and Leave seats were
No that was my point. They were very much casting a negative vote for Brexit in 2019 and that is done now and it will unwind.
I don't expect any of those to go LD. Maybe Guildford!
Brexit doesn't explain how embedded in local government the LibDems have become in much of the South-East. If they don't pick up at least one extra seat in Oxfordshire I will be surprised. Wantage and Henley are both very possible.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
The LDs would pick up one on a good night in Scotland. Two in a truly exceptional one.
I think they'll make decent gains against the Conservatives in England next year, because their vote share will be flat, a quarter of Tory voters will stay home, and there will be some crossover Lab-to-LD tactical voting.
26 seats would be my midpoint for them, with all but one coming from gains from Conservative.
Dunbartonshire East the other one? Or whatever it is under the new boundaries?
I would be happy to see LD finish ahead of SNP. 26 would achieve that. Maybe 20 will be enough 👍
LD gain in ANME.
You heard it here first...
I think I have called it previously 😈
CON and SNP each down 15% all to LD and it's there (just?) 👍
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
Bingo.
Parallel and concurrent and distributed software is really, really hard. But. But! This level of incompetence is not even close to acceptable. The principles which could have allowed this software to work - or mostly work - or even usually work - have been known since the 70s or early 80s.
The first thing that computers were used for, commercially was stock and financial control. Distributed transactionality was solved in the 1960s.
Lyons cafe's 1951 vs Fujitsu/PO c2000. A sad decline.
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
There must be a number of Civil Servants with blood on their hands, but the chances of finding out who are close to zero.
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
I think that as the responsible Minister she has to be very careful about what she says about this when there is allegedly an active police investigation and probable prosecutions.
She should, however, be doing more to ensure the outstanding appeals are dealt with as a priority and that the compensation scheme is operating as fast as possible.
Should could save everyone's necks by doing an Ed Balls - fire the people involved without process. So they all get massive compensation packages.
This would satisfy the tabloids and the NU10K'rs. The SPMs - does anyone important care?
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
There must be a number of Civil Servants with blood on their hands, but the chances of finding out who are close to zero.
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
I think that as the responsible Minister she has to be very careful about what she says about this when there is allegedly an active police investigation and probable prosecutions.
She should, however, be doing more to ensure the outstanding appeals are dealt with as a priority and that the compensation scheme is operating as fast as possible.
It is unlikely the PO would have been able to procrastinate in the way it has without tacit support from the very top.
Answers to some of the questions on the previous thread.
1. "What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?"
From what Nick Wallis has said, far from being managed at arm's length, Post Office managers had the Business Department breathing down their necks demanding that it become profitable ASAP. That was probably why they covered up the problems with Horizon. Fixing it and paying compensation would have wiped out any profits. As it is the PO is now bust and only survives because we are funding it and the compensation to be paid.
If the tapes - or other evidence - shows this government-inspired "profits before people" approach that is not going to help the Tories, is it?
2. "Did Ed Davey and the Post Office employees believe:
1) that the money was missing and that theft was more plausible than the IT failure that they were assured by Fujitsu was foolproof
or
2) the postmasters were innocent but should be persecuted and prosecuted anyway?"
Neither. Under the contracts SPMS were liable for any losses that were down to them. The PO saw the discrepancies, told the SPMs that this was down to them and then used the threats of theft or false accounting charges to extract the money and close down their businesses. Alan Bates never got charged with anything because he refused to sign off the accounts. Later the Post Office changed the system so that you had to sign them off in order to open the next day ie even if they disputed them they had effectively signed false accounts.
The investigations into the cause of the discrepancies were cursory or non-existent. They didn't need to investigate because they simply misused the contracts and threats of prosecutions to get admissions and money. Where SPMs fought back they either bankrupted them in the civil courts or lied about Horizon in the criminal courts.
What they likely told Davey was that there was evidence of theft and the SPMs were maliciously blaming Horizon. This was wrong. But it would be really helpful if Davey were to spell out now:-
- What questions he asked - Of whom - When - What answers he was given - When he realised these answers were wrong - And if this was some time ago why he didn't speak up then.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
I actually expect the Tories to see a bigger swing to the LDs than Labour in seats where the LDs are the main challengers. Certainly in the local elections this year and last year the swing from Tory to LD or Independent has been bigger than the swing from Tory to Labour in most wards.
Davey's LDs are closer to New Labour still than Starmer Labour are and I expect a bigger anti Tory swing in Remain seats (and almost all LD targets are Remain seats) than Leave seats (which are more likely to be Labour targets).
Only the prospect of Corbyn as PM kept seats like Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Cheltenham and Wantage Tory in 2019 and they will likely now go yellow, maybe the likes of Henley and Tunbridge Wells as well. They were never casting a positive vote for Brexit and the Tories as redwall and Leave seats were
No that was my point. They were very much casting a negative vote for Brexit in 2019 and that is done now and it will unwind.
I don't expect any of those to go LD. Maybe Guildford!
Brexit doesn't explain how embedded in local government the LibDems have become in much of the South-East. If they don't pick up at least one extra seat in Oxfordshire I will be surprised. Wantage and Henley are both very possible.
LD always popular in local elections as a protest. Generally doesn't translate into GE success.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
Fujitsu is a very large, international company. Even Fujitsu UK is large. I’m not convinced they should *all* be damned for the failures of some. Collective punishment is wrong.
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
There must be a number of Civil Servants with blood on their hands, but the chances of finding out who are close to zero.
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
I think that as the responsible Minister she has to be very careful about what she says about this when there is allegedly an active police investigation and probable prosecutions.
She should, however, be doing more to ensure the outstanding appeals are dealt with as a priority and that the compensation scheme is operating as fast as possible.
Should could save everyone's necks by doing an Ed Balls - fire the people involved without process. So they all get massive compensation packages.
This would satisfy the tabloids and the NU10K'rs. The SPMs - does anyone important care?
A skilled politician could use it as an opportunity to push through some significant reforms.
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
What bothers me somewhat is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
But it is not just Sir Ed Davey. It is the political equivalent to Murder on the Orient Express. All the three main political parties did it. They are all guilty.
From the Blair administration which brought in Horizon and overrode concerns about Fujitsu. Then there was Jack Straw's wife, Alice Perkins, who was Chairman of the Post Office when this matter started to come to light. After Ed Davey, there was Jo Swinson, who was useless (No surprise.) Then the Conservatives, who awarded Paula Vennells her CBE. Not to mention Education Secretary Gillian Keegan's husband with his Post Office IT background and then head of Fujitsu in the UK. Now Rishi Sunaks' in-laws'company, it is alleged, have business dealings with Fujitsu.
Indeed. And notice the classic NU10K silence about it - it could mean a swathe of Proper People catching it in the neck.
