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British Post Office Scandal

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Re: British Post Office Scandal

#131

Post by hermitcrab »

Karellen wrote: post #121
phkahler wrote: post #99

So.... In a lot of these cases the system wrongly reported money missing at these lower levels. It seems these numbers should have rolled up into sums at a higher level that also showed losses and they prosecuted people. But the money was never actually missing so where did it go? Hmmm?

Surely the "missing" money was never there in the first place? If a Post Office had £20,000 in takings on a day, but the buggy system reported takings of £30,000, then that's £10,000 of money reported missing, which the postmasters were prosecuted for stealing. But that £10,000 didn't "go" anywhere. It never existed.

In many cases the subpostmasters paid the 'missing' amount to the Post Office, rather than lose their franchise or even go to prison. That then went towards Post Office profits and management bonuses. Ka-ching - Trebles all round!

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#132

Post by KineticLensman »

zabil wrote: post #76

I'm following this from the UK. I watched the first episode of "Bates vs Post Office". It's interesting to see that the Horizon system, set up in 1999, was a client-server model with a box in each post office syncing with a central server. I'm surprised they thought this would work back then, given the challenges like network problems, failures and backup and the sheer volume of data. To me, it seems like the technol…

> To me, it seems like the technology wasn't available back then.

Banks had been doing this sort of stuff (distributed transactional integrity) for years by the time the Horizon system was conceived. SAP and Oracle were in widespread use, and Oracle (the database underlying Horizon) was explicitly exonerated as a source of the bugs.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#133

Post by hermitcrab »

walthamstow wrote: post #6

Britons - this is your reminder that Private Eye is available for subscription at the very low price of £45 for an issue in your letterbox fortnightly.

Worth every penny for their investigative journalism. Even if you never read it. And the cartoons are very good!

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#134

Post by hermitcrab »

minimaul wrote: post #53
walthamstow wrote: post #6

Britons - this is your reminder that Private Eye is available for subscription at the very low price of £45 for an issue in your letterbox fortnightly.

I wish Ian Hislop would drop his opposition to doing a sensible online version - I'd happily subscribe for access to the same content posted online, but when I get it posted through my door I find I don't read it.

They do have a very good podcast, which is free:

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#135

Post by KineticLensman »

InsomniacL wrote: post #93

Does anyone know of a report in to the actual technical fault of the system?

See https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-...

(posted in another comment here)

> the actual technical fault

There were numerous issues, no single fault.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#136

Post by crtasm »

drumhead wrote: post #57
hashtag-til wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly curious: can you expand a bit on why subscribe? I live in the UK, but never heard about Private Eye before?

Its the best source of investigative journalism in the Uk, generally you'll hear about a story in Private Eye years before it gets to the national press or the BBC. Its a great souce for stories of wrong doing in national and local government, business, schools, the NHS, transport, farming and the Media. They regularly report on miscarriages of justice which you'll never usually hear about and get to the root of cert…

This. When I see television news I continually wonder: why are there no mentions of so much important news the Eye is covering?

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#137

Post by hermitcrab »

drumhead wrote: post #57
hashtag-til wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly curious: can you expand a bit on why subscribe? I live in the UK, but never heard about Private Eye before?

Its the best source of investigative journalism in the Uk, generally you'll hear about a story in Private Eye years before it gets to the national press or the BBC. Its a great souce for stories of wrong doing in national and local government, business, schools, the NHS, transport, farming and the Media. They regularly report on miscarriages of justice which you'll never usually hear about and get to the root of cert…

>you'll hear about a story in Private Eye years before it gets to the national press or the BBC.

Still waiting to hear why a certain young person (of very modest accomplishments) made it into the House of Lords. Given the absence of any reporting by PE on this, it seems that rumours of a 'super injunction' might be true.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#138

Post by hermitcrab »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #28
mjburgess wrote: post #19

In middle of this it's obscene how the media neglects to mention who did most of the actual investigative journalism: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/ -- for years on end, whilst the issue was ignored by the rest of the press. They all now jump in on it and elide the years of work put in by the PE. This is a common tactic in media outlets, esp. here, for the major sources to try to "own" issues with nearly zero work pu…

I think that Computer Weekly were at the forefront of it

IIRC they sat on the story for a year before publishing, understandably worried about the blowback.

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#139

Post by drumhead »

hermitcrab wrote: post #137
drumhead wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the best source of investigative journalism in the Uk, generally you'll hear about a story in Private Eye years before it gets to the national press or the BBC. Its a great souce for stories of wrong doing in national and local government, business, schools, the NHS, transport, farming and the Media. They regularly report on miscarriages of justice which you'll never usually hear about and get to the root of cert…

>you'll hear about a story in Private Eye years before it gets to the national press or the BBC. Still waiting to hear why a certain young person (of very modest accomplishments) made it into the House of Lords. Given the absence of any reporting by PE on this, it seems that rumours of a 'super injunction' might be true.

A certain prime ministers alleged daughter?

Re: British Post Office Scandal

#140

Post by phkahler »

Karellen wrote: post #121
phkahler wrote: post #99

So.... In a lot of these cases the system wrongly reported money missing at these lower levels. It seems these numbers should have rolled up into sums at a higher level that also showed losses and they prosecuted people. But the money was never actually missing so where did it go? Hmmm?

Surely the "missing" money was never there in the first place? If a Post Office had £20,000 in takings on a day, but the buggy system reported takings of £30,000, then that's £10,000 of money reported missing, which the postmasters were prosecuted for stealing. But that £10,000 didn't "go" anywhere. It never existed.

Woops. There are two numbers that don't match here. I just assumed the higher one was correct and the other one was misreported by the system. You may be right that the lower one may be correct and the higher one was wrong, in which case the money never existed.
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