What a wonderful, powerful, important and vital piece of television this is. The acting is absolutely first rate. The four episodes perfectly paced. The story is shocking and anger inducing in equal parts.
If you haven’t watched it, you really should.
mikethep says
Really want to see this, but doubt it’ll make it to Oz any time soon. VPN ahoy!
Sniffity says
The whole thing’s screened today on Channel 7 – two episodes at noon, the remaining two tonight. No promotion at all that I could ascertain…no wonder free-to-air is going down the tubes.
(Naturally I missed the first two, having only found out after the fact)
Captain Darling says
Yes, it’s very well done all round, and both heartbreaking and infuriating.
What happened to the victims was so much worse than I had thought from reading various press stories.
The intransigence of the Post Office, and the unwillingness to even entertain the idea that something might be wrong and that maybe the subpostmasters might be telling the truth, was like something from Kafka, Orwell, or Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”. As somebody says in the show, did nobody in charge think it improbable that so many people whose shops relied on the Post Office might be stealing from it?
I know this was only a midweek drama from ITV and not a new inquiry, but it really ought to prompt serious (belated) action from those in a position to punish those behind this dreadful misjustice.
Jaygee says
Must watch TV.
Brilliant on every level.
SteveT says
I was left angry and incredulous. This is something that shouldn’t happen here but did and even now I don’t think we fully know the subterfuge involved to try and deflect culpability.
Shameful.
fentonsteve says
The ITV drama uses a lot the BBC Radio 4 investigation The Great Post Office Trial as source material. It has been essential listening since Episode 1 appeared in May 2020. Currently at 17 episodes:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j/episodes/downloads
Leedsboy says
This is a good peice as well from Computer Weekly.
https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Post-Office-Horizon-scandal-explained-everything-you-need-to-know
fentonsteve says
Thanks. When I tire of shouting at the radio and shouting at the telly, I’ll have a read and start shouting at the computer as well. Full disclosure: one of my pals was a sub-PM who paid “back” the “missing” cash and quit.
garyt says
CW & Private Eye have been highlighting this clusterf*ck for over a decade now, so it’s gratifying to see the BBC, ITV et al finally catching up.
MC Escher says
Yep that’s where I found out about the jaw-dropping details of it. To think that the woman in charge was given a CBE (poss. a different gong but the point stands) is just about perfect, in dramatic irony terms, too.
Looking forward to seeing this .
Vulpes Vulpes says
There are moves afoot – 600,000 signatures – demanding her CBE be forfeited.
More detail at the end of the article here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells
This woman was subsequently an Anglican priest, during which time she was a member of the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group. You couldn’t make it up.
Jaygee says
As the parliamentary under secretary for postal affairs during the first two years of the Cameron-Clegg coalition of 2010-2015, Ed Davey is unlikely to emerge from the fall out from this show with his image intact
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d4e93026-7a4d-44aa-853a-21a3dbad36c9?shareToken=9d9dc8e6e40eb8a7354c72c0cd43551e
Moose the Mooche says
“Sir” Ed Davey you mean. Holding George Osborne’s coat while he kicks the shit out of us doesn’t go unrewarded!
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Until this series I never understood why the the people at the top didn’t stop and think “Surely there can’t be that many crooked people running Post Offices?” Now I know why. Because the people at the top were evil, greedy bastards.
I thought the series acting was absolutely superb although the script at times was very clunky. Despite that, unmissable TV.
Moose the Mooche says
I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve been reading Private Eye most of my adult life but, apart from the scale of this, none of it actually surprises me.
“It can’t happen here”? Rubbish, this is probably the only thing left that we’re really good at. A good old massive miscarriage of justice lasting decades and a cover-up followed by knighthoods and bonuses all round. None of the actual wrongdoers suffering so much as a moment of discomfort? Of course, why even ask?
garyt says
as a fellow PE reader, it is incredibly frustrating that the vast majority of the stuff they reveal in EVERY FECKING EDITION rarely gets picked up by the “MSM”.
fentonsteve says
Don’t Believe The Hype!, as PE would say.
