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Post by Northy on Jan 11, 2024 7:38:59 GMT
Another sad observation for me is that how in large ( often public the Police, Health service, political parties) organisations people get to the top who simply learn the "corporate speak", good "confident " performers, love the idea of having a bit of power over others, usually not really innovators or leaders but conformists. Then these people set the rules, the culture, the agendas. Not controversial or noticeable if nothing goes wrong. But when it does, there's a toxic atmosphere for the workers and very questionable beliefs and practices emerge, that become almost impossible to challenge. Any truth becomes secondary. I know what I mean, but can't explain it very well, perhaps others can explain it better than me!. Know exactly what you mean, the ones that open their mouth and all that comes out is corporate buzz words and asking you to 'think outside the box', to give ideas that they can claim
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Post by deeside2 on Jan 11, 2024 7:44:22 GMT
Another sad observation for me is that how in large ( often public the Police, Health service, political parties) organisations people get to the top who simply learn the "corporate speak", good "confident " performers, love the idea of having a bit of power over others, usually not really innovators or leaders but conformists. Then these people set the rules, the culture, the agendas. Not controversial or noticeable if nothing goes wrong. But when it does, there's a toxic atmosphere for the workers and very questionable beliefs and practices emerge, that become almost impossible to challenge. Any truth becomes secondary. I know what I mean, but can't explain it very well, perhaps others can explain it better than me!. Know exactly what you mean, the ones that open their mouth and all that comes out is corporate buzz words and asking you to 'think outside the box', to give ideas that they can claim Yes, we had a few of those where I worked. Most people could see they what they were but somehow they gradually (or rapidly in a couple of cases) got promoted into fairly top jobs. As you say, good speakers, confident, but essentially just bullshitters who were quick to distance themselves from any problems and were happy to see others take the blame.
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Post by Northy on Jan 11, 2024 7:56:28 GMT
Take a bow Ian Hislop...outstanding. what has Jake Berry done to be given a knighthood, not a lot, looks like they are given out these days like free sweets at school
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Post by chuffedstokie on Jan 11, 2024 7:57:10 GMT
I've been thinking about this helpline aspect, different sub postmasters ringing the same number (Fujitsu I presume), getting different people each time but being told the same thing, that they're the only one. This smacks of a scripted response handed down to the operators secure in the knowledge that they knew something was wrong and they'd be getting complaints. That responsibility, in itself is acceptance of liability on the part of Fujitsu. Ageed Chuffed, For me the personal issue rests on who, with executive or managerial responsibility, knew that there were major issues with Horizon, when they knew and what they did about it.....in all three organisations...Fujitsu, the Government/Parliament and the Post Office. Whether those people are covered by Corporate Law could mean that they avoid prosecution? Also what needs to be looked at are the Sub postmaster contracts which are probably illegal in themselves, the concept of making up the shortfalls, if they contained illegal clauses it is irrelevant if the sub postmasters signed them. The managerial ladder within Fujitsu really needs to be forensically looked at, if someone somewhere knew the shit was about to hit the fan and that their best defence, ie,tell the phone handlers to lie hoping it would go away then heads have to roll. Interesting yesterday that whilst the Nikkei was rising generally, guess whose value was dropping. I suspect they'll get dragged kicking and screaming into this whether they want to or not.
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Post by Northy on Jan 11, 2024 8:02:27 GMT
Ageed Chuffed, For me the personal issue rests on who, with executive or managerial responsibility, knew that there were major issues with Horizon, when they knew and what they did about it.....in all three organisations...Fujitsu, the Government/Parliament and the Post Office. Whether those people are covered by Corporate Law could mean that they avoid prosecution? Also what needs to be looked at are the Sub postmaster contracts which are probably illegal in themselves, the concept of making up the shortfalls, if they contained illegal clauses it is irrelevant if the sub postmasters signed them. The managerial ladder within Fujitsu really needs to be forensically looked at, if someone somewhere knew the shit was about to hit the fan and that their best defence, ie,tell the phone handlers to lie hoping it would go away then heads have to roll. Interesting yesterday that whilst the Nikkei was rising generally, guess whose value was dropping. I suspect they'll get dragged kicking and screaming into this whether they want to or not. what I've been saying now for a couple of days, it's who within Fujitsu at the time knew and they should be brought into the MET investigation, there's probably no one left there now that was involved and they've gone off with bonuses, golden handshakes, some were probably on final salary pensions etc and those that are there now are having to deal with this.
