And questions asked of the awarding committee.
Agreed. Having finally watched the TV show now, I was surprised to learn that she only received her gong relatively late on in her career at the Post Officeā¦ Iād assumed sheād got it before the scandal was really well known, rather than in 2019. That really was just rubbing the victimsā noses in it.
I also didnāt know before that she is a priest. Iāve never held the clergy in high regardā¦ Sheās not helped in changing my opinion!
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And incredibly, apparently the Post Office fraud investigators were given bonuses for every conviction! The whole fiasco defies belief. Meanwhile I think Andyās rather pleased another storyās soaking up journalists time.
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It beggars belief in so many ways - not least because of the crass hypocrisy of a government only willing to do the right thing because the whole affair has finally entered the public consciousness.
Iāve been aware of the problem for years, not sure quite where I picked it up (The Register, possibly) but I suspect the whole thing was being actively suppressed for a very long time.
The fact that no one in the Post Office seems to have questioned why there was apparently a sudden explosion in fraud - one suspects that someone, somewhere thought all postmasters and sub postmasters were on the make and this just fed into those preconceptions, āoh look - the new software has rooted them outā.
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Private Eye has been following this for years. Thanks heavens for Gwyneth Hughes, James Strong and ITV, not to mention incredibly sensitive acting by a fabulous ensemble led by Toby Jones.
Fujitsu (an old employer but I was in the telecoms bit) are culpable as well, too many head in the sand and not rock the boat types.
No, you are wrong there. I heard distinctly on Sky at lunch a barely intelligible scouse PO investigator in the enquiry saying that was not the case - one case or a thousand cases, the pay was the same 
ā¦ He has to be right, cāmon the organisation was headed up by a high priestess - now if you cannot trust a high priestess, who can you trust 
She was within an ace of becoming the Bishop of London and thus having an ill-gotten and unelected say, however small, in the running of the whole country.
Surely the Crown Prosecution Service must take some blame? So many cases as people said would surely raise an eyebrow.
My wife and I so nearly bought a post office back 2 years before horizon came in. That was near Lindfield in Sussex. Fortunately some other shop keepers I knew went over the books and said it wasnt turning over enough to take it, phew!
This is the problem - the CPS, an independent entity, were never involved. The PO was investigator and prosecuter.
Had the CPS been involved, maybe with some brain power they would have looked at both sides, but as it was, the high priestess had absolute power.
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There was a Panorama programme 8/9 years ago on this, and some other TV coverage even earlier I recall. Interestingly itās back on YouTube.
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It seems the PO leaned very heavily on the BBC and panorama not to release their findings at the time.
I wonder a little how much those at the top knew, and how much was held back. Iāve seen situations in the past where assumptions are made incorrectly, then a picture built that supports them and hides whatās really happening. Those in charge are too focussed on other things to dig deeply into the situation, and although they may call in heads of depts for an explanation, they wonāt be able to get to the bottom of it all.
Some of the senior guys have described themselves as ānon-technicalā and given the time at which this was first rolled out, ordinary people probably didnāt have the ability to really dig into the software. Eventually I think the whole thing became too big to believe it was wrong and a culture developed that made unpicking from inside impossible.
None of this makes it acceptable, but it DOES make it possible to see how such a travesty could have taken place.
Therein lies the problem in the modern world, also those non technical will also be paid considerably more than the technical people.
And Iād argue they didnāt need to be Ć¼ber-technical. They just need to be inquisitive and to ask the right questions. Like about having remote access to a subpostmasterās account. The barrister did this when the woman from the Post Office (Angela Van Der Something) said that the Post Office didnāt have remote accessā¦ but she had to begrudgingly admit, after being questioned about it, that Fujitsu did.
Does anyone object if I move the posts about the PO scandal, rather than the dramatiseation thereof, to a separate thread?
No problem, I guessed that was what you would do when I saw the new thread.
My son in law will agree with you there as the number of times he has got senior management out of technical fixes in previous companies he has worked for where they got paid a lot more than him but had no idea what they were doing, this is in the IT industry and big companies
OK, posts moved except for @Garethās original post in the film recommendations thread, which Iāve partially duplicated here in the interest of continuity.
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Just looking back at this thread and more than once I think we have condemned the giving of a medal to Paula Venell for āServices to the Post Officeā.
When you think about it, that was entirely justified, she did an enormous service to the Post Office at the time it was awarded. Think of all the thousands it took illegally from all those poor people who went bankrupt or took out 2nd mortgages to give it money which it hadnāt lost.
Letās hear it for Paula, Yay. 
ā¦ 
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It is worth remembering that, although culpability undeniably attaches to Vennells, she is nevertheless being scapegoated (as Chris Grey points out in his blog today).
A convenient lightning rod for the the post Office and the Government.
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