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Hundreds of Post Office workers ‘vindicated’ by High Court ruling over faulty Post Office IT system

two sheds

Least noticed poster 2007
Surprised I can't see a thread on this (please merge if there is indeed one) but:

Post Office workers win High Court ruling over faulty IT system that left them bankrupt and in prison

Hundreds of former Post Office workers who claimed a faulty IT system led to some of them being prosecuted and others going bankrupt due to cash shortfalls have been "vindicated" after a High Court ruling in their favour.

His [judge's] ruling that there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by Horizon is a major step in workers’ attempts to have convictions for fraud and theft overturned.

There was standing room only in the court as more than 100 of the claimants attended the hearing, some of whom said they had been left suicidal by the fiasco.

Private Eye have done really good work on exposing this over the years. Disgusting treatment of subpostmasters by Post Office.

Among the comments from our own Peter Dow :cool: quoted here in case they remove it:

PeterDow

In 1994 I was fined then jailed for doing my duty to prevent fraud. If they had listened to me then Mr Chhokar would be alive today. See - BBC: "Ronnie Coulter convicted of 1998 Chhokar murder after second trial" The Chhokar murder arose from an argument over a stolen giro-cheque, which could only have value to any thief because of the incompetent policy of the Post Office which was in the 1990s to cash giro-cheques to the bearer WITHOUT ASKING FOR IDENTIFICATION if the amount of the cheque was under £100. In other words, the victim would be ALIVE today if the Giro-cheque payment system at the Post Office was competently managed to prevent fraud. So the Post Office insisting on their right to make fraudulent payments has cost a man his life. So the police and prosecutors insisting on arresting, prosecuting, convicting, fining and jailing someone (that would be me in 1994) who protests this mismanagement of the Post Office instead of arresting and prosecuting Post Office management has cost a man his life. So the pro-fraud police state jailed me and it cost a man his life.

The Post Office paid stolen giro-cheques (up to £100) without demanding I.D., rewarding thieves and robbers, who would raid communal mailboxes, on a regular basis, sometimes coming into violent conflict with residents expecting their giros. In 1994, I was fined then jailed for doing my duty to prevent such fraud at Post Offices when I protested at my local post office, to blow the whistle on the failure of the Post Office to prevent fraud and other crimes arising. Surjit Singh Chhokar was stabbed to death in North Lanarkshire in 1998 in a fight which arose over a stolen giro-cheque. If they had listened to me then Mr Chhokar would be alive today because it was the Post Office’s slack fraud control which encouraged thieves to steal giro-cheques and to get into conflicts with those to whom the giro was intended. Not only was the Post Office to blame but the government which both sanctioned the Post Office mismanagement but also unjustly criminalised those like me who were trying to blow the whistle on the Post Office encouraging fraud and crime. This highlighted something rotten with the whole kingdom, the incompetent way in which local police and courts actually encourage crime and insist that social activists can do nothing about crime.

So there should in addition now be a conviction of the government ministers and head of state in the 1990s that allowed the post office to encourage fraud.

Go Peter, I miss his posts, not seen him for ages :(
 
Wasn't it Post Masters?, no matter, this was a huge miscarrage of justice, and one has to wonder why it wasn't on the radar of progressives, etc.
 
This is such a tragic case. I’m glad it has vindicated all the people but there have been so many lives ruined (and in some cases lost) for so many years, people shunned in their community and driven out of town, businesses seized. It’s unfathomable how it ever got to this and has taken so long to get here. Respect to those who’ve been protesting their innocence all this time.

Also, Peter Dow did jail time? :eek:
 
This is such a tragic case. I’m glad it has vindicated all the people but there have been so many lives ruined (and in some cases lost) for so many years, people shunned in their community and driven out of town, businesses seized. It’s unfathomable how it ever got to this and has taken so long to get here. Respect to those who’ve been protesting their innocence all this time.

Also, Peter Dow did jail time? :eek:

But not for threatening to shoot the queen :thumbs:

 
Indeed - you'd hope it would be good material for an appeal. The Post Office refused to admit liability so I wonder whether they'd oppose.
 