Moose the Mooche says
Back, caught you looking for the same thing…
fentonsteve says
Also worth noting that while there’s a petition to strip (CEO of Post Office Ltd at the time) Paula Vennels of her CBE, Adam Crozier, who was CEO of Royal Mail Ltd at the time, does not appear in the ITV show.
Who’s Adam Crozier, I hear you ask? He left Royal Mail to become CEO of, erm, ITV.
Mike_H says
Royal Mail and Post Office Counters were two separately-run businesses by the time this was occurring.
I’m told that Tony Blair had a hand in this by pressuring the Post Office into accepting the Horizon software against the advice of their techies, who didn’t think it was good enough but were told to shut up. Of course Fujitsu-Siemens appear to be evading their responsibility for producing and selling a badly faulty system, for which they had previous form.
Leedsboy says
The Horizon system was an ICL one that Fujitsu inherited when they took over ICL.
fentonsteve says
Yep, there’s massive potential for blame-shifting in all of this.
I’m fairly shit at my job, and I’m a pain in the arse, I wish they’d give me £400k and a CBE to bugger off quietly. My plan hasn’t worked yet.
Jaygee says
@fentonsteve
Are you hinting a fellow AWer should start a whip round?
In the immortal words of that great fundraiser Henry Root
“Here’s a pound, let’s go!’
Rigid Digit says
Maintain incompetence and you will be promoted
(Or is that just in the Civil / Public Service arena?)
Vulpes Vulpes says
Subsequent to the inquiry, judge Fraser told the DPP that documents disclosed as part of the Horizon trial “clearly show that Fujitsu knew about the existence of bugs, errors and defects in Horizon from a very early stage in the life of the system”.
Fujitsu whining that ‘we inherited it from a takeover’ is no defence at all.
Leedsboy says
Don’t disagree with that. What is unclear to me is whether Fujitsu knowingly kept the bugs and errors from the Post Office or whether the Post Office chose to knowingly act on bug ridden data. There is a big question that needs answering about what Fujitsu did to support the legal cases.
Most systems have errors and bugs in them. It’s why you never totally rely on a single, unreviewed data set for anything important.
retropath2 says
Alan Bates has been offered a gong too. OBE, I think, but he has declined it, feeling he cannot accept anything from the same source that has also “honoured” Vennels.
Hauntingly good telly, distressing and disturbing. As someone said above, I thought I knew the story but it needed the graphic horror to be spelt out to fully appreciate the full and utter shite of it all.
davebigpicture says
Post Office Counters are still dragging their feet over compensation and liability . One thing I didn’t understand when I listened to the Radio 4 series was why Fujitsu weren’t held more responsible and why their Professional Indemnity Insurance isn’t picking up the compensation and legal costs, which run into hundreds of millions.
Leedsboy says
My take on it is that it was that the faults in the system were the trigger for the issues. But the issues were around the unfair nature of the sub postmaster contracts, the way that the contracts were then enforced (the accusation of theft despite the lack of evidence of theft), the ability of the Post Office to effectively police itself and it’s contracted sub postmasters.
I did feel Fujitsu got off of it a bit lightly but it seemed to me that they were not hiding the issues from the Post Office but that the Post Office were hiding the issues from the sub postmasters. And invoking contract clause, taking money and prosecuting people for theft when parts of the organisation knew that the system was far from perfect. The contracting dynamic between the sub postmasters and the Post Office changed with the system. Prior to the system, the sub postmastewrs were rihtly responsible for the accuracy of the accounts. Once the Post Office supplied the system to take on this responsibility, the contracts should have changed – the burden of proof should have moved to one where the Post Office would need to prove the discrepancy is with the sub postmaster.
I do wonder how either company managed to ignore the data that would be coming from the help desk calls or the volume of cases suddenly arising, It is either incompetence or a cover up. I suspect the latter.
