#Horizon Scandal

[superbeans89]

‘Sorry for screwing over your entire organisation for 25 years. Here’s a knighthood.’

[insidecroydon]

Post Office scandal: 'I wept for a few hours' says Tory MP

Stamp of approval: Mr Bates vs The Post Office, aired this week, has brought to broader public attention the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history Millions of television viewers have been horrified by the impact of the Horizon IT scandal, brought to their screens this week in a shocking mini-series. According to one MP, the government can’t do enough for ‘those who have been…

[fabricdragondesigns]

Scandal: Poorly Designed Software Led to HUNDREDS of False Convictions |...

[inexpressiblybeatiful]

I wonder what Mycroft's reaction and response would be to the whole Kate Middleton saga. 😂

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

SCREAMING at all of you to watch Mr Bates vs. The Post Office (on itvx in the uk and idk maybe britbox internationally or……. u know….. i’m sure you can find it somewhere….)

[thelandofbritain]

Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Horizon whistleblower - BBC News

It's all coming out now, after all these years.

The UK Post Office has been managed by probably corrupt, and certainly incompetent individuals who have tried to cover up some kind of dubious deal with Fujitsu over this faulty Horizon software.

Their actions have ruined the lives of nearly 800 sub-postmasters and their families over the course of over 20 years, many of whom were tragically bankrupted and even wrongly jailed.

Many £millions in taxpayer money was paid to Fujitsu and we now need to know the names of the guilty who caused this huge miscarriage of justice.

Financial compensation alone doesn't even come close to putting this right.

[muninnhuginn]

kinda neat how media can be used as a jumping off point to learn about new things. there are the obvious things like documentaries, but then there are all sorts of other things. when 'hamilton' first got big, you ended up with people learning about aaron burr and the new york water system and various trivia from usa history around that era which wasn't even featured in the musical itself.

when 'mr bates vs the post office' came out recently over here (UK), a whole lot of people were able to appreciate the impact the whole horizon/post office affair had on its victims. sure, the story has been in the news for a few years now, but it's the first time it's been a story actively discussed in daily life. and people learning more about it has actively pushed the government to consider speeding up compensation or mass exonerations.

and even aside from these obvious instances, there are a lot that don't tell you up front and you realise as you're watching. when shows and films and books reference real life events through the veneer of fiction. suzume, referencing the tohoku earthquake of 2011 (something I imagine pretty much every japanese citizen is aware of - suzume's own age is very deliberate in how she lost her mother to the quake. she was very young at the time it happened, but it still had a huge impact on her and many others). link click, referencing the 2008 sichuan earthquake (and deliberately having the arc revolve around school-age children in a run-down old building when irl one of the reasons the casualties were so high was because of poor construction of school buildings). various kdramas referencing generational SK disasters: imf financial crisis (explored in 'reborn rich', but I imagine many other shows), sampoong department store collapse (referenced in 'move to heaven', but again, once I knew the history, it made a lot of sense why so many corrupt villains in kdramas were specifically involved in construction).

it's a mix of how, if you know the events being referenced, they'll impact you more. but if you don't know the events, then it gives you a reason to learn. I personally had very very vague memories of the 2008 earthquake, just in terms of some clips on the news at the time. I had no idea about the various factors that made the disaster so much worse until I realised what was being referenced when watching the show and decided to read up on it.

I have somewhat conflicted feelings on how fictional (or dramatised in the case of mr bates) media approaches specifically *disasters*, as opposed to other historical events, but I think the shows I've mentioned here at least take a victim-first approach.

[anch-vaviel]

Last year's VS this year's birthday party with my lovely friends on Vaviel! A lot has changed over the past year but we're still all besties!

2022:

2023:

[insidecroydon]

Post Office closure deals new blow for Croydon High Street

Union boss describes closures plan by scandal-hit business as ‘immoral’, as 115 Crown Post Offices are to go and 1,000 workers face redundancy In the latest low blow to blighted Croydon High Street, the Post Office has this morning confirmed that its Croydon branch is among the 115 that it is closing to reduce costs to secure its financial future. Days are numbered: Croydon’s town centre Post…

[transpondster]

The Post Office scandal is about two things. First, the ease with which corporate executives were able to pursue, demonise and destroy completely innocent people, particularly using the justification that technology should always be trusted over humans. And second, the ease with which those bigwigs have been able to escape any accountability themselves for doing something far, far worse than anything they wrongly accused their most junior underlings of. They escaped it for decades, and are still escaping it. It is not just Vennells who has questions to answer far beyond the issue of that CBE. There is a whole host of senior figures from the Post Office, Royal Mail and Fujitsu (which supplied and maintained the Horizon system) who were involved in or stood by the long-term policy of pursuing and privately prosecuting postmasters, as well as successive ministers from the Gordon Brown administration onwards who were made aware of the problems and either didn’t really listen or chose to believe the Post Office. These are all people we should be furiously keen to hear more from. 

 Not for them the maximum-security prisons, the social ostracisation, the bankruptcies, the mental and physical breakdowns, the giving birth wearing an electronic tag. Ministers come and go but the executives failed upwards. The upper tiers of business in this country seem almost impossible to be cast out from. One simply moves on lucratively elsewhere. A certain status of person in our society can be imprisoned for theft (or for non-theft, as it would turn out). Yet for actions that led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, to the ruination of hundreds of lives – well, not one person has ever even been charged. In a lot of cases, they seem to have been promoted.

[lost-carcosa]

[voxpeople]

In Short: Post Office Pledges Give Tories Lead in Polls by 100%

A recent poll shows that pledges made by the Conservative party and leader Rish! Sunak to ensure justice for those effected by the Post Office Horizon scandal now sees them with an unassailable lead of 100% over Labour.

This comes in stark contrast to their declining popularity and public outrage in the party after numerous scandals and shortcomings since being returned to office in 2019.

These numbers show newfound overwhelming public approval in the current government and the Conservatives now look to retain and even improve their majority in this year's general election.

[nextwavefutures]

Busy doing the wrong things

Busy doing the wrong things: The Post Office governance systems were missing in action during the scandal because the Board and the government were obsessed with ‘breaking even by 2020’. New post.

This is Part 2 of a two part post on the UK’s Post Office scandal. In Part 1, I described the mindset that made the organisation behave as badly as it did. In this part, I discuss why governance didn’t work. When the Post Office Horizon scandal starts in 1999, with the roll-out of the computer system by Fujitsu to Post Office branches, the Post Office is a division of the Royal Mail, which at…

[headlinehorizon]

Political Challenges and Scandals Surrounding NYC Mayor Eric Adams: The Headline Horizon

Catch up on the latest news surrounding New York City Mayor Eric Adams as he faces mounting political challenges and scandals reminiscent of former Governor Andrew Cuomo's downfall.