The Post Office should not be allowed to conduct their own investigations. The Horizon travesty has shown their teams to be utterly incompetent and their superiors corrupt.
Ms. Stonehouse should be fully compensated for loss of earnings and distress. Take it out of the wallets of the Post Office and Fujitsu execs. Then throw them into jail.
I’m really curious about what happened internally in the Post Office offices during all of this. They surely had people telling them that the IT system was not reliable and all of these cases were unfounded. Were they just ignored? It’s hard to imagine someone was informed of this and still chose to maliciously pursue everyone in the courts. Or was it just the bureaucracy and rules that set this juggernaut off and then no one person had both the intel and the authority to stand in its way?
It has always been and remains a complete unbelievable travesty. Someone at the post office drove this hounding of people. It is inconceivable that no one thought the amount of cases,problems and the timing of these incidents as anything other than a problem with their system.
> she had gone through everything with a fine toothcomb
lol, close but no cigar.
My boss tells me I can’t go and comfort my child, I politely leave and comfort my child. They aren’t plod.
> The RSPCA has recently decided voluntarily to stop bringing private prosecutions after its activity was questioned, along with that of the Post Office, by Parliament’s Judicial Affairs Committee.
> The Post Office has made no such announcement
Wtf.
I don’t get why these organisations like their private prosecutions so much anyway. Don’t they save money if they get the police and the CPS/COPFS/PPSNI to investigate and prosecute people for them? Is it just so they can pester people for really low-level or poorly evidenced crimes that the police wouldn’t bother with?
>the problem with the Post Office is that they were judge, jury and executioner
They weren’t though. There would have been an actual judge and probably an actual jury in each case.
The Post Office was the prosecutor, and their only evidence was their own computer software. How did that get past the judge, 700 times? Presumably some judges would have seen numerous cases, each with a postmaster of previous good character swearing that they hadn’t stolen any money, and completely baffled why the figures didn’t add up, each with no sign of any unexplained wealth, and in every single case the only evidence is the prosecuting organisation claiming that their software is reliable.
8 comments
The Post Office should not be allowed to conduct their own investigations. The Horizon travesty has shown their teams to be utterly incompetent and their superiors corrupt.
Ms. Stonehouse should be fully compensated for loss of earnings and distress. Take it out of the wallets of the Post Office and Fujitsu execs. Then throw them into jail.
I’m really curious about what happened internally in the Post Office offices during all of this. They surely had people telling them that the IT system was not reliable and all of these cases were unfounded. Were they just ignored? It’s hard to imagine someone was informed of this and still chose to maliciously pursue everyone in the courts. Or was it just the bureaucracy and rules that set this juggernaut off and then no one person had both the intel and the authority to stand in its way?
It has always been and remains a complete unbelievable travesty. Someone at the post office drove this hounding of people. It is inconceivable that no one thought the amount of cases,problems and the timing of these incidents as anything other than a problem with their system.
[The Tip Off’s latest episode](https://shows.acast.com/thetipoff/episodes/ep-61-beyond-the-horizon) covers the unfolding of this entire story.
[Media file]( https://sphinx.acast.com/p/acast/s/thetipoff/e/6256d09564f93700122962c8/media.mp3)
> she had gone through everything with a fine toothcomb
lol, close but no cigar.
My boss tells me I can’t go and comfort my child, I politely leave and comfort my child. They aren’t plod.
> The RSPCA has recently decided voluntarily to stop bringing private prosecutions after its activity was questioned, along with that of the Post Office, by Parliament’s Judicial Affairs Committee.
> The Post Office has made no such announcement
Wtf.
I don’t get why these organisations like their private prosecutions so much anyway. Don’t they save money if they get the police and the CPS/COPFS/PPSNI to investigate and prosecute people for them? Is it just so they can pester people for really low-level or poorly evidenced crimes that the police wouldn’t bother with?
>the problem with the Post Office is that they were judge, jury and executioner
They weren’t though. There would have been an actual judge and probably an actual jury in each case.
The Post Office was the prosecutor, and their only evidence was their own computer software. How did that get past the judge, 700 times? Presumably some judges would have seen numerous cases, each with a postmaster of previous good character swearing that they hadn’t stolen any money, and completely baffled why the figures didn’t add up, each with no sign of any unexplained wealth, and in every single case the only evidence is the prosecuting organisation claiming that their software is reliable.