Jaygee says
I suspect both – the former followed by the latter as night follows day
Carl says
Going off at tangent and possibly not entirely relevant, but on the issue of accuracy of accounts I remember back in pre-decimalisation times a friend of my mother’s who had been a sub-postmistress being round at our house and talking about working for the Post-Office saying that at the end of every day they had to check the accounts and if the were out by one old halfpenny that had to check (and recheck) until they could account for the discrepancy.
And further to Lodestone’s comment, it’s not just them asking “Surely there can’t be that many crooked people running Post Offices?” but also why these people who had previously been entirely honest should suddenly turn to criminality en masse and then ask what are they doing with the money they has stolen – new cars, foreign holidays etc etc.
Vulpes Vulpes says
I share your view. Fujitsu had ample evidence that the system was deeply flawed from its inception, but lied to the management at the PO and told them all was fine. In turn the management at the PO failed to properly challenge this even when the data started looking dodgy.
Subsequently they hid behind the claim that they thought Fujitsu were beyond questioning; a gross failure of their own due diligence and their faith in their own sub-postmasters.
Most appallingly of all they were content to fall back on the Ts&Cs of their ongoing contracts with the sub-postmasters that made them individually accountable for ‘shortfalls’ despite having taken away the sub-postmasters ability to scrutinise their own records properly by burying them in the software layer beyond examination.
Fujitsu’s management clearly knew fuck all about the technical back end of the Horizon system, which constituted a home-grown store-and-forward asynschronous messaging system that patently wasn’t working reliably. This in the day when guaranteed delivery messaging systems were in their early infancy, and any such infrastructure should have been confined to the lab, not let loose on an entire national network of Post Offices.
Perhaps the Fujitsu techies claimed that it was all working fine (buying time to deal with all those pesky bug reports) and their management just chose to believe them, passing on the false promises to the PO management.
All in all a great example of buck-passing, over-promoted, technically illiterate management layers in both companies that exemplify this country’s board room integrity and excellence.
Fujitsu got off more than a bit lightly to date; they are fundamentally complicit in the entire cluster.
Mike_H says
Horizon was commissioned and written for the DSS and Post Office counters, to manage UK benefit payments via Post Office branches. It was subsequently rejected by the DSS as unsuitable, but allegedly Fujitsu then got the Japanese govt. to pressurise the UK govt. into making Post Office counters still accept it.
It’s said the Japanese informed Tony Blair that there would be trade repercussions between the UK and Japan if the software wasn’t accepted. And that Blair made sure that it was.
fortuneight says
Fujitsu have suffered not a jot in this. They continue to be a favoured gov’t contractor. Recent contracts include £6m and counting from DEFRA for flood warning, £52m from HMRC and a deal with the Scottish Parliament to electronically count ballot papers in Scottish local elections.
Twang says
Spot on VV. The Beeb podcast makes it clear from technical people who were involved and either stepped up or blew whistles that it was a basket case of a development. Fujitsu insisted no one could change the data other than the post masters and a humble programmer on oath in the trial said he could do it from his desk without any difficulty.
davebigpicture says
This article suggests that Fujitsu dodged a bullet because of Post Office Counters’ appalling stance.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252509066/Fujitsu-escaped-huge-lawsuit-because-Post-Office-behaved-so-badly-in-Horizon-scandal
Vulpes Vulpes says
Lucrative dodge then.
From Computer Weekly:
“The latest contract awards take government spending with Fujitsu to over £3.5bn since 2013.
According to figures from Tussell, put together for Computer Weekly in May, Fujitsu was awarded £3.1bn worth of contracts with the UK public sector between 2013 and 2021. In the last five years, without the two latest contracts being taken into account, Fujitsu has signed deals worth £673m with HMRC, £456m with the Home Office and £572m with the Ministry of Defence.”