The guilt parties here are -
1) All the ministers responsible for the Post Office through the period in question (All three main parties). 2) The senior civil servants who went along with the bullshit. 3) The management at the Post Office 4) The legal unit at the Post Office 5) Fujitsu - from the developers who coded shit, to the managers who sold shit.
That list is Too Big To Fail.
Bit like the vast list of prosecutions & firings over Rotherham.
Yes, it's a systemic failure. The best thing is to help the victims and ensure this kind of thing can never happen again.
The politically-motivated witch-hunt achieves nothing and does nothing for the victims.
It depends what sort of failure. Being generally useless is not mostly a crime though it is quite common. What ordinary folks like us are finding hard to credit is different.
Is it really true that the PO went through all these hundreds of cases with all relevant parties in every case genuinely believing that the appearance of the evidence actually matched the reality claimed of criminal conduct? Did no-one even wonder, smell a rat, ask why hundreds of exemplary people were stealing thousands and all these cases were suddenly emerging.
Did no auditor ever spot that non-existent cash was being generated by a system which they couldn't locate in the actual world.
The point was they became aware. And became ever more desperate in converting it up. And carrying on the prosecutions.
If it was just a simple - "The software is shit. Right, stop prosecutions." - then the PO would be (mostly) in the clear. But they lied and lied and lied. Then lied some more.
Long ago, I had a job which involved investigations not dissimilar to those the PO conducted. My investigations would start with some sort of trigger, usually a piece of information which indicated the possibility of financial impropriety. But that was just the start of the matter. You then had to do a heap of hard work to build up a case and demonstrate the initial concerns were justified.
What struck me about the PO investigators was that they simply assumed that if Horizon said there was a shortfall, that was it. No more work necesssary - SPM guilty - job done. That is wholly out of order, of course, but then the investigators were underqualified, and undertrained. For them, it was just a box-ticking exercise. There was no real investigation. Guilt was simply assumed. Apart from the inhumanity, it was all so amateurish.
Yes, you'd think someone somewhere in the organisation might have said ' Hold on, this is not passing the smell test.' This I think is where the Board is criminally at fault. You'd think that by the time of, say, the 200th prosecution somebody would have said 'This doesn't feel right. All these people of previous good character...and no obvious evidence of where the money is going - lavish life-style, gambling debts, drug-taking or the like - so what is going on?' Nah, they believed what they wanted to believe and didn't dare contemplate the consequences of being wrong.
I don't see how the Board avoids chokey, but then comparable scandals in the past suggest they might.
The problem was that each SPM had to sign off their accounts on a daily basis confirming that the balances were right. If the system said the balances were wrong and there was a shortfall then they accepted , by their contract, that they were obliged to make the shortfall good. Alan Bates refused to sign his accounts which is why he was never prosecuted. He did not believe they were accurate.
I think a more diligent inquiry might have looked for evidence of where the "missing" money had gone, whether this was compatible with the actual transactions recorded, the SPMs own bank accounts etc. But a confirmation that the SPM had signed off accounts that a supposedly infallible computing system said was wrong is a pretty good start.
Its a bit like when senior officers signed off the accounts of the SNP declaring that this was a full statement of their donations, loans, expenditure and assets when there is good evidence that there was other money spent and other assets that had not been declared. Look how Police Scotland have zipped on with that. 😉
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
I think it's accurate - it's known that a lot of Ofsted inspectors come in with pre-formed ideas seeking to find the evidence to back it up so I can see why someone who cares about the school (and their future career) can work themselves into such a state...
What bothers me somewhat is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
You speak of OFSTED's "reputation"
Their reputation used to be people who could be unpleasant but were not dishonest. So if you were doing a half-decent job, you would be OK.
If it's got to the stage where everyone assumes they're liars out to get people, then they are not only less use in driving up educational performance than Dominic Cummings' brain cell but actively damaging it.
It would be ironic if Davey resigns over his (seemingly very minor) role in the Post Office Scandal.
He is the only party leader that every one of the 80+ PB competition entries predicted would remain in place until the GE.
Which means that at least one entrant reckons Starmer won't make it to the GE? Think we have an early loser.
The first part's true but... there are 10 questions, getting one wrong isn't going to disqualify you.
It is if I get all 10 right.
I repeat: every one of the 80+ PB competition entries predicted Davey would remain in place until the GE. If he goes, no one is getting 10/10.
MY entry did NOT go along with herd wisdom, on the future of Ed Freaking Davey or anything else!
Which is why you decreed my humble submission "spoiled" and hurled it into the Dustbin of PB?
Is THIS what you call British "fair play" when dealing with the "Irish"?
If any one of your predictions proves correct, including 'Harry Windsor & Meghan Markle' as joint leaders of the LibDems, I promise to retrospectively reinstate your entry.
I agree with @Casino_Royale and @StillWaters that, whatever the rights or wrongs, Ed Davey and the Lib Dems are suddenly looking toasty.
What is perhaps most inexcusable is the pathetic management of the story so far. Michael Crick signalled fired the starting pistol on Ed Davey open season last week, this isn’t just a Tory pile-on. But the Lib Dem counter-narrative barely exists.
Davey either needs to call it a day as leader, or to do a long form interview to explain his position and put up an active defence.
His problem is surely not what he did at the time but whether he has had anything to say about this over the last 14 years when it surely became clearer and clearer that he had been lied to. Why was he not ringing alarm bells a decade ago?
Didn’t he go and work for the company that were fighting the post masters?
I think I read that somewhere as well, a consultancy when he was out of Parliament, but I don't know the details.
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
There must be a number of Civil Servants with blood on their hands, but the chances of finding out who are close to zero.
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
I think that as the responsible Minister she has to be very careful about what she says about this when there is allegedly an active police investigation and probable prosecutions.
She should, however, be doing more to ensure the outstanding appeals are dealt with as a priority and that the compensation scheme is operating as fast as possible.
Should could save everyone's necks by doing an Ed Balls - fire the people involved without process. So they all get massive compensation packages.
This would satisfy the tabloids and the NU10K'rs. The SPMs - does anyone important care?
A skilled politician could use it as an opportunity to push through some significant reforms.
The LDs would probably do better at an election with Daisy Cooper as leader.
Yes they would. Daisy is the obvious successor and comes over as more assertive more 'in your face'.
Layla's time is gone and there are no obvious others.
As it stands despite all the apparent unhappiness among the right wing voters in the 'Blue Wall' LD are heading for 20 seats.
