Post Office scandal

The lady barrister (miss Paige?) had a go at him there. Probably expecting him to deny everything, but having their/her thoughts put on record.

This Ismay bloke is going to have a rough ride, I reckon.
 
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max wartbug said:
Wasn't there concerns about Horizon before it was put in, but Blair's government forced it through because they were wary of upsetting Fujitsu/Japan?
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Yes. The DSS (or whatever they were called at the time) had already pulled out and POL were talking about doing the same. Blair then got a threatening letter from the chairman of Fujitsu and his arse dropped. IIRC, as well as pretty much forcing POL to continue, he also paid Fujitsu some compensation for the money lost when DSS pulled out.
 
Lord Nigle said:
No. Not just Vennels but the whole senior management and those who enabled and facilitated this tragedy
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There were certainly a number of key players within the Post Office at an executive level who were directly involved. Those who are likely to It shouldn't be to difficult to identify them. The problem arises as you go down the chain of command - how many were aware that they were falsifying evidence against innocent people?

To me its an atonishing affair how the hell could anyone believe that you can get away with sending innocent people to jail without anyone eventually noticing - just to cover up the fact that you bought a crap computer system? These people collectively lost any sense of perspective about what they were doing - even their own leagl advisors were directly involved and those people surely should have been saying "this has to stop - now".

I think that it will not only result in those responsible being sent to prison but it will signal the end of the Post Office itself.
 
What an arrogant cold hearted bastard KC Richard Morgan is. The barrister for the post office in the Lee Castleton prosecution. Denied any disclosures were withheld from defence and then subsequently the judge , even when shown written evidence . Then at the end there was a stunning silence from him when it was suggested that the verdict was “ one of the most miserable miscarriages of justice on British history”. Tried to feebly argue that it wasn’t a miscarriage because the judge’s decision was correct based on the evidence presented. The miscarriage claim was repeated and he still sat motionless. Finally as proceedings ended he squeezed in “ I want to say “ I have some sympathy for what Mr Castleton went through , I do feel sorry for him “
Horrible Tory Bastard.
 
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Lord Potts said:
There were certainly a number of key players within the Post Office at an executive level who were directly involved. Those who are likely to It shouldn't be to difficult to identify them. The problem arises as you go down the chain of command - how many were aware that they were falsifying evidence against innocent people?

To me its an atonishing affair how the hell could anyone believe that you can get away with sending innocent people to jail without anyone eventually noticing - just to cover up the fact that you bought a crap computer system? These people collectively lost any sense of perspective about what they were doing - even their own leagl advisors were directly involved and those people surely should have been saying "this has to stop - now".

I think that it will not only result in those responsible being sent to prison but it will signal the end of the Post Office itself.
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I have watched the last couple of days and really been slightly amazed. I do not know if it is credible that people must have banded together (or conspired) to keep the information re backroom entry, away from the board.

yesterday it seemed to be pushing the fact that the legal dept would have been the ones in the know, yet it appears they did not pass it on.

Sir Win even asked yesterday why, when the post office had to pay substantial damages ( undisclosed amount but thought to be about £250,000) was not sanctioned at board level. This was for a court case that the POL lost.

It does appear that the inquiry barristers or legal team are playing a canny game of extracting specific details and a number of people will be totally boxed in, when they are hit with lie after lie and they will have no where to run.

legal dept are certainly in for it. but they need evidence that the main board knew about it.
 
Has it been asked/answered, why people were altering figures remotely?

If it has, I've missed it. I've heard mention of Horizon duplicating entries and even the system using the wrong currency in foreign exchange balances, but I haven't heard why manual adjustments were made.
 
max wartbug said:
Has it been asked/answered, why people were altering figures remotely?

If it has, I've missed it. I've heard mention of Horizon duplicating entries and even the system using the wrong currency in foreign exchange balances, but I haven't heard why manual adjustments were made.
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To the best of my understanding, the problem was that there were a lot of unexplained errors in the accounts and numerous calls from subpostmasters to the Helpdesk. After walking through exactly what had been inputted and what was showing up in the system, people at Fujitsu's end (rightly) surmised it was a computer error. They must have seen it was going to be a right ball ache to resolve and no one wanted to admit there were errors in the system so they were going in and manually changing the accounts to what they should be saying.

I don't think anyone from Fujitsu or Post Office would be in the crosshairs of an inquiry right now if they'd said "Right, not an ideal situation and there's some errors in some of the accounts, let's record all the sub post offices that have a problem and work on a fix."
 
max wartbug said:
Has it been asked/answered, why people were altering figures remotely?

If it has, I've missed it. I've heard mention of Horizon duplicating entries and even the system using the wrong currency in foreign exchange balances, but I haven't heard why manual adjustments were made.
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To fix the problems that they knew the software and its various bugs were creating.
 
NYMackem said:
To fix the problems that they knew the software and its various bugs were creating.
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Cockney Mackem said:
To the best of my understanding, the problem was that there were a lot of unexplained errors in the accounts and numerous calls from subpostmasters to the Helpdesk. After walking through exactly what had been inputted and what was showing up in the system, people at Fujitsu's end (rightly) surmised it was a computer error. They must have seen it was going to be a right ball ache to resolve and no one wanted to admit there were errors in the system so they were going in and manually changing the accounts to what they should be saying.

I don't think anyone from Fujitsu or Post Office would be in the crosshairs of an inquiry right now if they'd said "Right, not an ideal situation and there's some errors in some of the accounts, let's record all the sub post offices that have a problem and work on a fix."
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Cheers, but, haven't the spm's said they'd phone up with a, say, £2k shortfall and then in front of their eyes the shortfall would double or whatever on the system. So the adjustments were the wrong way!

Seems a bit ad-hoc to me. Plus, that guy who visited the "bunker" ( although they denied he was there) intimated he watched someone change figures and it seemed it wasn't part of an ongoing call. Could be wrong there though.
 
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