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Mr bates v the Post Office

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gonetomorrow said:
I'm finding it irksome that this business is increasingly being referred to as the Horizon Scandal.

It's the Post Office Scandal. It was Post Office managers and employees who acted like a gestapo, lied, obfuscated and ruined innocent people's lives.
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The post office (and in my experience royal mail) are ancient organisations, steeped in bullying tactics. All the senior managers responsible for this debacle need to be prosecuted first and foremost.
 
Putting people who have no knowledge of an industry or sector into CEO roles will likely lead to some disaster or under-performance. How people like Crozier and Vennels were given those roles absolutely stinks. Post Office has been run down for years and I wonder who that suits? It's just more of the same, starve a public utility of funds / put in lousy managers and then line them up for selling off / clearing the way for a private company to step in.
 
Horizon have been handed billions of contracts since this debacle started - the DWP the NHS who handed them out the present PM as Chancellor- new was fully aware of the ongoing compliant with the post office Figitsu should be made to pay out - plus post office mananent jailed....if proved they deliberately covered all this up !
 
davek said:
The Crown Prosecution Service is refusing to reveal Sir Keir Starmer’s role in the wrongful prosecution of subpostmasters after admitting it took at least 27 victims to court.

The CPS said it was combing through historic files and had found at least 27 prosecutions it had brought over issues linked to the Horizon IT computer system.

The defective IT system is blamed for hundreds of sub-postmasters being wrongly convicted in the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

The CPS said that once its trawl had been completed it expected to find about 50 cases in which it had launched prosecutions. More than 700 cases – the vast majority – were brought by the Post Office in private prosecutions.

But the CPS declined to say precisely when cases were taken to court, insisting it was looking at a time frame of 20 years between 2001 and 2020.

Sir Keir, the Labour Party leader, was head of the CPS between 2008 and 2013 as Director of Public Prosecutions.

The CPS refused to reveal if the cases took place between the dates Sir Keir was in charge of the organisation. Sir Keir and his party are favourite to win this year’s general election.

A CPS spokesman said: “The vast majority of these cases were private prosecutions brought by the Post Office. We’ve worked extensively and identified a small number of CPS cases which involved evidence connected to Horizon. In these cases, we have written to those defendants to disclose information so they could pursue an appeal.”

The CPS said the cases were taken on in “good faith”. The scandal first came to light in 2009 when Computer Weekly first raised questions about unsafe convictions and queried the Horizon IT system.


Sir Keir’s spokesman declined to comment on Tuesday night.
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I'm not sure if you know this Dave, but I would be surprised if Starmer was informed of many, most or all of those cases, let alone decide on them.

A duty officer at the CPS will decide. Does the Chief Constable of the police know about most people arrested or charged?
 

Joey66 said:
Horizon have been handed billions of contracts since this debacle started - the DWP the NHS who handed them out the present PM as Chancellor- new was fully aware of the ongoing compliant with the post office Figitsu should be made to pay out - plus post office mananent jailed....if proved they deliberately covered all this up !
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"my
whatsapps
have
magically
disappeared"

Come on man, it was all of three weeks ago.
 
PhilM said:
I'm not sure if you know this Dave, but I would be surprised if Starmer was informed of many, most or all of those cases, let alone decide on them.

A duty officer at the CPS will decide. Does the Chief Constable of the police know about most people arrested or charged?
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and those CPS case workers, they may ask questions abut the validity of the Horizon and other evidence and if they are told it is all tickety fluckety boo, what are they supposed to do? We need to be careful we dont create more victims in the clamour for justice
 
PhilM said:
I'm not sure if you know this Dave, but I would be surprised if Starmer was informed of many, most or all of those cases, let alone decide on them.

A duty officer at the CPS will decide. Does the Chief Constable of the police know about most people arrested or charged?
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….many government departments have their own legal departments and prosecute independantly without any association with CPS. My understanding is the PO had its own Solicitors Office.
 
PhilM said:
I'm not sure if you know this Dave, but I would be surprised if Starmer was informed of many, most or all of those cases, let alone decide on them.

A duty officer at the CPS will decide. Does the Chief Constable of the police know about most people arrested or charged?
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Would the Chief Constable know of one of the most notorious criminal acts in their entire career?
 
Eggs said:
….many government departments have their own legal departments and prosecute independantly without any association with CPS. My understanding is the PO had its own Solicitors Office.
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For private prosecutions, yes. For the public ones, they did go through the CPS.

arch stanton said:
and those CPS case workers, they may ask questions abut the validity of the Horizon and other evidence and if they are told it is all tickety fluckety boo, what are they supposed to do? We need to be careful we dont create more victims in the clamour for justice
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Exactly, as I've mentioned earlier. With hindsight, the system hasn't worked and the PO shouldn't have been believed, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

If you look at it on a case by case basis as they did at the time, with the belief that the PO was acting honestly, the CPS probably did believe it was a fair case.

The real problem was that the PO wasn't trustworthy and, if the evidence is correct, actively looked for prosecutions knowing the evidence wasn't there - fraud.

As I've said before, the CPS aren't blameless, but for some reason people are trying to twist this away, so we lose sight of how is actually to blame.

davek said:
Would the Chief Constable know of one of the most notorious criminal acts in their entire career?
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Hindsight tells us it is a most notorious act; at the time, many people believed that these individuals were criminals because of the lies of the post office.

So no, he or she wouldn't have known.
 

PhilM said:
For private prosecutions, yes. For the public ones, they did go through the CPS.


Exactly, as I've mentioned earlier. With hindsight, the system hasn't worked and the PO shouldn't have been believed, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

If you look at it on a case by case basis as they did at the time, with the belief that the PO was acting honestly, the CPS probably did believe it was a fair case.

The real problem was that the PO wasn't trustworthy and, if the evidence is correct, actively looked for prosecutions knowing the evidence wasn't there - fraud.

As I've said before, the CPS aren't blameless, but for some reason people are trying to twist this away, so we lose sight of how is actually to blame.


Hindsight tells us it is a most notorious act; at the time, many people believed that these individuals were criminals because of the lies of the post office.

So no, he or she wouldn't have known.
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I've got to say that on this occasion I think that you're wrong.

Where is the evidence you might well ask. It's obvious surely. @davek says otherwise and as we all know, he is never, ever wrong. No siree.
 

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