Post Office plan to sack Horizon IT reviewer kept secret, documents reveal
- Thread starter WaveJumper
- Start date
I wasn't suggesting they should have gone to prison, simply pointing out their actual punishment.
That said, it's my belief that they should have been investigated in respect of potentialy fraudulent activity on the basis of the below;
"Last year, the Insolvency Service announced the directorship ban for Howson, and said he had caused Carillion to report its financial statements in a way that he ought to have known “falsified and concealed” the reality of the company’s deteriorating financial position.
It also said that he signed off a £54m dividend in June 2017, which he should have known was not in the interest of the company, or its creditors, given its financial position."
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I was a sub postmaster for 9 years. I found it a terribly run organisation from the top. Lots of jobs for jobs sake. Eventually they started trimming some fat when cuts were made. But still carried on with a lot of waste.
My small branch would regularly get hundreds of brochures and huge glossy posters that were updated regularly. These must have cost a lot of money and its disputation wether they actually achieved any sales benefits. But the worst aspects of it is regularly we would receive our stock and some days later the Post Office would message me and say due to printing error, destroy the batch sent and they would send corrected versions. Because someone hadn't proof read correctly.
I think just these errors multiplied nationally would have run losses into hundreds of thousands at least. No wonder they went after subpostmasters to recover money.
Fortunately in my branch I never had any huge losses. But regularly would have small losses from £5 to £100, which I topped up.
I did have a eureka moment one morning when I started work morning at the start of a new trading period. I switched on my computers and had a transaction correction for the branch of around £22 in my favour. I accepted this. Which meant I should take that amount out to balance the post office money. But when I declared last nights cash figures again, which remember had balanced to zero and should now be showing the transaction correction over for that amount. It was showing around £17 over and around £5 had disappeared somewhere.
I had printouts and timeliness of this error and because I hadn't opened the branch at the time so no way could this have effected anything.
I was excited because at that time the stories had circulating about the postmasters being charger for the huge losses and being sent to prison.
I emailed my local MP at the time who was the Minister for the Post Office at the time. I never got a reply.
I phoned my local subpostmasters federation representative who ran his own post office. But all he said was everyone knows the computer system is faulty and his own branch is regularly losing hundreds. He didn't seem interested in the fact I had potential evidence.
I thankfully managed to leave my branch without incurring any horrendous discrepancies. But my successor who took over the franchise and moved it to her shop immediately ran into difficulties. Within a year had been forced to repay £40k plus losses. Lost her business and was a claimant on the Alan Bates v The Post Office litigation.
My small branch would regularly get hundreds of brochures and huge glossy posters that were updated regularly. These must have cost a lot of money and its disputation wether they actually achieved any sales benefits. But the worst aspects of it is regularly we would receive our stock and some days later the Post Office would message me and say due to printing error, destroy the batch sent and they would send corrected versions. Because someone hadn't proof read correctly.
I think just these errors multiplied nationally would have run losses into hundreds of thousands at least. No wonder they went after subpostmasters to recover money.
Fortunately in my branch I never had any huge losses. But regularly would have small losses from £5 to £100, which I topped up.
I did have a eureka moment one morning when I started work morning at the start of a new trading period. I switched on my computers and had a transaction correction for the branch of around £22 in my favour. I accepted this. Which meant I should take that amount out to balance the post office money. But when I declared last nights cash figures again, which remember had balanced to zero and should now be showing the transaction correction over for that amount. It was showing around £17 over and around £5 had disappeared somewhere.
I had printouts and timeliness of this error and because I hadn't opened the branch at the time so no way could this have effected anything.
I was excited because at that time the stories had circulating about the postmasters being charger for the huge losses and being sent to prison.
I emailed my local MP at the time who was the Minister for the Post Office at the time. I never got a reply.
I phoned my local subpostmasters federation representative who ran his own post office. But all he said was everyone knows the computer system is faulty and his own branch is regularly losing hundreds. He didn't seem interested in the fact I had potential evidence.