On the current swing in most polls the Tories are down about 15% on 2019, if in Blue Wall LD V Tory marginals tactical voting by Labour voters ensured the swing from the Tories all went to the LDs, they could pick up about 50 seats and be back to 1997-2015 levels
HYUFD I know you are an expert on this sort of thing but it's not going to happen. A lot of the apparently good close runs for LD in CON South east seats was due to dissatisfaction over Brexit but that's done now. Maybe one or two gains in SE. Maybe St Ives. I think Chalk will hold on in Cheltenham.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
I actually expect the Tories to see a bigger swing to the LDs than Labour in seats where the LDs are the main challengers. Certainly in the local elections this year and last year the swing from Tory to LD or Independent has been bigger than the swing from Tory to Labour in most wards.
Davey's LDs are closer to New Labour still than Starmer Labour are and I expect a bigger anti Tory swing in Remain seats (and almost all LD targets are Remain seats) than Leave seats (which are more likely to be Labour targets).
Only the prospect of Corbyn as PM kept seats like Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Cheltenham and Wantage Tory in 2019 and they will likely now go yellow, maybe the likes of Henley and Tunbridge Wells as well. They were never casting a positive vote for Brexit and the Tories as redwall and Leave seats were
No that was my point. They were very much casting a negative vote for Brexit in 2019 and that is done now and it will unwind.
I don't expect any of those to go LD. Maybe Guildford!
If anything they are now casting an even more negative vote against the effects of Brexit knowing that a vote for the LDs does not risk making Corbyn PM
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
Whoever is involved there are always two views about this fairly universal phenomenon, which in the case of Starmer was written up in detail and admiringly by the Economist a few months ago.
Those who support where he currently is will draw no attention to it and ascribe it to political reality. Those who don't (the DM etc) will draw attention to the fact that successful politicians appear sincere but are in fact in perpetual zigzag.
Starmer: totally compromised but going to be (OK) PM; Rory: principled but totally outside the corridors of power.
Politics is a dirty game.
Rebecca Long-Bailey was the Corbyn continuity candidate. Starmer was the 'change to win' choice.
Starmer was a Corbyn continuity with a bit of change candidate.
Lisa Nandy was the 'change to win' candidate.
Of course Starmer has all the integrity of Boris Johnson so having been a loyal member of Corbyn's cabinet during the racism of 2019, and the having had a Corbyn continuity manifesto in 2020, he then dumped the Corbynistas as soon as he had his hands on the wheel and had an opportunity to do so.
Which we get regularly told by Starmer fans is perfectly reasonable because had he not remained in Corbyn's cabinet and not lied to the Corbynistas in 2020 then he wouldn't have won the election and winning elections trumps integrity apparently.
I agree with @Casino_Royale and @StillWaters that, whatever the rights or wrongs, Ed Davey and the Lib Dems are suddenly looking toasty.
What is perhaps most inexcusable is the pathetic management of the story so far. Michael Crick signalled fired the starting pistol on Ed Davey open season last week, this isn’t just a Tory pile-on. But the Lib Dem counter-narrative barely exists.
Davey either needs to call it a day as leader, or to do a long form interview to explain his position and put up an active defence.
His problem is surely not what he did at the time but whether he has had anything to say about this over the last 14 years when it surely became clearer and clearer that he had been lied to. Why was he not ringing alarm bells a decade ago?
Didn’t he go and work for the company that were fighting the post masters?
I think I read that somewhere as well, a consultancy when he was out of Parliament, but I don't know the details.
He was on the advisory board of Herbert Smith Freehills who acted for the Post Office until last year. Davey gave up his position with them in 2021
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
Well, yes it certainly should, but you're missing the point. At the moment it's believed what it is saying bears no relationship to what is happening. Well, difficult to draw any other conclusion from the events at Caversham. But that in itself makes it pretty much useless as an inspectorate. If on top of that it's causing a widespread collapse of the management of our schools, it is a Bad Thing.
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
Whoever is involved there are always two views about this fairly universal phenomenon, which in the case of Starmer was written up in detail and admiringly by the Economist a few months ago.
Those who support where he currently is will draw no attention to it and ascribe it to political reality. Those who don't (the DM etc) will draw attention to the fact that successful politicians appear sincere but are in fact in perpetual zigzag.
Starmer: totally compromised but going to be (OK) PM; Rory: principled but totally outside the corridors of power.
Politics is a dirty game.
Rebecca Long-Bailey was the Corbyn continuity candidate. Starmer was the 'change to win' choice.
Starmer was a Corbyn continuity with a bit of change candidate.
Lisa Nandy was the 'change to win' candidate.
Of course Starmer has all the integrity of Boris Johnson so having been a loyal member of Corbyn's cabinet during the racism of 2019, and the having had a Corbyn continuity manifesto in 2020, he then dumped the Corbynistas as soon as he had his hands on the wheel and had an opportunity to do so.
Which we get regularly told by Starmer fans is perfectly reasonable because had he not remained in Corbyn's cabinet and not lied to the Corbynistas in 2020 then he wouldn't have won the election and winning elections trumps integrity apparently.
Given the current Labour poll lead and Starmer dumping of the Corbynites, it is safe to say he was the real 'change to win' candidate
What bothers me somewhat is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
You speak of OFSTED's "reputation"
Their reputation used to be people who could be unpleasant but were not dishonest. So if you were doing a half-decent job, you would be OK.
If it's got to the stage where everyone assumes they're liars out to get people, then they are not only less use in driving up educational performance than Dominic Cummings' brain cell but actively damaging it.
As a founder member of the Royal Society For the Protection Of The Reputation Of Brain Cells... that's a nasty association you are making there.
'Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who is a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said he was told by Post Office managers that the Horizon pilot scheme was rolled out to 300 branches in 1995.
“I have met one of the post office managers who was pursued by the Post Office after taking part in the pilot and then accused of mishandling money. There were protests that the system was faulty and the protests were ignored. They were obviously not a crook and should never have been prosecuted,” said Jones.
Jones said he believed there may be dozens more victims of the pilot scheme and said the Post Office should have disclosed the existence of the pilot years ago. “Amid the controversy and scandal over the Horizon system, no one from the Post Office thought to mention that they had this pilot scheme which also resulted in prosecutions. [...]"'
'Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who is a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said he was told by Post Office managers that the Horizon pilot scheme was rolled out to 300 branches in 1995.
“I have met one of the post office managers who was pursued by the Post Office after taking part in the pilot and then accused of mishandling money. There were protests that the system was faulty and the protests were ignored. They were obviously not a crook and should never have been prosecuted,” said Jones.
Jones said he believed there may be dozens more victims of the pilot scheme and said the Post Office should have disclosed the existence of the pilot years ago. “Amid the controversy and scandal over the Horizon system, no one from the Post Office thought to mention that they had this pilot scheme which also resulted in prosecutions. [...]"'
In news just in, it appears that a an early version of the Horizon system was tried under Brian Tuke, Governor of the King's Posts. It resulted in the execution and gibbetting of dozens of Post Masters.
'Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who is a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said he was told by Post Office managers that the Horizon pilot scheme was rolled out to 300 branches in 1995.