NigelT says
I used to work in IT at the MoD. Back then, along with most if not all Government departments, it was almost exclusively ICL mainframe kit that was used, and I would imagine a lot of that software is still running, albeit on different hardware. Fujitsu took over ICL of course, so would be handily placed to maintain or further develop all that bespoke stuff.
Sewer Robot says
I’m really enjoying this and, as someone who didn’t know the story, it’s a real eye-opener. Some of the characterisation and dialogue is a bit simplistic, but the acting is great.
Two things I still don’t understand, though
(1) Why have first and second class stamps? Isn’t that less efficient than only having one bundle to sort?
(2) Why not use Cherry Ghost at the end instead of the lady with the piano? Anyone know how big a difference it makes ker-chingwise? Would Alabama 3 be looking so smug if David Chase had got Jewel in to strum an acoustic version of “Woke Up This Morning” for The Sopranos?
fortuneight says
One of the so called justifications for executive pay levels – FTSE 100 CEO’s median pay (excluding pension) currently stands at £3.8m, a mere multiple of 109 x the median UK pay of £35k – is the risk and accountability / legal liability they face. Something which has been shown to be a total and utter load of bollocks by this charade.
Vennels “stood down” in Feb 2019 which is code for was allowed to cut and run with a £400k payoff. Just 10 months later the Post Office paid out £58m in compensation for undertaking false prosecutions. Contrast Vennels treatment with that of the sub postmasters falsely jailed. She went on to become Chair of the Imperial College NHS Trust, slumming it on a mere £60k a year for what would have been less than a days work a month. Her salary was £1k more than the amount one sub postmaster from Hull was falsely convicted of stealing, sacked and sent down for 9 months.
Vennels also became a non exec director of the Cabinet Office and received a CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours list for her “for services to the Post Office and to charity” and continues to resist calls to hand it back. Meanwhile the Post Office prosecuted over 700 others. To date just 93 convictions have been overturned and of those, only 27 people have agreed “full and final settlements”. The Post Office refuses to overturn all the convictions, requiring “people who believe they were wrongly convicted, for any reason, to consider an appeal”. At the end of 2023 the Post Office reduced the funds provisioned for compensation from £487m to £244m. 33 of the people prosecuted died without their prosecutions being reviewed and 4 took their own lives.
In mid 2023 CEO Nick Read who took over from Vennels had to agree to hand back some bonus after inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams pointed out that that the bonus was in part contingent on providing information to the inquiry, and it reaching a timely conclusion – which it hadn’t. Vennels, along with the other Board members and senior management who were complicit in this travesty haven’t faced a single legal charge, spent a day in jail, or been fined a penny. A pox on them all.
Jaygee says
I think Vennells should be allowed to hang on to her CBE.
But only until such time as she is asked to hand it over during her processing at the front desk of the maximum security women’s prison where she will be spending the next several years
Vulpes Vulpes says
Arf! Harsh but fair.
slotbadger says
This is the petition to get Vennells relieved of her CBE. Doubt it’ll do anything but like so many who saw this, am flabbergasted at the way the Post Office treated these people
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/strip-paula-vennells-of-her-cbe?source=rawlink&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=rawlink&share=c5c77982-5e32-4baf-ad98-1cf904bfcaf3
mikethep says
As I said to Niall the other day in the other place, I think CBE is neither here nor there. She should be stripped of her bonuses and made to work without pay for one day in every single affected PO, wearing a t-shirt that says I LIED AND PEOPLE DIED.
Ardnort says
My wife was employed in a small Post Office and would spend hours on the phone to the ‘helpdesk’ trying to find the differences. It wad only due to the goodwill and trust of the owners that she didn’t end up under suspucion. Treatment of the sub-postmasters was and remains outrageous.
Moose the Mooche says
I don’t think the TV drama made clear that there was a racial element to this – a lot of the victims were brown people and a calculation was made, accurately as it turned out, that they wouldn’t be listened to.
davebigpicture says
According to the R4 series, there were shouts in the “Help Desk” office of “We’ve got another Patel”
Moose the Mooche says
When I mentioned that this was an example of the kind of thing we’re still really good at in the UK I forgot to mention institutional racism.