I thankfully managed to leave my branch without incurring any horrendous discrepancies. But my successor who took over the franchise and moved it to her shop immediately ran into difficulties. Within a year had been forced to repay £40k plus losses. Lost her business and was a claimant on the Alan Bates v The Post Office litigation.
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- Original Poster
- #44
My father always use to say to me go to the bank asking for £500 quid "son you're jump through all sorts of hoops, ask for 5m and they will fall over themselves to give you the money"
Yep its the olds boys network and its working overtime .......you just need the right tie
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Alan Bates has announced he has been offered a " cruel and derisory " offer of around a sixth of the amount of his claim.
The government is saying they have made a full and fair offer.
news.sky.com
Can nobody sort this mess out..?
The government is saying they have made a full and fair offer.
Post Office scandal: Alan Bates to refuse 'offensive' compensation offer
The former sub-postmaster described the government's proposal as "derisory" and "cruel".
news.sky.com
Can nobody sort this mess out..?
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And def not in an election year - being seen to be anti small business owners is not really an area the Tories should wander into and an easy political win for labour "if we get elected - all subposter compensation will be handled by an independent apolitical body and paid out in full without delay" is a simple political message to get out
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I don't understand why the compensation is being decided by these quasi independent bodies apparently, at least until recently, controlled by the Post Office.
For those wrongly convicted, there must be ordinary compensation paid to those wrongly convicted, paid by the state. For them and those not convicted there should be compensation for actual losses - payments made to the Post Office to 'make up' their Horizon 'losses', money lost through failed businesses and lost reputations and injury to feelings. Those caculations should be straightforward and, to a large extent, factual. SImilarly compensatiuon for personal injury - the mental and physical effects of the stress caused is straightforward. The courts work on figures like this daily. The figures will be enormous, but the damage deliberately caused by the Post Office, with the connivance of Fujitsu, was enormous.
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And therein lies the issue...
Who do you think will end up footing the bill for this enormous compensation...?
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The Post Office, which would then go bankrupt so the money will have to be paid by the government as the owner. In turn they will seek (or sue) a proportion from Fujitsu.And therein lies the issue...
Who do you think will end up footing the bill for this enormous compensation...?
I don't understand this concept that it is too expensive to compensate these people. We never say it is too expensive to start a war, do we? Or pay pensions that are legally due?
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Not sure if I'm right - Now that it's privatised, Royal Mail is part of International Distributions Services, which also contains General Logistics Systems and Parcelforce. Daniel Křetínský, a Czech billionaire, has the biggest share - 25% of the company is controlled by his Vesa Equity Investment group. The UK government initially retained a 30% stake in Royal Mail, but sold its remaining shares in 2015,
Let him and Fujitsu pay the compensation. Why should we pay.
Let him and Fujitsu pay the compensation. Why should we pay.
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Primarily because the perpetrators of this fraud were The Post Office, which is wholly owned by the government, not by Royal Mail which is an entirely different, and differently privatised company.
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Part of the issue is a lot of postmasters (including those not convicted of anything) were dipping in their own pockets (or of their other business) to make sure the till tallied - do they get recompense - if so how much, how do they prove an actual amount which can't be determined electronically now
What about those that bled guilty to false accounting who were actually strictly speaking guilty of false accounting but because they were fiddling the books to try and cover up the errors caused by a system they were told was infallible as they assumed they had done something else wrong - what do they get for that ?
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If the data is not available to identify how much the Post Office received fraudulently, they can make it up as a best guess. If it's a bit high, so what? The Post Office did that in the first place.
The government has announced that all of them, including the 'false accounting' people were wrongly convicted and will have their convictions overturned - one of the first to win her appeal was Jo Hamilton, one of the false accounting people.
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It is still not a simple matter to work out who gets what - if you say "you all get £500k + any losses" you still have to at least estimate the losses and it gives the same to someone given community service as someone locked up - someone who borrowed money from family and kept their business the same as someone declared bankrupt, disowned by their family and who circled into depression.