This was on my mind yesterday to start a thread about it, but I was out most of yesterday & overnight.

I remember reading the coverage in Private Eye, and thinking what a total fuck-up, I am gutted for those that lost their living, ended-up with criminal records, and esp. for those that ended-up in prison. :(
 
This was on my mind yesterday to start a thread about it, but I was out most of yesterday & overnight.

I remember reading the coverage in Private Eye, and thinking what a total fuck-up, I am gutted for those that lost their living, ended-up with criminal records, and esp. for those that ended-up in prison. :(

Yes, this result is a victory for the post office.

People at the post office have committed perjury, and the post has got away with not even admitting liability.

Alex
 
Know several subpostmasters, they all slag Horizon off as a complete ar5e to work with.
One of them even had an accountant closely study the situation (and do audits) but still had the PO claim they were fiddling the books ...
 
Subpostmasters. Most of them running little village or suburban post offices, often inside a local shop. IIRC the average wage was about £11,000 (this was a few years ago.) Post Office management paid them shit, then automatically assumed they were on the take.

Did Labour get behind them?, they should have done.
 
It's mad this has been going on so long, remember stories from years, decade plus, back. Surely anybody with a conviction can have it made unsafe?

You'd hope so. You'd also hope that anyone responsible at the Post Office or the software company would publicly hang their head in shame, apologise and seek some sort of forgiveness and repentance. I'm not holding my breath.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice
 
My uncle took his own life after the Post Office accused thousands like him of theft and fraud – this High Court ruling is too little, too late

My uncle took his own life after the Post Office went after him – this High Court ruling is too little, too late

...
The subpostmaster scandal is just one example of ordinary people paying the price for corporate malfeasance. My uncle paid with his life

...

After 14 years running a respected sub-post office, an upgrade to Horizon started to cause discrepancies in his accounts. Instructed by the Post Office to pay up, he drained his savings for four years until 2013 when, on the brink of being fired and driven into a deep depression, he took his own life....

Allow me to translate its PR guff:

“The Post Office is committed to applying the lessons it has learnt.”


After a decade of ignoring subpostmasters’ concerns, and spending over £23m of public money on legal fees – all while we knew there were “high risk” issues with its computer system – we did something about it.


“In the past, we have fallen short.”


We falsely claimed subpostmasters stole hundreds of thousands of pounds, leaving several of the wrongly accused in prison.


“In the past, we got things wrong in our dealings with postmasters and we look forward to moving ahead now.”


We drove people to suicide. Those people cannot “move ahead now”.

good piece, worth reading



 
Can someone tell me why civil society didn't take this up as a burning injustice, the left should have , would have shown it was for everyone.
Many people did, including Private Eye, which often sells nearly 300,000 copies per issue (more than many national newspapers.)

Who or what is civil society tho.
 

Pete Murray, 53, from Wirral, Merseyside, claimed he was nearly bankrupted when he was forced to hand over £30,000 and told he owed £35,000 more to cover discrepancies at the branch in Great Sutton, Cheshire, between 2014 and 2019.

Murray, who said he also suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the accusation, first encountered problems when he took over Hope Farm Road post office in October 2014 and began noticing large deficits in the branch’s accounts.

Fucking weasel quote at the end by post office after years of bullying:

A Post Office spokesperson told the Echo: “We’re making extensive improvements throughout the Post Office to ensure we work together with postmasters in genuine commercial partnership.

“We’ve put in place personalised new support for every postmaster, increased training and a new branch support centre with dedicated case handlers for more complex queries which cannot be immediately resolved.

“There is of course much more work to be done but we’re putting our postmaster and our customers at the centre of everything we do.”
 
There's a radio documentary all this week on Radio 4 about this - the Post Office wrongly prosecuting hundreds of post office workers. It's on live now and also the programme website here:

Just listening to it now, it's fucking heavy. Injustice in any form is always difficult to take/witness.
 
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