I've Talked About This Before But I Trhink We Need To Revisit........

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60374182
It just beggars belief that anyone could have been prosecuted, surely all they had to do was produce a list of transactions and do the arithmetic independently. I just cannot see how any of these cases could possibly be proven. All I would do is get them to agree on the transactions then get the arithmetic done independently. It seems the PO chiefs were telling the courts that 2+2=5 and they were getting believed. The SPMs where even putting their own money in! FGS! shameful episode.

[Togo]

Guess who will be stumping up the compensation though. The innocent public will once again get the bill. Venells and every one of her accomplices should be dispossesed and the proceeds put into the kitty, not living in mansions with gold plated pension pots and the proceeds of a crime in the secret bank account.

[Togo]

They were doing the adding up ... adding up in ways that would protect their own complicity, or at least employing auditors that were compliant. When the Postmaster provided independent accounts, that they had indeed added up in the old school way, the Post Office called them liars.

[ToraToraTora]

talking about independently, for the court case.

[Togo]

It would have had to have been a long day at the office for the CPS, plod, the lawyers or the judges to buck nigh on 200 years of what were exemplary standards of business practice and trust based on honesty from the Post Office, for them to ask for "independant accounts". Venells and her accomplices knew this and hid behind it. Their behaviour has shattered that trust along with the lives of the Post Office managers who were ruined.

[ToraToraTora]

yes but ultimately the software would be able to list out all the raw input data then it could be checked and the discrepancy found. Just do one or two cases to start with. The defence lawyers should have been doing that.

[Togo]

Anyone know how long these cases against the post masters/mistresses have been going on? I do. They started in 2000 up until 2014. Ken McDonald, Kier Starmer, and Alison Saunders were in charge at the cps during those years. Only one of them served a full term during the prosecutions. As the original op advised. Keep adding it up.

[ToraToraTora]

that's just the elapsed time, the first sniff of an issue someone should have done the analysis, the figures are probably still available even now.

[jackthehat]

It wasn't just that the software couldn't complete simple adding and subtracting, it also made false transactions for which there was no accounting (in all senses of the word).
If your machine said you had processed £ 78,000 of transactions but your till-drawer only contained £ 60,000 - the automatic assumption was that you had stolen the missing money. The bosses absolutely refused to acknowledge that there was a massive glitch; to a man, or in the CEOs case, a woman, they were very happy to call their employees thieves and see them imprisoned.

[ToraToraTora]

"If your machine said you had processed £ 78,000 of transactions but your till-drawer only contained £ 60,000 - the automatic assumption was that you had stolen the missing money." - yes but there would be a record of each transaction that could be matched and show that the software was wrong. Sorry I've worked in IT all my life and I just keep thinking about how I would have demonstrated the package was flawed.

[ToraToraTora]

I wonder if they'd been so head in the sand if the errors had been the other way.

[tiggerblue10]

They probably weren't interested in all that, TTT, they were more concerned that money was going missing than the background data.

[jackthehat]

They weren't allowed to 'prove' anything.
The PO said their system was fine...beyond reproach...worked absolutely perfectly.
I doubt you are the only person who felt that access to the raw data would vindicate those who were under suspicion.
That's probably another question for the PO to answer; why weren't the accused given full access to information which would have exonerated them?

[ToraToraTora]

tigs: "They probably weren't interested in all that, TTT, they were more concerned that money was going missing than the background data. " - yes but the legal reps of the prosecuted should have been when they started prosecuting.

[ToraToraTora]

they would have had to prove theft and the same data would have had to have been made available to the defence. It's almost as if the Judiciary ignored their processes too.

[tiggerblue10]

In hindsight, yes they should've asked for this to be obtained but at the time (dating back to 2000 I think) running raw data reports may not have been thought of by the defence teams. IT systems back then were not as sophisticated as they are now. But then the figures could be skewed by the wrong data being inputted in the first place so any reports that are run would just throw up inaccurate data anyway.

[bobbinwales]

Yes I am suprised none of the defence lawyers pressed for real proof and for proper scrutiny of the systyems.

I can only think the defence lawyers were going through the motion's and expected the postmasters were guilty.

[ToraToraTora]

sorry Tiggs, none of that is true.

[ToraToraTora]

Tiggs: "IT systems back then were not as sophisticated as they are now." - you may be surprised to know that most of the heavy lifting in IT is still done by stuff written in the 80s running on IBM mainframes. 8/10 cash machines for example are talking to a COBOL/DB2 system. We have code last assembled in the 70s, we run a custody system written 40 years ago.

[ToraToraTora]

list of companies still using IBM mainframes:
https://ibmmainframes.com/references/a41.html
that means they use an operating system derived from system 360 from the 60s. very little is new in computing software wise, faster and better hardware make more possible.

[Peter Pedant]

we have had this before
and we have a post office mgr lurking on AB

he commented at the first glitch - he checked the transactions with xcel and it all came out OK....

but I dont think the victims clicked that it didnt add proper

Of the hundreds of victims , the post office havent given up but have taken the view they have to appeal because - - - some of them WERE stealing !