Mr Bates Vs The Post Office

Reverend

I've not go around to watching it yet but would wonder if anyone would recommend it?

HippoPete

Wholeheartedly yes. But if you get angry about miscarriages of justice and corporate bullying, prepare to be incandescent with rage.

bluecat

I watched it all yesterday and recommend it 100%

Chris.B

I've watched the last two nights and does a great job of portraying the suffering that the postmasters went through.

The hard faced intransigence of the PO and Fujitsu is distressing and scary to see the effective power they wield over individual lives. 

In summary, yes, it's well worth a watch, I'll be watching the remaining 2 episodes. 

Kittyfrisk

Not watching the TV show, but I have listened with incredulity & anger to the BBC R4 show about the scandal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j/episodes/player?page=1
It is unbelievable that this  corporate criminality has cost peoples livelihoods & probably shortened lives has remained unpunished. The Post Office head (Paula Vennells) & other senior management at that time  deserve to be prosecuted, but instead they get rewarded with bonuses & a CBE, which had been given for "services to the Post Office and to charity".

Supportact

Haven't watched it yet but I intend to. The subject is interesting but I reckon I'd watch anything with Toby Jones in, he's brilliant. 

DrCornelius

Supportact said:

Haven't watched it yet but I intend to. The subject is interesting but I reckon I'd watch anything with Toby Jones in, he's brilliant. 

He is brilliant in it- not mater what he is in within the first 2 minutes you forget he's acting , he just becomes the character 

euan

The whole things strikes me as almost bad as the Hep C scandal. Lives and communities were ruined by corporate malpractice and vindictiveness. 

It’s notable that no one in Scotland was prosecuted though the Post Office made the postmasters pay back the false figures back. Basically in Scotland the PF would refuse to prosecute because the data from Horizon wasn’t enough evidence. They actually told the Post Office that there was severe doubts about the reliability of the system. 

Whole thing is disgusting   

HAL9000

Really good. Binged it in one night (and I never normally binge watch anything). Compelling and scary at the same time.

Offset

I plan to watch it.  Both Fuji and the PO should be hung out to dry for this, but of course they won't be.

@kittyfrisk - yeah, gongs all round for catastrophic corporate failures and arse-covering.

JEM

I spent a bit of time volunteering as a vaccination centre marshal during the pandemic and got chatting to a fellow volunteer who had recently retired from Fujitsu.

I half jokingly asked him about the Post office using Horizon and it turned out he'd been a project manager on it and was involved with the early investigation into the issues.

According to him "software doesn't make mistakes" and "the postmasters were all thieves". He'd seemed like a nice chap up until then. Whether he really believed that or was just still regurgitating the company line I never new. I never talked to him about IT again though.

JezWynd

JEM said:

I spent a bit of time volunteering as a vaccination centre marshal during the pandemic and got chatting to a fellow volunteer who had recently retired from Fujitsu.

I half jokingly asked him about the Post office using Horizon and it turned out he'd been a project manager on it and was involved with the early investigation into the issues.

According to him "software doesn't make mistakes" and "the postmasters were all thieves". He'd seemed like a nice chap up until then. Whether he really believed that or was just still regurgitating the company line I never new. I never talked to him about IT again though.

Software might not make mistakes but the people who write it certainly do. Hubris writ large and with tragic consequences for a lot of honest people. 

Jono111

Paula Vennells went on to become a priest and was part of the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group. 

drofluf

Reverend said:

I've not go around to watching it yet but would wonder if anyone would recommend it?

Not my thing but my wife watched it and hugely enjoyed it

Kittyfrisk

Right on cue. Post here if you feel strongly about the issue   https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/strip-paula-vennells-of-her-cbe?bucket=twitter-tweet-3_1_2024_PostOffice

ICBM

JezWynd said:

Software might not make mistakes but the people who write it certainly do. Hubris writ large and with tragic consequences for a lot of honest people. 

I'm dealing with this at work just now - we've got a new stock control system which is supposedly able to predict stock quantities in advance based on the production log, and hence optimise re-ordering etc. Except that of course there are numerous places where discrepancies can get in, since production is not a perfect system and quantities used/scrapped etc are not always what the system says they should be... and the errors are cumulative over multiple production runs. So when we test-ran the system for a month, not one quantity agreed exactly with the manual counting that we have done up to now - and the accountant who is running the system says this is due to 'human error', ie they think we're making mistakes inputting the data. We *might* be, occasionally - but not on every production run. We (production staff) have explained this over and over, but they just don't seem to get it - they seem to believe the computer is infallible, when in fact it simply doesn't have access to enough information, and to give it enough would make it impossibly time-consuming to operate even if it's actually doable.

There are no tragic consequences for us like what's happened to the postmasters, but it's illustrative of the same type of culture of putting total trust in a computer system without any manual cross-checking, and then blaming the humans when you don't get the right result.

thermionic

Watched all four episodes last night - would recommend. It's a great story with some real characters who are real people who found themselves in difficult situations who fought back. Noel Thomas (one of the ones jailed) was familiar to me when I was growing up, I remember his daughter from school and it was strange to see him on TV portrayed by an actor.

tony99

I wouldn't recommend it to be honest. Not watched it yet though.

Lodious

HippoPete said:

Wholeheartedly yes. But if you get angry about miscarriages of justice and corporate bullying, prepare to be incandescent with rage.

I really want to watch it, but I know this will be the outcome. It’s outrageous

bertie

I worked for ICL / FJ for over 35 years,  I left 3 years ago,  and those of us that had no dealings with the Horizon project (ie 95% of the company) were (media aside) completely unaware of the seriousness this at the time

There were certainly no corporate wide internal comms from HR / legal people about what could  / couldn't be said, certainly "no company line" as has been mentioned  - not for those outside of that project anyway (as there usually are in legal/contractual issues which as with most large IT companies, there are going to be)

It was quite a horrible shock as things unwound in the press/media.  

I - and a lot of former colleagues -  feel quite ashamed, where once we were quite proud of the company we worked for, even   still even now with no real understanding of what went on both internally and between FJ and the PO.  

Having left the company,  and while investigations I believe are still going on -  I literally have no insight and TBH dont want to 

@digitalscream ;;
Lee - remove this if you feel the need

chromatuna

Brilliant TV that made me quite angry, there seems to be a strata of society that get away scot free no matter how dishonest and greedy they are and how much pain they inflict upon others. I hope the excellent programme helps raise the profile of this tragedy and finally get the compensation to the right place.

p.s. looked up ‘scot free’ as I realised I didn’t know the origin…

The expression 'Scot-free' originates from the Scandanavian word, 'Skat,' which means “tax” or “payment.” The word mutated into 'scot' as the name of redistributive taxation meant to provide relief to the poor during the 10th century. Someone who did not have to pay the tax for some reason was referred to as 'scot-free.'