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Watched the Mr Bates 4 part series, and a few things didn't make much sense to me. The balancing. Perhaps because more was cash, but I would have expected som

Watched the Mr Bates 4 part series, and a few things didn't make much sense to me. The balancing. Perhaps because more was cash, but I would have expected some logging to have shown "at 4pm, the account had cash on hand of X pounds. at 4:08pm, the account had 2300 pounds less". Would that not have been useful? But watching (yes, it was a dramatization, but it didn't seem like much), it seems like PO did not want to admit any fault, ever, at all, and just kept sticking to that far beyond the time when they could have just cut their loss, held up their hands, and said "hey - problem identified, we'll fix it". If I sold 5000 pounds of stuff, and should have received 5000 pounds, and... I have 5000 pounds on hand, but the computer says I have a shortfall 1000 pounds... how is that defensible? Where did the money 'go'? If I had 4000 pounds on hand, but the computer then said I should have 6000, and I'm short 2000 pounds... why wasn't that discpreancy noted? Also.. what was the motivation behind all the changes? The whistleblower seemed to indicate this was remote people at horizon "fixing" things by hand. Were these all just 'accidents' no one owned up to? The drama seemed to indicate there was some intentional retaliation against some people, but it couldn't have been intentional in all cases. But also... it doesn't sound like anyone at Horizon stole that money, they were just changing figures in a system.

Marazan 3y ago
One of the bugs in the system was that one of the data entry screens which postmasters recorded their takings would routinely freeze. If you hit "Return" again whilst the screen was frozen it would silently submit the figures again. So if you had £4000 of takings and submitted, got the frozen screen bug and hit return again then the Post Office thought you had £8000 of takings. These were _incredibly obvious_ duplicate entry errors when the Post Office investigated but they blindly took the system as perfect and automatically assumed criminality on the part of the postmaster. NOTHING about this makes any sense if you assume people on the Post Office/Fujitsu side were acting in good faith.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  > These were _incredibly obvious_ duplicate entry errors when the Post Office investigated but they blindly took the system as perfect and automatically assumed criminality on the part of the postmaster They did not blindly take the system as perfect, but instead they were well aware of the errors and instead decided to bully the sub postmasters and gain bonuses for successful prosecution. They knew exactly what they were doing and took pains to hide any evidence of the shortcomings of Horizon.
  - mgkimsal 3y ago
    Outside of ego/reputation, I can't see what the coverup provided. Maybe that's all it was. Crazy.
contravariant 3y ago
You're about 1 or 2 steps away from reinventing double entry bookkeeping. Buy yeah in a proper accounting system you'd have those entries which would be easy to check, and nobody would be able to remove or edit them and the system would keep track of who was responsible for which entry. This system works well enough that it can be done with pen and paper. Perhaps consolidating some stuff from time to time (but keeping the calculations for X years). As far as I can tell Horizon wasn't playing by the rules, either because of bugs or because of badly designed secret admin access (maybe to fix those bugs, but you can guess how well that goes).

Marazan 3y ago

One of the bugs in the system was that one of the data entry screens which postmasters recorded their takings would routinely freeze. If you hit "Return" again whilst the screen was frozen it would silently submit the figures again. So if you had £4000 of takings and submitted, got the frozen screen bug and hit return again then the Post Office thought you had £8000 of takings. These were _incredibly obvious_ duplicate entry errors when the Post Office investigated but they blindly took the system as perfect and automatically assumed criminality on the part of the postmaster. NOTHING about this makes any sense if you assume people on the Post Office/Fujitsu side were acting in good faith.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
> These were _incredibly obvious_ duplicate entry errors when the Post Office investigated but they blindly took the system as perfect and automatically assumed criminality on the part of the postmaster They did not blindly take the system as perfect, but instead they were well aware of the errors and instead decided to bully the sub postmasters and gain bonuses for successful prosecution. They knew exactly what they were doing and took pains to hide any evidence of the shortcomings of Horizon.
- mgkimsal 3y ago
  Outside of ego/reputation, I can't see what the coverup provided. Maybe that's all it was. Crazy.

contravariant 3y ago

You're about 1 or 2 steps away from reinventing double entry bookkeeping. Buy yeah in a proper accounting system you'd have those entries which would be easy to check, and nobody would be able to remove or edit them and the system would keep track of who was responsible for which entry. This system works well enough that it can be done with pen and paper. Perhaps consolidating some stuff from time to time (but keeping the calculations for X years). As far as I can tell Horizon wasn't playing by the rules, either because of bugs or because of badly designed secret admin access (maybe to fix those bugs, but you can guess how well that goes).