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Nice and all to make Fujitsu the (well deserved) fall guy, but it shouldn’t stop there. Everyone involved, from the Government top down to asinine middle manage

Nice and all to make Fujitsu the (well deserved) fall guy, but it shouldn’t stop there. Everyone involved, from the Government top down to asinine middle management that just blindly followed stupid software accusations without, you know, actually counting cash, should go to jail.

tjpnz 3y ago
Paula Vennells should be in a prison cell. A thoroughly nasty piece of work she is.
- belter 3y ago
  The UK does not jail Anglican priests... :-)
- surfingdino 3y ago
  It is unlikely anybody will go to prison. A report will be published, recommendations will be made, people will be paid some compensation, and that's that.
  - tiew9Vii 3y ago
    It’s sad the only people involved in this 20 year old plus saga who seen and ever will see a prison are the victims. The people knowingly sending innocent people to prison, and responsible for the suicides of innocent people directly due to the pressure of being wrongly accused and the management knowing wrongly accused will never be held accountable and see any consequences of their actions.
stephen_g 3y ago
You're right that Fujitsu shouldn't be made fall guy - although they should face massive fines, the Post Office management actually knew the software was buggy and witness statements from Fujitsu developers admitting to the bugs existing were altered by Post Office lawyers to remove references to those bugs (!). That is scandalous and people really need to go to jail over such a miscarriage of justice. It wasn't so much a matter of "not counting cash" though - it was counted frequently, and the problem was that when it was counted, bugs in the accounting system had accumulated to make it look like there was cash missing. These errors added up to a lot of money that never existed seemingly being missing. The crazy thing to me is how so many people (nine hundred!) could be prosecuted for exactly the same thing, with none of them having any seemingly unexplained wealth, suspicious transactions, money trail, or anything like that at all... I mean, sure, for the first few you might just think they were smart in hiding it, but even before they knew about the bugs and covered that up (and fraudulently kept prosecuting people), after a while surely alarm bells should have been going off somewhere. These were large sums of money, somebody should have stopped and asked "is the most likely scenario for this that we keep employing dozens and dozens of masterful money laundering thieves as postmasters and sub-postmasters, or is something else going wrong"!
- mdekkers 3y ago
  > It wasn't so much a matter of "not counting cash" though - it was counted frequently, and the problem was that when it was counted, bugs in the accounting system had accumulated to make it look like there was cash missing. These errors added up to a lot of money that never existed seemingly being missing. I should have been more clear, apologies. Counting cash isn’t just “we have xxx cash monies”, it should include “and going by actual sales, and services processed, we should have xxx cash monies”. We both appear to agree that if you are going to take folks to court or tribunal or something, hell even “let’s have a trip to HR”, you best have some proper evidence besides “computer said so”. > after a while surely alarm bells should have been going off somewhere. I am absolutely certain that alarm bells were going off all over the place about this, but mostly in a “cover my ass and hope it goes away” mode. _Lots_ of people belong in jail over this.
- d1sxeyes 3y ago
  I'm not familiar with the contract between Fujitsu and the UK government, but it is common practice in these types of contracts to have: 1. A sign-off process where the customer approves releases. 2. A bug reporting process where the customer is informed of any defects in the software and whatever corrective steps are being/need to be taken in order to fix them. Although I've seen quite a bit of evidence that the Horizon software was not fit for purpose, and it had serious bugs, I have not seen any evidence that Fujitsu hid that from the Post Office (evidence does seem exist that Fujitsu conspired with the Post Office to keep that evidence from judges in various trials). It's not a crime to produce bad software (thank goodness), even under contract. Fujitsu should face consequences for lying to courts, but it seems to me that the lion's share of the criminality here is on the side of the Post Office, and they are doing a (relatively) good job of spreading blame to Fujitsu for the bugs in Horizon, where the real scandal is the dogged approach to prosecutions taken by the Post Office despite very significant problems with the evidence which were known to them.

tjpnz 3y ago

Paula Vennells should be in a prison cell. A thoroughly nasty piece of work she is.

belter 3y ago
The UK does not jail Anglican priests... :-)
surfingdino 3y ago
It is unlikely anybody will go to prison. A report will be published, recommendations will be made, people will be paid some compensation, and that's that.
- tiew9Vii 3y ago
  It’s sad the only people involved in this 20 year old plus saga who seen and ever will see a prison are the victims. The people knowingly sending innocent people to prison, and responsible for the suicides of innocent people directly due to the pressure of being wrongly accused and the management knowing wrongly accused will never be held accountable and see any consequences of their actions.

stephen_g 3y ago

You're right that Fujitsu shouldn't be made fall guy - although they should face massive fines, the Post Office management actually knew the software was buggy and witness statements from Fujitsu developers admitting to the bugs existing were altered by Post Office lawyers to remove references to those bugs (!). That is scandalous and people really need to go to jail over such a miscarriage of justice. It wasn't so much a matter of "not counting cash" though - it was counted frequently, and the problem was that when it was counted, bugs in the accounting system had accumulated to make it look like there was cash missing. These errors added up to a lot of money that never existed seemingly being missing. The crazy thing to me is how so many people (nine hundred!) could be prosecuted for exactly the same thing, with none of them having any seemingly unexplained wealth, suspicious transactions, money trail, or anything like that at all... I mean, sure, for the first few you might just think they were smart in hiding it, but even before they knew about the bugs and covered that up (and fraudulently kept prosecuting people), after a while surely alarm bells should have been going off somewhere. These were large sums of money, somebody should have stopped and asked "is the most likely scenario for this that we keep employing dozens and dozens of masterful money laundering thieves as postmasters and sub-postmasters, or is something else going wrong"!

mdekkers 3y ago
> It wasn't so much a matter of "not counting cash" though - it was counted frequently, and the problem was that when it was counted, bugs in the accounting system had accumulated to make it look like there was cash missing. These errors added up to a lot of money that never existed seemingly being missing. I should have been more clear, apologies. Counting cash isn’t just “we have xxx cash monies”, it should include “and going by actual sales, and services processed, we should have xxx cash monies”. We both appear to agree that if you are going to take folks to court or tribunal or something, hell even “let’s have a trip to HR”, you best have some proper evidence besides “computer said so”. > after a while surely alarm bells should have been going off somewhere. I am absolutely certain that alarm bells were going off all over the place about this, but mostly in a “cover my ass and hope it goes away” mode. _Lots_ of people belong in jail over this.
d1sxeyes 3y ago
I'm not familiar with the contract between Fujitsu and the UK government, but it is common practice in these types of contracts to have: 1. A sign-off process where the customer approves releases. 2. A bug reporting process where the customer is informed of any defects in the software and whatever corrective steps are being/need to be taken in order to fix them. Although I've seen quite a bit of evidence that the Horizon software was not fit for purpose, and it had serious bugs, I have not seen any evidence that Fujitsu hid that from the Post Office (evidence does seem exist that Fujitsu conspired with the Post Office to keep that evidence from judges in various trials). It's not a crime to produce bad software (thank goodness), even under contract. Fujitsu should face consequences for lying to courts, but it seems to me that the lion's share of the criminality here is on the side of the Post Office, and they are doing a (relatively) good job of spreading blame to Fujitsu for the bugs in Horizon, where the real scandal is the dogged approach to prosecutions taken by the Post Office despite very significant problems with the evidence which were known to them.