Timbar says
I worked as a counter clerk at a main (crown) post office for five years in the 80s and the “subs” were seen as the poor relations, with variable standards, cutting corners & long queues.
There was a lot of prejudice from senior management & often we’d get a frantic visit from the sub saying that they hadn’t had their delivery of stamps from head office & could we bail them out,
While we were paid directly by the Post Office, the sub offices were agents, earning their money on amounts sold – the attached shop bringing in additional income
Once I left (our branch closed) I would see the sub manager & he would moan about the additional hoops they were having to jump through.
The lack of trust in the subs would have motivated the change to an automated balancing system (we used to do a manual weekly balance on a Wednesday evening & I was rubbish at it)
There would sometimes be a Thursday morning spot audit from the IB (Investigation Branch) This could be very intimidating if things didn’t tally – On one occasion, someone was grilled about how £1500 had disappeared, before being asked if they’d included the change that Boots were collecting. “Oh sorry, that’s ok then” It took the rest of the day to recover from the intimidation.
That culture, prejudice and mistrust has grown since them. An automated system, without the ability to check your own figures was always going to be a disaster. It’s taken nearly 25 years to finally investigate this & no financial compensation is going to bring back those ruined years.
ishmethit says
I think this is the key point: people ask why the sudden rise in discrepancies following the Horizon deployment wasn’t flagged as a system problem, but the Post Office was already predisposed to assume the subs were on the take and so this was the “reliable” IT finally exposing the extent of the problem. Nick Wallis goes into this in more detail in his book: many of the PO staff were lifelong employees who would candidly admit they were unsuited to a career in any other organisation, and they probably had a naive understanding of technology. Of course, this doesn’t excuse their lack of curiosity about the increasing issues or their determination to cover things up and stick to their guns once the bugs became clear.
Managing Director David Smith celebrated the imprisonment of subpostmaster Seema Misra, then pregnant, for theft from the Post Office, telling staff it was “brilliant news”. (Misra was placed on suicide watch in prison.) Even if she had been guilty of a crime, that was not an understandable or humane reaction to the circumstances.
dai says
I knew nothing of this, it is truly scandalous.
It did put me in mind of the Phoenix pay system for those working for the Federal government in Canada. About 130,000 of them here in the Ottawa/Gatineau area.
It was totally messed up with many receiving too little or too much pay, the former having to struggle by sometimes on no wages, the latter having to later pay it back. Many gave up their jobs, some lost their pensions and houses. Don’t really think any responsibility has been taken for it and I was dumbfounded at the general indifference n the country/media of such a shitshow as it went on and on.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-system-issues-impact-public-servants-six-years-later-1.6457840
Dave Ross says
The fact that there aren’t heads on sticks being paraded through parliament speaks volumes for the British. These good people had faith in the system. I feel desperate for them. We are mere pawns in a game played by all those in power. This happened on Labour’s watch and was roundly ignored by the Torys. Culpability lies with all those who knew the truth and did nothing.
Jaygee says
@dave-amitri
Like the anarchists say, whichever party you vote for you end up getting the government
NigelT says
It made us sick to watch this. As a former IT developer and analyst, I absolutely understand how this happens technically (lack of adequate testing, changes to requirements, pressure to get things finished to deadline, no proper business sign off….did I mention inadequate testing..?), but the most shocking thing is the bare faced lying to these poor people, the cover ups, and the refusal to accept responsibility. They’d rather let people go to jail than admit anything was their fault. Shocking and tragic.
Apparently the TV series has prompted even more sub postmasters to come forward. There needs to be a proper reckoning.
fentonsteve says
Given No. 10’s response to an ITV drama, i.e. it looks like they might actually do something about it at last, what other outrage should ITV be scripting?