“I have met one of the post office managers who was pursued by the Post Office after taking part in the pilot and then accused of mishandling money. There were protests that the system was faulty and the protests were ignored. They were obviously not a crook and should never have been prosecuted,” said Jones.
Jones said he believed there may be dozens more victims of the pilot scheme and said the Post Office should have disclosed the existence of the pilot years ago. “Amid the controversy and scandal over the Horizon system, no one from the Post Office thought to mention that they had this pilot scheme which also resulted in prosecutions. [...]"'
In news just in, it appears that a an early version of the Horizon system was tried under Brian Tuke, Governor of the King's Posts. It resulted in the execution and gibbetting of dozens of Post Masters.
Re: Wellingborough, the Tories there have adopted strategy pioneered a century ago in the great Lone Star State of Texas: the Pa > Ma Ferguson Gambit.
Back in the day, 2nd-term Gov James E. "Pa" Ferguson was impeached, tried and convicted by Texas legislature. AND in addition to being ejected as Governor, he was also barred for life from any state elected office.
Afterward, and after running unsuccessfully for President (just on Texas ballot) and US Senator, he came up with a brand new plan: if voters couldn't elect Pa Ferguson, they could elect Ma = his wife, Miriam Ferguson. Which they did, winning her two non-consecutive terms as Governor, closely advised (to put it mildly) by Pa.
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
Am one other things, announced inspections don't make sense.
Building stress over months is a former of torture.
Rock up at the school, unannounced, on a bunch of different days (to create a sample).
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
Whoever is involved there are always two views about this fairly universal phenomenon, which in the case of Starmer was written up in detail and admiringly by the Economist a few months ago.
Those who support where he currently is will draw no attention to it and ascribe it to political reality. Those who don't (the DM etc) will draw attention to the fact that successful politicians appear sincere but are in fact in perpetual zigzag.
Starmer: totally compromised but going to be (OK) PM; Rory: principled but totally outside the corridors of power.
Politics is a dirty game.
Rebecca Long-Bailey was the Corbyn continuity candidate. Starmer was the 'change to win' choice.
Starmer was a Corbyn continuity with a bit of change candidate.
Lisa Nandy was the 'change to win' candidate.
Of course Starmer has all the integrity of Boris Johnson so having been a loyal member of Corbyn's cabinet during the racism of 2019, and the having had a Corbyn continuity manifesto in 2020, he then dumped the Corbynistas as soon as he had his hands on the wheel and had an opportunity to do so.
Which we get regularly told by Starmer fans is perfectly reasonable because had he not remained in Corbyn's cabinet and not lied to the Corbynistas in 2020 then he wouldn't have won the election and winning elections trumps integrity apparently.
Given the current Labour poll lead and Starmer dumping of the Corbynites, it is safe to say he was the real 'change to win' candidate
He wasn’t hugely loyal in the shadow cabinet either. He voted with the front bench (as did almost all Labour MPs) but did his own thing politically.
'Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who is a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said he was told by Post Office managers that the Horizon pilot scheme was rolled out to 300 branches in 1995.
“I have met one of the post office managers who was pursued by the Post Office after taking part in the pilot and then accused of mishandling money. There were protests that the system was faulty and the protests were ignored. They were obviously not a crook and should never have been prosecuted,” said Jones.
Jones said he believed there may be dozens more victims of the pilot scheme and said the Post Office should have disclosed the existence of the pilot years ago. “Amid the controversy and scandal over the Horizon system, no one from the Post Office thought to mention that they had this pilot scheme which also resulted in prosecutions. [...]"'
In news just in, it appears that a an early version of the Horizon system was tried under Brian Tuke, Governor of the King's Posts. It resulted in the execution and gibbetting of dozens of Post Masters.
One really is beginning to wonder.
I wouldn't use "beginning" or "wonder"
As a French friend puts it - Same Shit, Different Assholes.
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
Whoever is involved there are always two views about this fairly universal phenomenon, which in the case of Starmer was written up in detail and admiringly by the Economist a few months ago.
Those who support where he currently is will draw no attention to it and ascribe it to political reality. Those who don't (the DM etc) will draw attention to the fact that successful politicians appear sincere but are in fact in perpetual zigzag.
Starmer: totally compromised but going to be (OK) PM; Rory: principled but totally outside the corridors of power.
Politics is a dirty game.
Rebecca Long-Bailey was the Corbyn continuity candidate. Starmer was the 'change to win' choice.
Starmer was a Corbyn continuity with a bit of change candidate.
Lisa Nandy was the 'change to win' candidate.
Of course Starmer has all the integrity of Boris Johnson so having been a loyal member of Corbyn's cabinet during the racism of 2019, and the having had a Corbyn continuity manifesto in 2020, he then dumped the Corbynistas as soon as he had his hands on the wheel and had an opportunity to do so.
Which we get regularly told by Starmer fans is perfectly reasonable because had he not remained in Corbyn's cabinet and not lied to the Corbynistas in 2020 then he wouldn't have won the election and winning elections trumps integrity apparently.
Given the current Labour poll lead and Starmer dumping of the Corbynites, it is safe to say he was the real 'change to win' candidate
Though that wasn't what he was presenting himself as during the election, or how he campaigned. It was pure 'bait and switch'.
Which now they're winning and now Boris is gone, suddenly a lot of Labour fans are a lot more concerned with winning, and a lot less concerned with such piddly things like honesty, integrity, lying and so on.
What bothers me somewhat is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
You speak of OFSTED's "reputation"
Their reputation used to be people who could be unpleasant but were not dishonest. So if you were doing a half-decent job, you would be OK.
If it's got to the stage where everyone assumes they're liars out to get people, then they are not only less use in driving up educational performance than Dominic Cummings' brain cell but actively damaging it.
An inspectorate should by definition be a corps d'elite.
Interesting difference in tactics between Tories and Labour on post office.
Tories: we’ll get blamed by default so let’s go in feet first on Davey and try to get him scapegoated. That way we avoid the shrapnel.
Labour: shit, this stuff started under us. Let’s keep quiet as a church mouse and hope it dies away, because otherwise the Tories will try to scapegoat us.
The Tory scapegoating machine remains world beating. Inducing the same fear as trembling GOP congressmen have of Vladimir Putin,
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
Am one other things, announced inspections don't make sense.
Building stress over months is a former of torture.
Rock up at the school, unannounced, on a bunch of different days (to create a sample).
I never understood the purpose of announced inspections. Food hygiene don't inform restaurants they're paying a visit in a couple of days, they turn up kitted out and ready and announce themselves as doing the inspection right now, without warning. Whatever they see, they see, no time to change things and warp perspectives, but then its all done and dusted.
It would be ironic if Davey resigns over his (seemingly very minor) role in the Post Office Scandal.