Personally i would give them all a large lump sum now and say "that is interim payment" it is just to keep you going and accepting it does not affect your final award
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Because some at the Post Office wouldn’t know probity or justice if they both came and punched them in the face. Which hopefully they will, but I’m not holding my breath
And scheme still isn’t fully independent: overseen by their highest-billing lawyers, if I recall Richard Moorhead’s blog correctly
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The wrongful conviction compensation should be separate as that is an error of the state.
I have not suggested giving everyone the same figure + losses. I understand that Alan Bates' advisors have done a full analysis of their assessment of his losses, both financial and personal injury based. It is possible.
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Lets be clear, the return of the money that postmasters had to pay back the Post Office is not compensation. This is a the return of stolen money. Because has we now know the post Office knew about Horizon bug issues and still did what they did.
This money doesn't need calculated and should have been returned ages ago. Plus appropriate interest.
The compensation part should be worked out separately by a independent body with a formula taking into account prison time, loss of business and assets, so these people can have those years of financial ruin compensated.
This money doesn't need calculated and should have been returned ages ago. Plus appropriate interest.
The compensation part should be worked out separately by a independent body with a formula taking into account prison time, loss of business and assets, so these people can have those years of financial ruin compensated.
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Ofsted inspectors ‘make up evidence’ about a school’s performance when IT fails
The Observer spoke to several current or recent inspectors on condition of anonymity who said such problems had been “common” for years, and that senior leaders within Ofsted were aware of this, but “there has been a lot of covering up”.
One current inspector told the Observer: “In the middle of a meeting with a school, you might suddenly lose all your evidence. The advice is that you mustn’t let on and keep an inscrutable face.”
A second former inspector described how he sat and watched as evidence from a lengthy interview “just disappeared bit by bit from the screen, like a Banksy artwork self-destructing”. He said: “It’s very hard to avoid giving any body language clues while that’s happening.” And he added: “The instruction then was just to make it up.”
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “This has echoes of the Post Office scandal. The idea of inspectors making lost evidence up, or remembering what they can, is abhorrent. It’s not how schools are allowed to conduct themselves.” He argued that if such a practice has been commonplace, “essentially every inspection conducted over the past five years should be disregarded”
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Post Office still pursued sisters after case thrown out
Jacquie El Kasaby and Rose Stewart lost their business and paid £10,000 despite not being prosecuted.
www.bbc.co.uk
The nastiness keeps coming out - in this one the scottish courts refused to prosecute due to issues with Horizon yet the post office didnt let on to that in formal mediation and forced £10k out of 2 sisters as part payment for £34k of "missing" money - it caused them to have to sell their house
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Post Office still pursued sisters after case thrown out
Jacquie El Kasaby and Rose Stewart lost their business and paid £10,000 despite not being prosecuted.
The nastiness keeps coming out - in this one the scottish courts refused to prosecute due to issues with Horizon yet the post office didnt let on to that in formal mediation and forced £10k out of 2 sisters as part payment for £34k of "missing" money - it caused them to have to sell their house
Surely the Post Office must be up there with companies with the worst culture and nastiest people working for it.
Nothing you are hearing with each new story is surprising anymore. Yet despite all the revalations, they still want drag out the ordeal of the wronged subpostmasters has long has possible. Maybe the faces have changed but the ethos still seems the same. A total lack of empathy or humanity.
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The question for me is how the shareholder (HM Government) have been so ineffective in overseeing the management.
Enter Private Eye this week (again) and surprise surprise, it looks like plenty of politicians have been in the trough with POL and Fujitsu
I gather the directorships are public appointments so I hope we can see some convictions for misconduct in public office. Not holding my breath
Enter Private Eye this week (again) and surprise surprise, it looks like plenty of politicians have been in the trough with POL and Fujitsu
I gather the directorships are public appointments so I hope we can see some convictions for misconduct in public office. Not holding my breath
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everyone at the bottom says "I was only following orders" everyone at the top says "I was never told there was an issue" they will find a couple of middle mgt patsies to take the blame for all - have a few press conferences saying all sorted and culture different now and expect us all to move on to the next story
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