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Post by chuffedstokie on Jan 11, 2024 8:08:30 GMT
The managerial ladder within Fujitsu really needs to be forensically looked at, if someone somewhere knew the shit was about to hit the fan and that their best defence, ie,tell the phone handlers to lie hoping it would go away then heads have to roll. Interesting yesterday that whilst the Nikkei was rising generally, guess whose value was dropping. I suspect they'll get dragged kicking and screaming into this whether they want to or not. what I've been saying now for a couple of days, it's who within Fujitsu at the time knew and they should be brought into the MET investigation, there's probably no one left there now that was involved and they've gone off with bonuses, golden handshakes, some were probably on final salary pensions etc and those that are there now are having to deal with this. Right on both counts 👍
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Post by hotterpotter on Jan 11, 2024 8:26:56 GMT
Noticed today that our system at work is done by Fujitsu. That's a load of shite too! Which system is that ? We use Microsoft and ever since I was upgraded to v11 its been shit. Probably shouldn't say. And in any case I'm probably "the only one having any issues"...
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Post by bigjohnritchie on Jan 11, 2024 8:32:54 GMT
Know exactly what you mean, the ones that open their mouth and all that comes out is corporate buzz words and asking you to 'think outside the box', to give ideas that they can claim Yes, we had a few of those where I worked. Most people could see they what they were but somehow they gradually (or rapidly in a couple of cases) got promoted into fairly top jobs. As you say, good speakers, confident, but essentially just bullshitters who were quick to distance themselves from any problems and were happy to see others take the blame. Dee, Off topic , but I would like to recount one of my experiences in my first teaching post. As a form teacher, I had an 12 year old girl who had a lot of absences, broken bones. To cut a long story short , I met her mother who confessed abuse. She said" I knew I would be found out one day". Having already been in the Police for 5 years, used to evidence and procedures, I said to the parent " Please wait here ( my classroom), I need to report this to the deputy head now". I immediately went to the PASTORAL deputy who had responsibility in child welfare /protection. I recounted the story. She actually said" Do you want me to get involved?"!!!!! Same woman called me and my friends racists AFTER a staff meeting to which I had invited two Rastafarian Youth workers to talk to the staff about being black in Derbyshire, in a virtually all white school. She never said a word during the extremely interesting and insightful meeting. At a later date She said to me that " Ofsted might want to come in to look at the policy on equal opportunities/race....as a sort of threat to me.....until I had to point out that I was head of RE and PHSE, She was responsible for school policy in this area. We did some team teaching one day, repeated the same lesson twice. Even on the second lesson she constantly asked me..." what do we do next? What do we say now?". I was better off without her. She organised an end of school pre Christmas staff meeting involving staff , governors and other members of the community....I'm not joking, the first half hour of the meeting involved staff going to various parts of the school to get chairs and to set up the room..she hadn't given that a thought ( she would have loved observing a lesson and offering advice, pre inspection), the rest of the meeting was a joke, she was obviously making it up as the event went on,she asked people to speak with no pre warning. I could go on . The only thing of note she achieved was to get a fridge in the staffroom....I can remember her pointing to the fridge and saying " The magic is working " She will be on a good pension now. I do apologise that this is totally irrelevant and insignificant in light of the the subject of this thread, but I wanted to get it off my chest.
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Post by Huddysleftfoot on Jan 11, 2024 8:38:58 GMT
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Post by Huddysleftfoot on Jan 11, 2024 8:47:55 GMT
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Post by superjw on Jan 11, 2024 9:27:52 GMT
Assuming the bonuses were taxpayer money, a bonus paid out on an unlawful conviction will mean the bonus itself becomes unlawful and should be clawed back. Out of everything bonus related they try to worm out of, this one they will have to do, by extension it will mean those in receipt of said bonuses have done so unlawfully too…
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Post by franklin on Jan 11, 2024 11:39:08 GMT
Just watched the "lead/ Head of investigation" and I'll be honest he's fucking thick and has admitted to the enquiry that he lied on statements and allowed others/ solicitors to draft evidential statements for him to just sign for Court. He'll be looking forward to being arrested and interviewed himself very shortly the cunt.
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Post by Northy on Jan 11, 2024 11:41:29 GMT
Just watched the "lead/ Head of investigation" and I'll be honest he's fucking thick and has admitted to the enquiry that he lied on statements and allowed others/ solicitors to draft evidential statements for him to just sign for Court. He'll be looking forward to being arrested and interviewed himself very shortly the cunt. What was that on? I'll see if it's on catch up later.
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Post by Paul Spencer on Jan 11, 2024 12:24:16 GMT
My old man raised a good point. When was the last accusation against a postmaster made? Can you believe that it was in 2021! Two years AFTER the trial!
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Post by maxplonk on Jan 11, 2024 13:01:18 GMT
The thread following this tweet makes for dire reading.