He is the only party leader that every one of the 80+ PB competition entries predicted would remain in place until the GE.
Which means that at least one entrant reckons Starmer won't make it to the GE? Think we have an early loser.
The first part's true but... there are 10 questions, getting one wrong isn't going to disqualify you.
It is if I get all 10 right.
I repeat: every one of the 80+ PB competition entries predicted Davey would remain in place until the GE. If he goes, no one is getting 10/10.
MY entry did NOT go along with herd wisdom, on the future of Ed Freaking Davey or anything else!
Which is why you decreed my humble submission "spoiled" and hurled it into the Dustbin of PB?
Is THIS what you call British "fair play" when dealing with the "Irish"?
If any one of your predictions proves correct, including 'Harry Windsor & Meghan Markle' as joint leaders of the LibDems, I promise to retrospectively reinstate your entry.
I can't say fairer than that.
You may be a closed-minded, libtard fuddy-duddy with delusions of grandeur . . . but you are also a gentleman.
'Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who is a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said he was told by Post Office managers that the Horizon pilot scheme was rolled out to 300 branches in 1995.
“I have met one of the post office managers who was pursued by the Post Office after taking part in the pilot and then accused of mishandling money. There were protests that the system was faulty and the protests were ignored. They were obviously not a crook and should never have been prosecuted,” said Jones.
Jones said he believed there may be dozens more victims of the pilot scheme and said the Post Office should have disclosed the existence of the pilot years ago. “Amid the controversy and scandal over the Horizon system, no one from the Post Office thought to mention that they had this pilot scheme which also resulted in prosecutions. [...]"'
'Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who is a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said he was told by Post Office managers that the Horizon pilot scheme was rolled out to 300 branches in 1995.
“I have met one of the post office managers who was pursued by the Post Office after taking part in the pilot and then accused of mishandling money. There were protests that the system was faulty and the protests were ignored. They were obviously not a crook and should never have been prosecuted,” said Jones.
Jones said he believed there may be dozens more victims of the pilot scheme and said the Post Office should have disclosed the existence of the pilot years ago. “Amid the controversy and scandal over the Horizon system, no one from the Post Office thought to mention that they had this pilot scheme which also resulted in prosecutions. [...]"'
In news just in, it appears that a an early version of the Horizon system was tried under Brian Tuke, Governor of the King's Posts. It resulted in the execution and gibbetting of dozens of Post Masters.
One really is beginning to wonder.
I wouldn't use "beginning" or "wonder"
As a French friend puts it - Same Shit, Different Assholes.
I wouldn't trust the Post Office with the logistics of that.
Interesting difference in tactics between Tories and Labour on post office.
Tories: we’ll get blamed by default so let’s go in feet first on Davey and try to get him scapegoated. That way we avoid the shrapnel.
Labour: shit, this stuff started under us. Let’s keep quiet as a church mouse and hope it dies away, because otherwise the Tories will try to scapegoat us.
The Tory scapegoating machine remains world beating. Inducing the same fear as trembling GOP congressmen have of Vladimir Putin,
1) I think you are massively overestimating the ability of Conservative politicians.
2) Are you saying that GOP congressmen are trembling in fear, trembling in admiration or trembling in indifference to Putin ?
I agree with @Casino_Royale and @StillWaters that, whatever the rights or wrongs, Ed Davey and the Lib Dems are suddenly looking toasty.
What is perhaps most inexcusable is the pathetic management of the story so far. Michael Crick signalled fired the starting pistol on Ed Davey open season last week, this isn’t just a Tory pile-on. But the Lib Dem counter-narrative barely exists.
Davey either needs to call it a day as leader, or to do a long form interview to explain his position and put up an active defence.
His problem is surely not what he did at the time but whether he has had anything to say about this over the last 14 years when it surely became clearer and clearer that he had been lied to. Why was he not ringing alarm bells a decade ago?
Didn’t he go and work for the company that were fighting the post masters?
I think I read that somewhere as well, a consultancy when he was out of Parliament, but I don't know the details.
He was on the advisory board of Herbert Smith Freehills who acted for the Post Office until last year. Davey gave up his position with them in 2021
Thanks, and thanks to @Isam too. That looks pretty remote to me. It is a huge law firm and he was advising on other matters. If, as he says, he never discussed the Post Office litigations then he is probably in the clear for that. But his silence is still embarrassing and hard to explain. He was in a position to say loudly that he had been lied to.
Interesting difference in tactics between Tories and Labour on post office.
Tories: we’ll get blamed by default so let’s go in feet first on Davey and try to get him scapegoated. That way we avoid the shrapnel.
Labour: shit, this stuff started under us. Let’s keep quiet as a church mouse and hope it dies away, because otherwise the Tories will try to scapegoat us.
The Tory scapegoating machine remains world beating. Inducing the same fear as trembling GOP congressmen have of Vladimir Putin,
I think you've completely misread the Labour position. They're quiet as a church mouse all the time, so them being quiet now is their usual MO and no different.
For the last two years Labour's policy under Starmer since the partygate story broke and they took poll leads has been "don't interrupt an enemy while they're making a mistake".
Starmer hasn't been some loudmouthed tactical genius. He's been an invisible nobody, telling his whole team to STFU so they can win by default.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
I’m not an IT person like I think you are.
But that failing sounds pretty fundamental
So the PO should go after them for commercial failure
(In your analogy the PO is the car manufacturer and the SPM the dealers. Fujitsu is a parts manufacturer . It’s Ford that gets blamed not Vistion (?)
Yes it is a fundamental failure.
The horrible phrase "Not fit for purpose" is right here.
They sold faulty goods.
The dealers (PO) carried on selling the faulty cars, prosecuting people for the inability to drive round corners etc, after *they knew* the cars were faulty.
The manufacturer is liable *and* the PO is liable.
It wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted on faulty evidence. The primary liability to the SPMs lies with the PO.
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
Am one other things, announced inspections don't make sense.
Building stress over months is a former of torture.
Rock up at the school, unannounced, on a bunch of different days (to create a sample).
Some bloke turns up and wants to wander around? No ID (OFSTED inspectors refuse to show them, or do I misremember)? No safeguarding training for the pupils' protection? Hell, not safeguarding training *for Sir and Miss*'s safety for that matter? Any school letting them in gets an instant FAIL, surely.
Interesting difference in tactics between Tories and Labour on post office.
Tories: we’ll get blamed by default so let’s go in feet first on Davey and try to get him scapegoated. That way we avoid the shrapnel.
Labour: shit, this stuff started under us. Let’s keep quiet as a church mouse and hope it dies away, because otherwise the Tories will try to scapegoat us.
The Tory scapegoating machine remains world beating. Inducing the same fear as trembling GOP congressmen have of Vladimir Putin,
1) I think you are massively overestimating the ability of Conservative politicians.
