Horizon - The Fujitsu/Post Office Scandal

the incompetence even extends to their trying to cover up their incompetence

Has anybody seen any information relating to who at (presumably?) Fujistsu ICL tinkered with the data, why they did so, and whether anybody directed them to do so?

At the moment I really don't understand the whys of this.

Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Everything else flows from trying to keep it quiet and find a scapegoat.

Yes. Unfortunately the Big Bad Wolf is incompetence rather than malice though. 

Malice, if present here, was initially ground level, with restricted impact. It was Incompetence (basic or strategic versions) that turned it into the wholesale disaster we see today.

Not to trivialise the matter, but it's like a walkthrough of the CIA WWII manual on how to decimate workforce productivity through corporate sabotage: www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/cia-field-manual 

There's still more than 11,500 post offices - and there would have been more at the time this was all going on. Prosecutions went on for 15 years after Bates first reported problems, the year after Horizon was introduced. 700 postmasters were prosecuted - about 6% of the current number, and it would have been a smaller %age at the time.

That's one HELL of a lot of transactions, the vast majority with no issue.

Now, add together a flaky system that occasionally mis-records transactions, and a helpdesk with no audit tracking... you can see that there could easily have been a LOT of errors with rolling back faulty transactions. And many of those would have been ignored, accepted as user error, rolled in to normal adjustments, etc.

Wrap all that in an apparent corporate culture of "it can't possibly be our fault" and buck-passing, and you can easily see how the finger-pointing escalated... It's a salutory lesson all round.

I've not been keeping a close eye on the inquiry for a while, certainly not so much as I think registerme has likely been. I was reading an article in The Times which I assume is based on the last couple of days or so. Amongst other things it discusses Susan Crichton, a POL General Counsel and most senior lawyer (while she was there). I'm not sure whether this was as a result of her testifying. 

Anyway, it seems like she acted at least as some form of bulwark against the POL leadership wanting to control the 'independent' (Second Sight) investigation. In that article I think I have read some of the most inappropriate/damning words that I've seen attributed to a CEO. 

"Following Crichton’s resignation, Vennells wrote in a file note that Crichton was “more loyal to her professional conduct requirements and put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business”."

Well quite Paula. That is how its meant to be.

On the face of it, they may not seem that much of a bombshell, but to me that says rather a lot about PV. Also apparently in 2013 PV argued [along with some other directions] against a recommendation made by the Executive Committee to cease prosecutions because they "acted as a deterrent". 

Presumably PV that was because it was all about "the reputation of the Post Office" not about ensuring a fair judicial process. 

I wondered at the start of all this how much PV was really directly to blame for much of this, and how much was "just" happening on her watch with the inequity of it all not being apparent to her. I think we're getting answers to that. 

Crichton appears from this article to be emerging with some credit and integrity. Maybe the first/only of the POL staff - other than the SPMs - to do so.

Saw this earlier www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/post-office-humza-yousaf-scotland-high-court-appeal-court-b1153567.html

it's left me gob smacked even now POL are trying to avoid disclosing documents to SPM appealing against conviction

seems we have a sensible Judge in Lady Dorrian see also www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/24/sas-ambush-ira-terrorists-jail-court/#:~:text=A%20former%20SAS%20serviceman%20who,an%20inquest%20about%20the%20mission.