[Youngian]

Farage has found the culprit

[Watchman]

My understanding (i.e. not legally trained), and this probably relates more to criminal law; the CPS makes a decision to prosecute, or not, based on he evidence brought to them by the police. Now, if that evidence is corrupted in favour of the police (and public opinion) e.g. various "IRA trials", then the CPS is likely to come to the conclusion to prosecute. Thus we apply the same principle to the Post Office situation, the whole thing was kept under wraps, if the CPS had become aware, then they would have had the government and the PO stating "nothing to see here its only 1 or 2 wrong 'uns."
The CPS does not have the power, and nor should it, to investigate

[Youngian]

Stoke Newington Drugs Squad in the 90s is a rare example of a state institution whose testimony became worthless to prosecutors due to being so bent. But the Post Office!
This is not on Ed Davey, Starmer, Paul Sculley or the boogie but a criminal conspiracy executed by PO staff. Sending down your employees to cover up an incompetent IT system isn’t what anyone would suspect the Post Office to be doing.

[Youngian]

Tale of two MPs who put in the hard yards on behalf of victims.

The real heroes of this scandal are its victims, but Tory and Labour backbenchers have played a key role in getting justice. https://inews.co.uk/opinion/mr-bates-vs ... od-2844609

[kreuzberger]

I am just hoping that bagging a CBE is a gateway drug.

Soon, public opinion can start smoking knights of the realm and then work its way up to freebasing fully-fledged princes. Tear down this ghastly establishment edifice and forge a decent society in the glowing embers.

All cunts.

[AOB]

If Michelle Mone was as clever as she thinks she is she'd use this opportunity to give the £200m of taxpayers money that she and her husband got for their dubious PPE contracts to the compensation scheme for the wrongly accused in this Post Office scandal. It would get her good PR, might even get the National Crime Agency off her case. If she has a conscience it might even help clear it.

[Bones McCoy]

If Michelle Mone was as clever as she thinks she is she'd use this opportunity to give the £200m of taxpayers money that she and her husband got for their dubious PPE contracts to the compensation scheme for the wrongly accused in this Post Office scandal. It would get her good PR, might even get the National Crime Agency off her case. If she has a conscience it might even help clear it.

The first rule of the gravy train is "You ever return the money".

Hand back an un-monetizable gong by all means, but hodl on to the cash.

[AOB]

Sadly true.

[Watchman]

They really are. all now crawling out of the woodwork

From the i: ''Fujitsu's chief lobbyist, Clark Vasey is also the co-founder of a right-wing pressure group of Tories. Clark Vasey has been Fujitsu's UK head of corporate affairs since 2014 and was selected as a conservative party candidate in 2017 (but lost) and is director and founder of the 'blue collar conservatives (!) which he set up with Esther McVey (common sense minister). ''

[slilley]

The Post Office Inquiry is rapidly becoming the new Covid Inquiry as the thing to livestream.

I watched Stephen Bradshaw yesterday morning and I was horrified. Now for some context I am a Quality Auditor by trade. I look at processes and ask people how those processes work and they show me and show me evidence to back up what they have said.

Bradshaw was supposedly an experienced Post Office Investigator. Yesterday his "defence" if you like was " I investigated crimes handed over papers to cartwright King or the PO's Lega; Department and they did the rest". he was supposedly the disclosure officer signing off that all material had passed to the defence, when pushed on this he admitted he assumed the legal people would do that. No wonder material that could have assisted the defence in a number of cases was never handed over.

He took the Horizon evidence that there was a shortfall at face value and when those accused said they had contacted the helpdesk with queries he never followed up those claims to see if they had any merit. He never asked what the bugs and problems were to get some sort of basic understanding. He claimed he acted in a professional way at all times, but when you read the transcripts of interviews with people suspected of wrongdoing, it is clear that is not the case.

I see today (Friday) will see some of the legal folk being questioned about the disclosure of material. let's be under no illusion the Court of Appeal in the past has taken a very dim view of prosecutors failing to disclose material relevant to the defence. Could be an interesting day.

[Crabcakes]

If Michelle Mone was as clever as she thinks she is she'd use this opportunity to give the £200m of taxpayers money that she and her husband got for their dubious PPE contracts to the compensation scheme for the wrongly accused in this Post Office scandal. It would get her good PR, might even get the National Crime Agency off her case. If she has a conscience it might even help clear it.

If Michelle Mone was as clever as she thinks she is, we wouldn’t know about her dubious PPE contracts. But thankfully, she isn’t!

[Watchman]

And another one

Simon Blagden, part of Fujitsu UK leadership team during much of the scandal, now oversees £5bn broadband programme
A Tory donor and former bigwig at the tech giant at the heart of the Post Office scandal was rewarded with a job running the government’s broadband rollout – three years after his old firm was found to be at fault. Simon Blagden, who stepped down as non-executive director at Fujitsu UK in 2019, was made chair of the government agency responsible for delivering faster broadband and mobile coverage in 2022.

[Youngian]

Shame plays a big part in Japanese corporate governance. Guess the concept is culturally alien to British values.

[MisterMuncher]

The Post Office Inquiry is rapidly becoming the new Covid Inquiry as the thing to livestream.

I watched Stephen Bradshaw yesterday morning and I was horrified. Now for some context I am a Quality Auditor by trade. I look at processes and ask people how those processes work and they show me and show me evidence to back up what they have said.

Bradshaw was supposedly an experienced Post Office Investigator. Yesterday his "defence" if you like was " I investigated crimes handed over papers to cartwright King or the PO's Lega; Department and they did the rest". he was supposedly the disclosure officer signing off that all material had passed to the defence, when pushed on this he admitted he assumed the legal people would do that. No wonder material that could have assisted the defence in a number of cases was never handed over.

