Hundreds of Post Office workers ‘vindicated’ by High Court ruling over faulty Post Office IT system
- Thread starter two sheds
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brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
I don't think that I have (knowingly) met (m)any wealthy tories, no.
Then again, we are talking about a member of a different subset of the capitalist class; I don't really think the grotesquely wealthy 'captains' of neoliberal capital would have much regard for grubby little politicians.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
Or change her name by deed poll, keeping her existing names, and then adding Claudia Barbara Elizabeth …
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
Sorry to be pedantic, but the PO and RM aren't connected.
But yeah, it's sickening.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Vennels has handed back her CBE. But not, at the time of writing, all the money she got paid for destroying hundreds of lives.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
How the Post Office’s Horizon system failed: a technical breakdown
From bugs to unqualified staff, the Post Office’s point-of-sale system was inadequate on many levels
This is pretty interesting, a fairly none technical description of some of the bugs which caused issues.
This is also interesting
“In 2015, for instance, the Post Office told the House of Commons inquiry: “There is no functionality in Horizon for either a branch, Post Office or Fujitsu to edit, manipulate or remove transaction data once it has been recorded in a branch’s accounts.” This was untrue, and the Post Office admitted as such four years later during a high court case.”
Anyone who has worked in IT, will know this is bollocks.
There are always senior devs who have the access to do this, and even relatively good systems occasionally need data “fixing” to resolve an issue. The better systems will have a way of recording this kind of thing, but it boggles the mind that anyone at the post office would let people say the above in parliament.
Alex
Good article from Marina Hyde yesterday:
www.theguardian.com
We have seen heroes emerge from the Post Office scandal. Now focus on the villains | Marina Hyde
Ministers feigned shock while executives pointed fingers at others, but gradually the truth is coming out. The public anger is working, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
teqniq
DisMembered
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
I am watching BBC Breakfast, at 8am they started a special segment on this, running for about 30 minutes, with nine victims of the PO live in the studio, more heart breaking stories.
It'll be available to catch-up on the iPlayer.
It'll be available to catch-up on the iPlayer.
It wasn't 30 minutes, it was an hour.
I really really hope Sunak sorts this out today and exonerates them all during PMQs so the news cycle can move on. It's a tragedy but there are actually other things going on in the world. I flicked around Sky, ITV and BBC Breakfast this morning and couldn't escape it. The middle east is about to totally explode.
I really really hope Sunak sorts this out today and exonerates them all during PMQs so the news cycle can move on. It's a tragedy but there are actually other things going on in the world. I flicked around Sky, ITV and BBC Breakfast this morning and couldn't escape it. The middle east is about to totally explode.
teqniq
DisMembered
It's the same modus operandi. Delay, delay obfuscate and hopefully a significant number of claimants will die.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Yeah, they did start by saying 'over the next 30 minutes so', but it ended-up being a fascinating hour, about half with live questions to the Post Office Minister, and I have to say the victims did extremely well in giving him a bit of a hard time, and just generally handling the situation of being on live TV, most impressive.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
At some point, presumably quite soon after the new system was installed, senior management were fully aware of the faults and wete faced with two options.
A. Go back to the old system and get fujitsu to rectify the bugs.
B. Plough ahead regardless and fuck the consequences even if it meant criminalising hundreds of their own staff.
Which then leads to three serious questions.
Who made that decision?
Why the fuck did they do it?
Why aren't they in prison?
A. Go back to the old system and get fujitsu to rectify the bugs.
B. Plough ahead regardless and fuck the consequences even if it meant criminalising hundreds of their own staff.
Which then leads to three serious questions.
Who made that decision?
Why the fuck did they do it?
Why aren't they in prison?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Yep, that's what the people's court would investigate.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
I keep thinking of the postmaster in our village up the road. Lovely bloke who luckily wasn't hit by any of this - but a huge number of them were at the centre of their village, making sure benefits and pensions were paid, looking after people. Despicable that they were treated so badly by managers who were paid so much more for pen pushing jobs and supposed to have some sort of duty of care. 
Then should give him immunity, on the basis he testifies against the post office.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
I'm pretty sure that such feelings have, along with the obvious feelings of basic injustice, have propelled the surge of public opinion since the ITV drama's broadcast. When so much of our communities has been stripped away by neoliberalism, those sub-post-offices that have survived are often cherished reminders of the society we used to have.I keep thinking of the postmaster in our village up the road. Lovely bloke who luckily wasn't hit by any of this - but a huge number of them were at the centre of their village, making sure benefits and pensions were paid, looking after people. Despicable that they were treated so badly by managers who were paid so much more for pen pushing jobs and supposed to have some sort of duty of care.
lazythursday
Well-Known Member
Not to defend the management - but I bet it wasn't as simple as that. They spent a lot of money on a transformational programme they wanted to be proud of, they wanted to believe the system worked, the contractor assured them over and over that everything was fine and all actions and decisions flowed from that (I suspect).
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Perjury carries a maximum sentence of 7 years. Can not think of a case more deserving of the maximum, for each time he did it, to be served consecutively. That would be just.
Bet he never has a single bowl of porridge.
Gerry1time
Did a wee in Dirac's toilet
I've been pondering those sorts of questions too. From time to time I end up working with senior execs in large organisations, and the sorts of things I notice are;
- They're people who get things done. Regardless of whether it's the right thing to do, or the best thing to do, they don't like waiting around. They're far too busy with far too many decisions to make, so if a course of action looks like it's dealing with a situation, whether it's right or not, they'll back it to the hilt, and get rid of the people who oppose it.