2) Are you saying that GOP congressmen are trembling in fear, trembling in admiration or trembling in indifference to Putin ?
Trembling in a mixture of fear and “ooh, they’re a bit scary and I like it” frisson.
And re 1 it’s not so much the Tory politicians as the - still pretty effective - Tory press.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
I’m not an IT person like I think you are.
But that failing sounds pretty fundamental
So the PO should go after them for commercial failure
(In your analogy the PO is the car manufacturer and the SPM the dealers. Fujitsu is a parts manufacturer . It’s Ford that gets blamed not Vistion (?)
Yes it is a fundamental failure.
The horrible phrase "Not fit for purpose" is right here.
They sold faulty goods.
The dealers (PO) carried on selling the faulty cars, prosecuting people for the inability to drive round corners etc, after *they knew* the cars were faulty.
The manufacturer is liable *and* the PO is liable.
It wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted on faulty evidence. The primary liability to the SPMs lies with the PO.
Fujitsu kept on bullshitting - including in sworn testimony.
Just finished the whole thing. Exceptionally good TV in terms of what it aimed to do: explain a horrible injustice, make you feel angry, tell the nation what happened
I reckon Davey is terminally damaged. Will struggle on but this now hangs around him. All the post office bigwigs are in danger of going to jail
On the upside this shows that - slowly, belatedly - British democracy and justice still kinda works. The 4th estate did its job. Journalists listened to a story and wrote it. Then tv came alone and shamed the powers that be (via a brilliant scriptwriter)
That’s something to cheer amidst what is still a pretty bleak tale. I apologise to all subpostmasters on PB for yawningly belittling this story
You owe me a drink or two when we meet.
You still have that visit to West Cumbria to do and the picnic on the beach I promised you.
I recently visited your beach. Some funny rules in the Gents...
And you didn't say hello?! How naughty of you.
I wouldn't know about the Gents, what with me being a woman and all. I'd have thought the urinals might be quite a convenient place to wash boots, what with them being nearer to the ground. Depends what is on the boots, I suppose.
Further up the coast there was a sign at a petrol state politely asking people not to turn up in their dressing gowns. When I asked the lady behind the counter, whether this was for real she said:
"Oh yes. We get men in their dressing gowns. We've seen it all."
"I do hope not!" I replied.
She laughed.
We have to make our own entertainment here, you know.
Here is the sign:
As fellow Cumbrians, Mrs Gadfly and I are all too familiar with making our own entertainment. She is a fellow PB lurker and we were guessing as to the whereabouts of Cyclefree towers when out looking for a grandchild friendly beach that day.
Haverigg is lovely with a beautiful sandy beach, a play area and a lovely new cafe.
Silecroft is a glorious beach. This is it on Boxing Day.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Sending the bill to the Post Office? It'd get lost in transit.
The bill should go to Fujitsu. Don't like it and we will start investigating your other contracts in more detail..
Why?
Yes their software was a failure and they should compensate their customer (the PO) for that.
But it wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted the SPMs and ruined lives
It was Fujitsu UK that lied about the infallibility Horizon, including about remote access. Without that the prosecutions couldn't have happened.
They are firmly in the frame. The problem is that the others believed them.
I’m not saying they are blameless. They are not.
But did they commit perjury? Or did they exaggerate to a customer?
The former should have criminal penalties. The latter commercial consequences.
They delivered software that couldn't do transactionality. For financial transactions.
If someone delivered cars that had a design of differential that meant they couldn't go round corners and people died, the manufacturer would get it in the neck.
I’m not an IT person like I think you are.
But that failing sounds pretty fundamental
So the PO should go after them for commercial failure
(In your analogy the PO is the car manufacturer and the SPM the dealers. Fujitsu is a parts manufacturer . It’s Ford that gets blamed not Vistion (?)
Yes it is a fundamental failure.
The horrible phrase "Not fit for purpose" is right here.
They sold faulty goods.
The dealers (PO) carried on selling the faulty cars, prosecuting people for the inability to drive round corners etc, after *they knew* the cars were faulty.
The manufacturer is liable *and* the PO is liable.
It wasn’t Fujitsu who prosecuted on faulty evidence. The primary liability to the SPMs lies with the PO.
The critical issue is surely whether Fujitsu fibbed in court or not.
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
Am one other things, announced inspections don't make sense.
Building stress over months is a former of torture.
Rock up at the school, unannounced, on a bunch of different days (to create a sample).
I never understood the purpose of announced inspections. Food hygiene don't inform restaurants they're paying a visit in a couple of days, they turn up kitted out and ready and announce themselves as doing the inspection right now, without warning. Whatever they see, they see, no time to change things and warp perspectives, but then its all done and dusted.
The exact date of inspection doesn't get much notice; typically lunchtime the day before. And if inspectors want to interrogate governors (part time, unpaid, often with day jobs of their own), it's hard to see how squeezing that timeframe more would work. But yes, it does make for a long anxious evening or two.
The other question is when a school is "in the window" and due for an inspection. If the plan is to look at every school reasonably regularly, then that implies an pattern. So after an inspection, it doesn't take Hercule Poirot to work out when the Inspector Calls again.
It would probably be better for schools and more useful for parents if inspections were more frequent and less showy, but that would need more inspectors- to look at every school every year, say. And you're smart enough to know why that's not happening.
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
Am one other things, announced inspections don't make sense.
Building stress over months is a former of torture.
Rock up at the school, unannounced, on a bunch of different days (to create a sample).
Some bloke turns up and wants to wander around? No ID (OFSTED inspectors refuse to show them, or do I misremember)? No safeguarding training for the pupils' protection? Hell, not safeguarding training *for Sir and Miss*'s safety for that matter? Any school letting them in gets an instant FAIL, surely.
Why can't they show ID?
That's what the EHO do and that seems to work.
We don't get the same scandals with the EHO and food safety reports as we do with OFSTED and school reports, why is that?
In reality the chief culpability lies with Fujitsu for delivering faulty software, and Post Office management for pressing on with wilful persecution of subpostmasters.
I can’t really blame any politicians, save for those who failed to give a shit once the full scandal unravelled. Chief culprit there seems to be Kemi Badenoch.
But agree with Foxy above, that Davey owes a long-form explanation. He may already be too late.
Ah yes, the idea that we can't associate legal responsibility with those legally responsible. Because it would be unfair.
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
Taking a step back, is it fair to ask ministers to have oversight for something like the PO
They have plenty of political responsibilities and areas where they are directly involved. Something like the PO will be seen as really far removed (even more so than an agency like DVLA) and so will get close to zero attention
Should we create a department responsible for managing these kinds of assets full time? Put it in the Cabinet Office?
