@
Ryannnnnn No, I dodn't work for Royal Mail and I am glad I did not! There was series on the radio a few months ago about the whole scandal.
RM had bought a new IT system called 'Horizon' from some Japanese firm, Hitachi I think, to run its Post Office branch finances. Unfortunetely it was just not fit for purpose and kept showing apparent losses of money - some due to the manufacturer's attempts to put it right. Its staff could read the finances directly and when they altered figures to test the programme, they did not or could not correct their changes.
No money was really missing, but rather than have the guts to admit it had bought rubbish and given the firm a month to correct the software errors or no more work and no more money to it, RM's directors decided to blame the sub-posters/mistresses and started to had have them prosecuted for theft.
Some were reimbursing the Post Office with their own money - where has that money gone? Why were the non-thefts and the attempted repayments not detected in audits?
They tried to keep it secret, to make it look like isolated rogue staff; but it was not long before everyone began to realise there was something odd about the apparent rise in branch thefts. Yet the Directors, even the so-called CEOs involved (two successive ones if I recall aright), and the software company stayed cowards and liars to the end. They still tried to claim Horizon was faultless; and resisted all attempts to have it, the finances and their claims investigated properly.
To them, and to the incompetent IT supplier who has escaped all action against it, ruining innocent people's lives and livelihoods was nothing. Many were sent to prison as result of the RM's perversion of the course of justice - none of the perjurers have been brougght to justice.
Simnce then, and indeed quite recently, the Courts have quashed the wrongful convictions but as the sole shareholder the Government (i.e. everyone via taxes) has to find the money to compensate them. It has admitted that RM itself could not afford it, and the cowards who ran RM or sold the software certainly would not even if you confiscate all their assets.
Too late for one or two victims, driven to suicide.
You might wonder why the post-masters' union failed them. It had basically been paid off by RM.
''''
Blair and Brown had wanted to give the Post Office to the Dutch delivery company, TNT! Well, we all know now that courier companies are not set up for domestic deliveries; and are often incompetent or inconvenient at it.