- They don't like facts / theories / ideas. Indeed, they often get quite angry and aggressive when you try to present facts or ideas to them. As far as they're concerned, all this namby pamby academic 'thinking about stuff' waffle is a waste of time when it comes to just getting stuff done.
- They're generally surrounded by, or surround themselves with, people like them who tell them what they want to hear, and agree with everything they want to do, because that's how those people climb the career ladder. As a result, their impression of the world can be very distorted from what it actually is, and they're unlikely to be challenged on doing the wrong thing by those around them.
I don't know if any of the above is true for the Post Office CEO, but I did notice that she was said to be under a lot of pressure to hit financial targets at the time, which will likely have meant that 'getting stuff done' will have been her sole focus, regardless of the consequences. The crows feet around her eyes in photos have been really noticable too. Can't be sure, but I do wonder if that points to a life of constant stress, which again is likely to have brought out the 'just get stuff done' mentality even further.
Basically, the current state of how senior execs work in large corporations almost designs in a system that is likely to make poor decisions that can have horrible impacts on people further down the organisation. The tragedy is that is they stopped for a minute, they could fix these systemic problems, but they're always too busy to do so, so they end up entirely stuck in a never ending whirlpool of nonsense.
lazythursday
Well-Known Member
I've also been reflecting a bit on what drives people to cover things up. About two decades ago the organisation I worked for had a client who went on to murder someone in a reasonably high profile case. There was a piece of evidence relating to our work with that client that was seriously embarrassing to the organisation in terms of how our staff had failed to challenge certain behaviours, and perhaps even encourage them - and potentially it also could have been used to demonstrate motivation / premeditation. I was part of a small group of people who drew up a crisis communications plan and as part of that we removed this piece of evidence from public view / deleted it. We didn't offer it to the police / lawyers (we didn't even discuss that!). It didn't make any difference to the case, as it turned out, luckily. It wasn't until relatively recently that it occurred to me that we had actually done something very wrong in this kneejerk action to protect our reputation.
I've really struggled with hindsight to justify my actions, or lack of actions. Some kind of 'protect the work / brand' groupthink just descended. I think I was particularly influenced by people more senior than me who I respected deeply, deciding that this was the right course of action. If they thought it was right, it was right. I don't think it's something I would do now but being a lot older changes your perspective on organisational politics I think.
I've really struggled with hindsight to justify my actions, or lack of actions. Some kind of 'protect the work / brand' groupthink just descended. I think I was particularly influenced by people more senior than me who I respected deeply, deciding that this was the right course of action. If they thought it was right, it was right. I don't think it's something I would do now but being a lot older changes your perspective on organisational politics I think.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
I'm sure there's a deal of truth to what you say there, (there's usually asymmetry of information/know-how between the purchaser & provider of IT systems), but what would have been simple enough for POL to do was to examine their rates of convictions pre and post implementation. They did not need to be IT experts to see they suddenly had a massive increase of convictions without explanation; not rocket (or computer) science.
Gerry1time
Did a wee in Dirac's toilet
Or create a system that allowed feedback to go direct from branches to senior management, given the branches were raising problems / concerns from quite early on. My guess is the bug tickets went direct to Fujitsu, who then did little with them given the pressure of delivery, and almost certainly didn't report on them in their client update reports. Again though, management at the top is being surrounded by people who keep them shielded from information on the ground.
As a silly aside, more than once I've been in a corporate office before someone very senior has come to visit. Every time an email has gone round beforehand setting out the exact route the person will be walked around the office, which people are to sit on that route, and which people / teams will be approached to interact with the exec. All because the middle management want to impress the senior leader for the benefit of their career. Just part of how the system is setup to build bad outcomes into it from the start.
Conversely, in one great organisation I worked for, the CEO sat at a different desk out amongst employees each day, and often went and sat in the call centre, listening to and chatting to the people who were speaking to real life customers 8 hours a day every day, to hear direct from customers and staff what was and wasn't working for them about the organisation.
Thinking some more, I think this quote from W Edwards Deming may also be quite relevant to this whole Post Office situation, from the perspectives of both the Post Office and Fujitsu.
"People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it."
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Deming was a hero and really useful to quote to managers to get what you want. I've often thought of starting a thread about him but have feared it would attract abuse because he was from the business world and talking to managers (although those are the people that really need talking to
There are so many quotable quotes though:
which he later updated to 98% as I recall.
"People work in the system. Management creates the system"
and
"What is wrong with posters and slogans? They are directed at the wrong people" [i.e. the workforce rather than at management]
come immediately to mind
Silas Loom
Advanced. Forthright. Signifficant.
He sounds interesting two sheds , but are his apothegms mutually coherent?
I have seen countless examples of target-driven short-termist stupidity of the sort covered in the quote from Gerry1time.
Incentives and motivations aren’t the same thing as system and process, so the 85% (or 98%) ascribed to the latter seems toppy. And it’s very common for bad managers to tweak process while ignoring bigger issues, such as that goals, incentives and motivations within an enterprise or a team are ill-aligned or counterproductive.
I have seen countless examples of target-driven short-termist stupidity of the sort covered in the quote from Gerry1time.
Incentives and motivations aren’t the same thing as system and process, so the 85% (or 98%) ascribed to the latter seems toppy. And it’s very common for bad managers to tweak process while ignoring bigger issues, such as that goals, incentives and motivations within an enterprise or a team are ill-aligned or counterproductive.
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