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
OFSTED should offer tips on how to improve, not just a grade and saying what is going well and badly
Am one other things, announced inspections don't make sense.
Building stress over months is a former of torture.
Rock up at the school, unannounced, on a bunch of different days (to create a sample).
Some bloke turns up and wants to wander around? No ID (OFSTED inspectors refuse to show them, or do I misremember)? No safeguarding training for the pupils' protection? Hell, not safeguarding training *for Sir and Miss*'s safety for that matter? Any school letting them in gets an instant FAIL, surely.
Why can't they show ID?
That's what the EHO do and that seems to work.
We don't get the same scandals with the EHO and food safety reports as we do with OFSTED and school reports, why is that?
Pass because you shouldn't get into a school without it. Twin A is currently doing work for the DoE - which means photo id and CRB form is in her bag to be presented before she checks how many more students they could cram into the building...
Interesting difference in tactics between Tories and Labour on post office.
Tories: we’ll get blamed by default so let’s go in feet first on Davey and try to get him scapegoated. That way we avoid the shrapnel.
Labour: shit, this stuff started under us. Let’s keep quiet as a church mouse and hope it dies away, because otherwise the Tories will try to scapegoat us.
The Tory scapegoating machine remains world beating. Inducing the same fear as trembling GOP congressmen have of Vladimir Putin,
1) I think you are massively overestimating the ability of Conservative politicians.
2) Are you saying that GOP congressmen are trembling in fear, trembling in admiration or trembling in indifference to Putin ?
Trembling in a mixture of fear and “ooh, they’re a bit scary and I like it” frisson.
And re 1 it’s not so much the Tory politicians as the - still pretty effective - Tory press.
Except Putin and the Russian military have shown themselves to be utterly unimpressive - it really hasn't been Germany 1939-1941.
And its that failure that has allowed the GOP to focus on Biden's failings re border security and immigration.
As for the 'Tory Press' does anyone notice - Davey's problem is that he's gone around apologising so therefore people will assume that he's been the one at fault.
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
Comments
What struck me about the PO investigators was that they simply assumed that if Horizon said there was a shortfall, that was it. No more work necesssary - SPM guilty - job done. That is wholly out of order, of course, but then the investigators were underqualified, and undertrained. For them, it was just a box-ticking exercise. There was no real investigation. Guilt was simply assumed. Apart from the inhumanity, it was all so amateurish.
Yes, you'd think someone somewhere in the organisation might have said ' Hold on, this is not passing the smell test.' This I think is where the Board is criminally at fault. You'd think that by the time of, say, the 200th prosecution somebody would have said 'This doesn't feel right. All these people of previous good character...and no obvious evidence of where the money is going - lavish life-style, gambling debts, drug-taking or the like - so what is going on?' Nah, they believed what they wanted to believe and didn't dare contemplate the consequences of being wrong.
I don't see how the Board avoids chokey, but then comparable scandals in the past suggest they might.
Overall not much joy for CON in GE 2024 but not too many losses to LD.
Maybe LD big in Scotland? 😈
Why have ministers then?
In a deeper question - if ministers can't get this information from their departments, do we need to sack large chucks of the civil service?
friendly though - The ‘change to win’ candidate won, then changed!
(Not asking for myself or anyone else, by the way!)
I predicted 25-35 LD seats at the GE the other day, and still sounds about right.
It's nut like they just sold a box and walked away.
That suggests Blair Government culpability. Ed is innocent!
I think they'll make decent gains against the Conservatives in England next year, because their vote share will be flat, a quarter of Tory voters will stay home, and there will be some crossover Lab-to-LD tactical voting.
26 seats would be my midpoint for them, with all but one coming from gains from Conservative.
I suspect the PO won't dare delay matters again. When he does appear, his testimony should be riveting.
Pity the poor Important Senior People.
I would be happy to see LD finish ahead of SNP. 26 would achieve that. Maybe 20 will be enough 👍
As for Kemi Badenoch, she is emiting a deafening silence. And normally she's such a headline-grabber!
You heard it here first...
Parallel and concurrent and distributed software is really, really hard. But. But! This level of incompetence is not even close to acceptable. The principles which could have allowed this software to work - or mostly work - or even usually work - have been known since the 70s or early 80s.
Davey's LDs are closer to New Labour still than Starmer Labour are and I expect a bigger anti Tory swing in Remain seats (and almost all LD targets are Remain seats) than Leave seats (which are more likely to be Labour targets).
Only the prospect of Corbyn as PM kept seats like Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Cheltenham and Wantage Tory in 2019 and they will likely now go yellow, maybe the likes of Henley and Tunbridge Wells as well. They were never casting a positive vote for Brexit and the Tories as redwall and Leave seats were
I don't expect any of those to go LD. Maybe Guildford!
So do NOT, at least necessarily, look up the arguably limited role of Ed Davie in PO Scandal, as a matter of principle (also arguable).
What I do believe, is that the PO Scandal is now making him a non-positive liability as party leader.
With minuses and demerits appearing to outweigh his merits and pluses, at least for electoral purposes.
On the other hand, am NOT inclined to criticizing party supporters from trying to stick with their leaders and not just toss 'em from the troika when the wolves start howling.
Emphasis on trying.
She should, however, be doing more to ensure the outstanding appeals are dealt with as a priority and that the compensation scheme is operating as fast as possible.
In the beginning, there was a plan,
And then came the assumptions,
And the assumptions were without form,
And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers,
And they spoke among themselves saying,
"It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said,
"It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying,
"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,
Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another,
"It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them,
"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him,
"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor
Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan
And saw that it was good,
And the Plan became Policy.
And this, my friend, is how shit happens.
Anyway, as I type this all 81 entries are correct on the LD leader!
This would satisfy the tabloids and the NU10K'rs. The SPMs - does anyone important care?
1. "What if those tapes reveal however that the PO Board was acting on the express instructions of the Government?
That changes things a bit, no?"
From what Nick Wallis has said, far from being managed at arm's length, Post Office managers had the Business Department breathing down their necks demanding that it become profitable ASAP. That was probably why they covered up the problems with Horizon. Fixing it and paying compensation would have wiped out any profits. As it is the PO is now bust and only survives because we are funding it and the compensation to be paid.
If the tapes - or other evidence - shows this government-inspired "profits before people" approach that is not going to help the Tories, is it?
2. "Did Ed Davey and the Post Office employees believe:
1) that the money was missing and that theft was more plausible than the IT failure that they were assured by Fujitsu was foolproof
or
2) the postmasters were innocent but should be persecuted and prosecuted anyway?"
Neither. Under the contracts SPMS were liable for any losses that were down to them. The PO saw the discrepancies, told the SPMs that this was down to them and then used the threats of theft or false accounting charges to extract the money and close down their businesses. Alan Bates never got charged with anything because he refused to sign off the accounts. Later the Post Office changed the system so that you had to sign them off in order to open the next day ie even if they disputed them they had effectively signed false accounts.