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Post by Paul Spencer on Jan 11, 2024 13:35:14 GMT
The thread following this tweet makes for dire reading. Utterly horrendous, thank the Lord for people like Dan Niedle, whose credentials are top drawer and even in the face of extreme intimidation (from Zahawi's lawyers), has in the past, shown that he's got the bollocks to stand up and fight for what's right. This is exactly what makes me so nervous about mass pardons and unified compensation offers. Call me a cynical old twat but I can't help feeling, that they (Government/Post Office/Fujitsu) will have worked out, that the best way to avoid prosecutions against them and having to pay million+ pound individual payouts to the victims, is to make the offer they've made. I just hope that there are now plenty of lawyers prepared to act pro bono, now that the potential rewards are so very much bigger.
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Post by maxplonk on Jan 11, 2024 13:45:21 GMT
The thread following this tweet makes for dire reading. Utterly horrendous, thank the Lord for people like Dan Niedle, whose credentials are top drawer and even in the face of extreme intimidation (from Zahawi's lawyers), has in the past, shown that he's got the bollocks to stand up and fight for what's right. This is exactly what makes me so nervous about mass pardons and unified compensation offers. Call me a cynical old twat but I can't help feeling, that they (Government/Post Office/Fujitsu) will have worked out, that the best way to avoid prosecutions against them and having to pay million+ pound individual payouts to the victims, is to make the offer they've made. I just hope that there are now plenty of lawyers prepared to act pro bono, now that the potential rewards are so very much bigger. Well I won't call you a cynical twat (don't know how old you are, sorry) especially when the similarities to previous injustices are considered: And I understand Lucy Powell MP has made a similar argument in the Commons today.
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Post by AlliG on Jan 11, 2024 14:04:54 GMT
I think I read that there are/were in the region of 19,600 sub-post offices around the country. What I don't understand is that as Horizon has never functioned correctly even before going live why are there "only" these 750-ish prosecutions. I assume that even now there are still some subpostmasters who have sadly been affected still to come forward, but why hasn't the problem affected every post office as the system itself is so obviously faulty and unfit for purpose ? Maybe I've missed this answer but it just seems strange it's been "selective" for want of a better word. The more that you see and read about this scandal the more shocking it becomes. Broken computer systems aren't generally completely broken. (It would make life so much easier if they were). There will be 1,000s of people affected over and above the ones we know about. Some severely, some less so and there will probably be some who have not been affected. I can give you my own personal experience with massive new computer systems. 15 years ago I went on a 9 week error checking secondment on a new high tech computer system about to be launched at the company where I worked. That 9 weeks ended up as 9 months at the end of which the CEO decided enough time and expenditure had been spent on trying to fix the system and the decision was made to launch "warts and all". (I was not allowed to raise secondary errors that I had come across in the system that did not relate to the specific items I was testing because "someone else is looking at that part of the system".) I spent the next 10 years doing audit and working with MI from the new system and was still identifying new issues when I retired. The problems tend to come from a number of sources. Just a few simple ones might be 1) Poor initial programming. (That can be something as basic as the person setting the requirements not really understanding how the system will be used in a day to day environment and providing unclear instructions to the programmer. In my organisation, the specification was drawn up by high level management, the design was done in Barcelona and the programming in India) 2) Errors caused when 2 parts of an entry combine to create an issue 3) How the user system communicates with any external systems. 4) How the MI systems work, if they are being used for the audit process. (For example, the introduction of various characters in business names (i.e. @ ) used to break the MI report. If you don't know what you expect to see, it is easy to miss) 5) A failure (or lack) of an audit/ on-going review of the system itself and a proper review, revise, test and upgrade process when issues are identified. The one common factor is that all these are management failure issues.
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Post by Paul Spencer on Jan 11, 2024 14:22:14 GMT
15 years ago I went on a 9 week error checking secondment on a new high tech computer system about to be launched at the company where I worked. That 9 weeks ended up as 9 months at the end of which the CEO decided enough time and expenditure had been spent on trying to fix the system and the decision was made to launch "warts and all". I spent the next 10 years doing audit and working with MI from the new system and was still identifying new issues when I retired. It wouldn't surprise me if something very similar happened in the Horizon case. And over time, management both at Fujitsu and the Post Office in an attempt to protect their bonuses, by hiding the fact that the system was compromised, destroyed the lives of thousands of subpostmasters, in the belief they could still ultimately fix it. Essentially, once the lie had begun, they had to keep on lying, to protect the lie that they had subscribed to, until they managed to fix the system. But they never could. They bet and lost and now it's time to pay up.
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Post by fullmetaljacket on Jan 11, 2024 14:48:44 GMT
Dying on his arse this Royal mail guy in the enquiry.