He took the Horizon evidence that there was a shortfall at face value and when those accused said they had contacted the helpdesk with queries he never followed up those claims to see if they had any merit. He never asked what the bugs and problems were to get some sort of basic understanding. He claimed he acted in a professional way at all times, but when you read the transcripts of interviews with people suspected of wrongdoing, it is clear that is not the case.

I see today (Friday) will see some of the legal folk being questioned about the disclosure of material. let's be under no illusion the Court of Appeal in the past has taken a very dim view of prosecutors failing to disclose material relevant to the defence. Could be an interesting day.

If I may ask your professional opinion on this, I have a bit of a Columbo feeling on all this. The one thing that just keeps bothering me is that this dude, and others like him, acting as the functional cops in this story, are suddenly seeing evidence of mass crimes amongst a group of people who've never shown such behaviour before. Surely at some stage, probably before the cases pushed into triple figures, one of them should have had that moment to wonder if the reports were legitimate?

To me, that's probably even more impressive negligence than the original IT fuckup.

[Andy McDandy]

Corridor, whispered conversation, "don't be a cunt" advice given.

Once it starts, you can't stop without admitting you were wrong all along. Easier to keep the mugs apart, in their little silos. At first it's because you don't want to admit you spent millions on a piece of junk. Then it's because if one conviction falls apart, you're all in the shit. Eventually the cover-up needs to keep on going, because it's everyone's arse if it falls apart. You've killed so many people, you can only get away with it by killing any potential witnesses. And blowing up where you killed them. And burning the ashes.

[Crabcakes]

Once Labour are in, I think the biggest growth industry in the U.K. is going to be public inquiries.

[slilley]

The Post Office Inquiry is rapidly becoming the new Covid Inquiry as the thing to livestream.

I watched Stephen Bradshaw yesterday morning and I was horrified. Now for some context I am a Quality Auditor by trade. I look at processes and ask people how those processes work and they show me and show me evidence to back up what they have said.

Bradshaw was supposedly an experienced Post Office Investigator. Yesterday his "defence" if you like was " I investigated crimes handed over papers to cartwright King or the PO's Lega; Department and they did the rest". he was supposedly the disclosure officer signing off that all material had passed to the defence, when pushed on this he admitted he assumed the legal people would do that. No wonder material that could have assisted the defence in a number of cases was never handed over.

He took the Horizon evidence that there was a shortfall at face value and when those accused said they had contacted the helpdesk with queries he never followed up those claims to see if they had any merit. He never asked what the bugs and problems were to get some sort of basic understanding. He claimed he acted in a professional way at all times, but when you read the transcripts of interviews with people suspected of wrongdoing, it is clear that is not the case.

I see today (Friday) will see some of the legal folk being questioned about the disclosure of material. let's be under no illusion the Court of Appeal in the past has taken a very dim view of prosecutors failing to disclose material relevant to the defence. Could be an interesting day.

If I may ask your professional opinion on this, I have a bit of a Columbo feeling on all this. The one thing that just keeps bothering me is that this dude, and others like him, acting as the functional cops in this story, are suddenly seeing evidence of mass crimes amongst a group of people who've never shown such behaviour before. Surely at some stage, probably before the cases pushed into triple figures, one of them should have had that moment to wonder if the reports were legitimate?

To me, that's probably even more impressive negligence than the original IT fuckup.

Mr Muncher

If I am auditing a process, and something comes up that is not as it should be, my first instinct is to dig a little further. There are two reasons. One is that it might be a one off, a simple typo or whatever, or secondly if you dig a little further you might uncover further examples of the process not working correctly. At which point you are into the realms of a Non-Conformity. As part of fixing that problem you would expect the process owner to do some root cause analysis, the 5Y method is the easiest, usualy if you ask why five times you get to the nub of the problem.

In the case of Mr Bradshaw he had Horizon based evidence that money was missing. He does not appear to have dug a little further to understand how that money went missing or indeed where it went, nor indeed to have dug further to get corroboration that the money was actually missing. Where was the analysis of bank accounts or lifestyle to see where the supposedly stolen money was going? there was none.

In my world of quality auditing, one error in operating a process does not indicate a systemic failure, it is the catalyst to look further to confirm one way or the other. Mr Bradshaw the non technical person that he is has taken the Horizon evidence as gospel and that was that.

It is quite shocking as well that no one at the Post Office seems to have wondered why after the introduction of Horizon did there seem to be a mass outbreak of fraud by its staff. Indeed the prevailing attitude appears to be that Horizon had uncovered the fraud.

Having dug themselves into this hole the Post Office have tried to deflect and divert scrutiny at every opportunity. As with many scandals the cover up is as bad if not worse than the original problem.

I can well understand why when he was giving evidence he made sure he was legally represented and had the option of not incriminating himself.

Simon

[Abernathy]

I thought Bradshaw, under oath and all, was brazenly lying about never having said to any of his interviewees they were the only people experiencing problems with Horizon, and about having abused one woman, calling her a “bitch”.

[davidjay]

People like Bradshaw, whether they be high-level auditors or the blokes who walk high streets looking for dropped fag ends, are the sort of wannabe Robocops who seem themselves as scourging society of the scum that pollute the streets. They haven't got the ability, or the patience, to be real policemen, who they see as having their hands tied by red tape and wokeism so they pick on those who don't have the power or the knowledge to fight back. In other words, bullies.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I have seen allegations that there was an unacknowledged racism at work; that many of the sub-postmasters being investigated were Asian, and therefore, 'obviously', constantly on the fiddle.
That might explain why no other explanation was sought.