The investigations into the cause of the discrepancies were cursory or non-existent. They didn't need to investigate because they simply misused the contracts and threats of prosecutions to get admissions and money. Where SPMs fought back they either bankrupted them in the civil courts or lied about Horizon in the criminal courts.
What they likely told Davey was that there was evidence of theft and the SPMs were maliciously blaming Horizon. This was wrong. But it would be really helpful if Davey were to spell out now:-
- What questions he asked
- Of whom
- When
- What answers he was given
- When he realised these answers were wrong
- And if this was some time ago why he didn't speak up then.
Which is why you decreed my humble submission "spoiled" and hurled it into the Dustbin of PB?
Is THIS what you call British "fair play" when dealing with the "Irish"?
https://twitter.com/WhistleblowingT/status/1744100360539533590
What bothers me somewhat and the reason I don't dismiss it as a one-off is it fits with anecdotal evidence I'm hearing.
If OFSTED's flawed processes cause most of our school's senior leaders to quit, it's going to be rather difficult to argue it is a positive on the education system.
And that's said without any starry eyed enthusiasm for a lot of SLT.
But in political scandals when seeking a replacement for the (in one sense anyway) scandalized, good rule of thumb is, cherchez la femme.
I see that Tories in Wellingborough agree . . . albeit with an interesting twist . . .
I think a more diligent inquiry might have looked for evidence of where the "missing" money had gone, whether this was compatible with the actual transactions recorded, the SPMs own bank accounts etc. But a confirmation that the SPM had signed off accounts that a supposedly infallible computing system said was wrong is a pretty good start.
Its a bit like when senior officers signed off the accounts of the SNP declaring that this was a full statement of their donations, loans, expenditure and assets when there is good evidence that there was other money spent and other assets that had not been declared. Look how Police Scotland have zipped on with that. 😉
If it's got to the stage where everyone assumes they're liars out to get people, then they are not only less use in driving up educational performance than Dominic Cummings' brain cell but actively damaging it.
I can't say fairer than that.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-12577139/ANDREW-PIERCE-ex-Post-Office-minister-Ed-Davey-trousered-275k-legal-firm-pursued-hundreds-innocent-sub-postmasters-accused-fraud.html
The sales reps nicknamed it Lose Every Order...
Sorry but I think the deadline was the deadline.
Lisa Nandy was the 'change to win' candidate.
Of course Starmer has all the integrity of Boris Johnson so having been a loyal member of Corbyn's cabinet during the racism of 2019, and the having had a Corbyn continuity manifesto in 2020, he then dumped the Corbynistas as soon as he had his hands on the wheel and had an opportunity to do so.
Which we get regularly told by Starmer fans is perfectly reasonable because had he not remained in Corbyn's cabinet and not lied to the Corbynistas in 2020 then he wouldn't have won the election and winning elections trumps integrity apparently.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/post-office-suspected-of-more-wrongful-prosecutions-of-operators-over-horizon
'Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who is a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board, said he was told by Post Office managers that the Horizon pilot scheme was rolled out to 300 branches in 1995.
“I have met one of the post office managers who was pursued by the Post Office after taking part in the pilot and then accused of mishandling money. There were protests that the system was faulty and the protests were ignored. They were obviously not a crook and should never have been prosecuted,” said Jones.
Jones said he believed there may be dozens more victims of the pilot scheme and said the Post Office should have disclosed the existence of the pilot years ago. “Amid the controversy and scandal over the Horizon system, no one from the Post Office thought to mention that they had this pilot scheme which also resulted in prosecutions. [...]"'
Back in the day, 2nd-term Gov James E. "Pa" Ferguson was impeached, tried and convicted by Texas legislature. AND in addition to being ejected as Governor, he was also barred for life from any state elected office.
Afterward, and after running unsuccessfully for President (just on Texas ballot) and US Senator, he came up with a brand new plan: if voters couldn't elect Pa Ferguson, they could elect Ma = his wife, Miriam Ferguson. Which they did, winning her two non-consecutive terms as Governor, closely advised (to put it mildly) by Pa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Ferguson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_A._Ferguson
Pa, Pa, where's your Ma?
Ma got elected Gov - ha! ha! ha!
Building stress over months is a former of torture.
Rock up at the school, unannounced, on a bunch of different days (to create a sample).
thing politically.
As a French friend puts it - Same Shit, Different Assholes.
No not him, the lord mayor. I have graciously accepted.
Which now they're winning and now Boris is gone, suddenly a lot of Labour fans are a lot more concerned with winning, and a lot less concerned with such piddly things like honesty, integrity, lying and so on.
At least half as good as Danny Kaye in "The Inspector General".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFScB4EtLKI
Tories: we’ll get blamed by default so let’s go in feet first on Davey and try to get him scapegoated. That way we avoid the shrapnel.
Labour: shit, this stuff started under us. Let’s keep quiet as a church mouse and hope it dies away, because otherwise the Tories will try to scapegoat us.
The Tory scapegoating machine remains world beating. Inducing the same fear as trembling GOP congressmen have of Vladimir Putin,
2) Are you saying that GOP congressmen are trembling in fear, trembling in admiration or trembling in indifference to Putin ?
For the last two years Labour's policy under Starmer since the partygate story broke and they took poll leads has been "don't interrupt an enemy while they're making a mistake".
Starmer hasn't been some loudmouthed tactical genius. He's been an invisible nobody, telling his whole team to STFU so they can win by default.
And re 1 it’s not so much the Tory politicians as the - still pretty effective - Tory press.
Silecroft is a glorious beach. This is it on Boxing Day.
The other question is when a school is "in the window" and due for an inspection. If the plan is to look at every school reasonably regularly, then that implies an pattern. So after an inspection, it doesn't take Hercule Poirot to work out when the Inspector Calls again.
It would probably be better for schools and more useful for parents if inspections were more frequent and less showy, but that would need more inspectors- to look at every school every year, say. And you're smart enough to know why that's not happening.
That's what the EHO do and that seems to work.
We don't get the same scandals with the EHO and food safety reports as we do with OFSTED and school reports, why is that?
They have plenty of political responsibilities and areas where they are directly involved. Something like the PO will be seen as really far removed (even more so than an agency like DVLA) and so will get close to zero attention
Should we create a department responsible for managing these kinds of assets full time? Put it in the Cabinet Office?
https://twitter.com/NickFitz/status/1744002057864945837
seems to be race conditions absolutely everywhere...
And its that failure that has allowed the GOP to focus on Biden's failings re border security and immigration.
As for the 'Tory Press' does anyone notice - Davey's problem is that he's gone around apologising so therefore people will assume that he's been the one at fault.