Moose the Mooche says
Mr Bates and the Corrupt and Incompetent Government….
…..right, commuters? ✊
fentonsteve says
How about Personal Independence Payments: The Musical? Or, the great British PPE Scandal? Or, What’s floating in your river? Covid Lockdown Downing Street parties?
Oh no, they’ve all been introduced within the last 14 years.
Jaygee says
@fentonsteve
They could do a great one about how this government’s continual fínancial emasculation of the BBC
They could also do a follow up to Mr Bates detailing one Adam Crozier’s involvement in the PO scandal. Sadly, given that Crozier is now running ITV that doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon
Moose the Mooche says
Coming soon to ITV: The Loudness Wars.
John Goodman as Bob Clearmountain
Peter Kay as Porky
Benedict Cumberbatch as Steven Wilson
fentonsteve says
Steve Hoffman has a walk-on part, throwing a brick.
SteveT says
@fentonsteve they are only doing something because there is an impending election. The people outraged by this TV series are likely in the main to be Tory voters. I saw Sunak yesterday saying what he intended to do. It appeared that he was shitting himself.
They could have done something in the last 10 years but chose not to. Very convenient that they are going to act in election year.
Well done to ITV for this exposure. Action is long overdue but apparently now in full flight.
fentonsteve says
Is there going to be an election? If only someone had mentioned it!
Whatever next? An election in America perhaps?
Is there a rock I can hide under for the next 12 months?
P.S. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I predict that in 12 months nothing will be resolved. “We tried really hard, but we ran out of time”
Moose the Mooche says
The difference is the election in America will be the last one, so it’s quite an event.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Yup. ACW2 I fear.
I bet Vlad’s betting on it.
Jaygee says
Doubt there will be enough gold braid and medals in the world to make Trump’s uniform
Freddy Steady says
Eh?
What have I missed?
Moose the Mooche says
Er, Trump’s going to win and then dismantle democracy. Hope you enjoyed the USA while it was there.
Freddy Steady says
Ok!
Fingers crossed it’s not that bad.
Moose the Mooche says
Crossing our fingers is all we can do.
Where the fk are the CIA when you need them? Grassy knolls? Get busy, you punks!
MC Escher says
Agree @vulpes-vulpes. In my view it’s almost a certainty that there will be an ideological split along red/blue state lines, which won’t, I hope, turn into a civil war, but will be unpleasant for the whole Western world.
fentonsteve says
Paula Vennells’ conscience has got the better of her (well, that and a million signatures on the petition) and has handed back her CBE.
Only the first to do so since a certain John Lennon.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67922410
Gatz says
Michael Sheen and Alan Cumming both returned OBEs years after receiving them, though I understand that’s only a gesture as only the monarch can actually rescind them.
I do hope one woman sending a badge back doesn’t mean, ‘Lessons have been learned, it is time to draw a line under this matter and concentrate on what is important to the public’.
fentonsteve says
Her CBE might have been of some use, if shoved {we get the idea – Ed} prior to spending time in the showers chez Pentonville.
Timbar says
I have visions of her queuing at a Post Office to send the gong back, and then it going missing, resulting in her having to fill in a form (P58 – I still remember) “How did you send it? What was the value of the item?”
Moose the Mooche says
Finally…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67929650
….what it this obsession racists have with “sending money to your relatives”? Whose fucking business is it what you do with your money once you’ve earned it and paid tax on it?
Better to give it to the local coke dealer I suppose.
Sewer Robot says
Mitch Hedberg used to point out whenever someone showed him a photograph of themselves “when they were younger”, all photographs are of you when you were younger. The evasive term “historical document” used here would appear to be employing the same logic: how can you criticise us for this? – it happened in the past..
chiz says
Miles Jupp: “I’m delighted to be here presenting the Plastics and Rubber Industry Awards. In fact I can honestly say that, in a purely chronological sense, my entire life has been building up to this very moment.”