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Post by Paul Spencer on Jan 11, 2024 14:55:59 GMT
Dying on his arse this Royal mail guy in the enquiry. It's absolutely incredible isn't it? If his claims that his witness statements weren't written by him but by PO lawyers then this is dynamite! You can only imagine this is exactly why the powers that be, don't want every individual case to be revisited ... Bradshaw is bricking himself isn't he? We've moved into another stage now and to think he is still on the PO payroll!: twitter.com/search?q=Bradshaw&src=typed_query
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Post by shakermaker on Jan 11, 2024 15:11:47 GMT
Ageed Chuffed, For me the personal issue rests on who, with executive or managerial responsibility, knew that there were major issues with Horizon, when they knew and what they did about it.....in all three organisations...Fujitsu, the Government/Parliament and the Post Office. Whether those people are covered by Corporate Law could mean that they avoid prosecution? Also what needs to be looked at are the Sub postmaster contracts which are probably illegal in themselves, the concept of making up the shortfalls, if they contained illegal clauses it is irrelevant if the sub postmasters signed them. The managerial ladder within Fujitsu really needs to be forensically looked at, if someone somewhere knew the shit was about to hit the fan and that their best defence, ie,tell the phone handlers to lie hoping it would go away then heads have to roll. Interesting yesterday that whilst the Nikkei was rising generally, guess whose value was dropping. I suspect they'll get dragged kicking and screaming into this whether they want to or not. I worked as a temp at ICL based at Kidsgrove, and was there during the transition to Fujitsu. I worked on the Rollout Support Helpdesk of IT infrastructure to HMRC, but the Pathway project (which rolled out Horizon) ran on helpdesks alongside me – this was from 2000-2001. God I wish I had worked on Pathway, I’d have probably been able to confirm whether call desk operatives had been given a corporate line to tell Post Office staff, not to mention who was Horizon Programme Director at the time. What I can say about ICL/Fujitsu is that the management were two-faced, self-serving cunts. They’d joke with you and say you’re doing a good job, then the next minute they sack you. If your face didn’t fit, they’d find a way to get rid and that’s what happened with me. Thankfully I went on to better things.
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Post by Huddysleftfoot on Jan 11, 2024 15:25:19 GMT
Never too difficult to join the dots is it?
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Post by Paul Spencer on Jan 11, 2024 15:34:49 GMT
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Post by felonious on Jan 11, 2024 15:35:41 GMT
Dying on his arse this Royal mail guy in the enquiry. It's absolutely incredible isn't it? If his claims that his witness statements weren't written by him but by PO lawyers then this is dynamite! You can only imagine this is exactly why the powers that be, don't want every individual case to be revisited ... Bradshaw is bricking himself isn't he? We've moved into another stage now and to think he is still on the PO payroll!: twitter.com/search?q=Bradshaw&src=typed_queryI strongly suspect that any lawyer involved in these cases will have covered their arses not that they need to because they are so heavily regulated by their profession they would never go anywhere near an untruth, lie. distortion of the facts, etc I'm sure a legal expert will be along soon to confirm this.
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Post by chuffedstokie on Jan 11, 2024 15:44:54 GMT
You can only hope that they'll get the bastards responsible even though they've gone. That won't be easy I'm betting. As you say, how bloody convenient.
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Post by shakermaker on Jan 11, 2024 16:06:13 GMT
You can only hope that they'll get the bastards responsible even though they've gone. That won't be easy I'm betting. As you say, how bloody convenient. The rats are starting to turn on each other. Andrew Bolc and Gareth Jenkins outed by Bradshaw as willingly overlooking capture of key data to support investigations. Bolc now works for Tuckers Solicitors. Not sure what legal regulation can protect dereliction of duty. Jenkins as Chief IT Architect must surely have known about any issues.
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Post by salopstick on Jan 11, 2024 16:13:02 GMT
On the 23rd of December 2022, Cartwright King Solicitors entered administration and its assets were acquired by a new company, with a completely new management team. None of the employees, owners or managers who were involved in advising the Post Office remain with the new company and had left Cartwright King prior to its acquisition by the new owners. How much responsibility should this new company have. If they have gone "bust" on purpose surely they would have changed name
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Post by Paul Spencer on Jan 11, 2024 16:41:33 GMT
On the 23rd of December 2022, Cartwright King Solicitors entered administration and its assets were acquired by a new company, with a completely new management team. None of the employees, owners or managers who were involved in advising the Post Office remain with the new company and had left Cartwright King prior to its acquisition by the new owners. How much responsibility should this new company have. If they have gone "bust" on purpose surely they would have changed name Who said the new company should have ANY responsibility? What is convenient, is that the law firm who Bradshaw fingered today, no longer exists.
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Post by Northy on Jan 11, 2024 16:41:51 GMT
Never too difficult to join the dots is it? How are they linked, I've tried searching but can't find anything, albeit there is a lot of results coming up atm. Interestingly on searching I see the New Statesman lists a few of the contracts and also the regulators (civil servants) etc who didn't do their job/auditing on contracts www.newstatesman.com/business/2024/01/post-office-scandal-fujitsu-blame
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