Unthreaded
The concern is not that mistakes were made at Fujitsu or that the PO tried to cover them up. Mistakes are always made, projects go wrong and organisations will ALWAYS cover it up as a first reaction and continue the coverup as long as they can in the hope of getting away with it. The concern is that there ought to be checks and balances. There ought to be an effective way to expose cockups and wrong-doing. That is the real problem because it isn't fixed and it isn't going to be fixed because the same people who are supposed to fix it have a vested interest in not fixing it. If you were to be involved as a victim in the PO, or the infected blood scandal or grooming gangs or vaccine damage there isn't a damn thing you can do to get timely investigation and justice. The route for redress goes via your elected representative to a minister to a department which cocked up and can keep things going indefinitely without resolution. And nobody will be punished, because they are all moved on before any action takes place and that situation suits everybody involved except the occasional MP who is willing to sacrifice any hope of advancement by rocking the boat.
rhoda klapp
Tomo,
The first thing that comes to mind is the good old "nah f88k them...they all signed up to the EU so now they can enjoy the benefits of being under the EU's control".
Mailman
A bit of pushback towards over-promoted and dim grifter Van der Leyen and her totalitarian mates
https://twitter.com/NetZeroWatch/status/1747560251094680029
tomo
Sir Tony Blair was warned the Horizon IT system at the centre of the Post Office scandal could be flawed before it was rolled out, a document shows.A handwritten note from the then-Labour PM, published by the public inquiry on Friday, suggests he raised concerns after being warned the system was "possibly unreliable".
But he said he gave it the go-ahead after being reassured by others.
Among them was Peter Mandelson, who was then his trade and industry secretary.
There was no indication at this stage that the Horizon software would lead to wrongful accusations of theft but there were concerns about its reliability and ballooning cost.
In a letter dated 10 December 1998, Lord Mandelson said he believed the "only sensible choice" was to proceed with Horizon.
He warned that cancelling the contract would cause "political fallout" from post office closures and damage relations with Fujitsu, which he described as a major investor in the UK.
The letter, and the submission to Sir Tony, were both previously shown in hearings at the inquiry, which was launched in 2021, but have now been published in full.
In 1998 Horizon was being developed by a firm called ICL, owned by Fujitsu, as a way of paying welfare benefits through Post Office counters using a swipe card.
Ultimately this element of the project was dropped and the system was rolled out in 1999 for tasks like accounting and stocktaking instead.
More than 900 workers were prosecuted after the faulty software wrongly made it look like money was missing.
from the BBC here which seems to have got lost in the blizzard of CYA - BS misdirection about the Post Office executives antics.
Perhaps if the "bag of shit" quote from a senior developer had got to Blair's desk he might've paid attention....
tomo
Mailman
from the cheap seats here - I feel it's rather clear that if any serious political blame game starts it'd be a circular firing quad - the uniparties all had a go... venal swinery evenly distributed.
The judiciary haven't exactly been out front seeking justice either - in fact the number of lawyers who've likely perjured themselves and withheld exculpatory evidence must be quite high. I see the Post Offices solicitors for a lot of the poisonous prosecutions have gone bust - rather conveniently.......
tomo
My concern with this PO thing is that there are a lot of people out there particularly invested in blaming a political party instead of those who actually made this issue an issue (ie. management, fujitsu, MP's who thought being a head of department was a cushy little number and did nothing to hold the PO accountable etc). These people are being distracted, quite easily, by the media who dont seem particularly interested in the truth [shrugs shoulders].
As as already been said, dont get your hopes up that anyone of consequence will be put away. Maybe that Bradshaw fella, as a sacrificial lamb, but I doubt many others will go.
Mailman
Robert - ha! substitute Les's guitar for Feynman's bongos...
Some media peeps are getting a grasp of what been going on...
https://twitter.com/kelvmackenzie/status/1747296473643954401
tomo
tomo,
Sounds almost as if the media has assumed the role of the bureaucracy's first line of defence. Surely not.
Your excel analogy is spot on. There's no such thing as an off-the-shelf system. Sure, there's off-the-shelf software, but how you incorporate that into your processes is *always* a bespoke system and it's for *you* do answer if it doesn't work.
It's amazing how poorly that's understood by decision-makers.
As for Ada/VB/C/etc., the software world is full of fads and fashions; the never-ending promise of the sliver bullet. No language makes it impossible to write bad code. Some languages make it very difficult to write good code. Most languages are in the middle.
On Les Hatton, he sounds like a smart fellow and no doubt complexity has played its part in the debacle, but his specialist knowledge probably won't be needed. As you say though, his stature is important. He (or whoever) would need to play the role of Feynman in the commission investigating the Challenger disaster. Someone with a thick skin, turning over rocks and seeing what scuttles out from under them.
Robert Swan
If somebody of Les Hatton's stature were employed by the inquiry it'd be a good thing... forcing focus away from the self evident mess of bad software to the real bad people who'd been advised of the failing software but chose to abuse process and the legal system and their publicly funded deep pockets to attack people who had trusted them to provide functional administrative software to assist them in running a business. Classic "blame the user" tactics taken beyond the nth degree.
tomo
rhoda klapp
the notionally "independent" quangos and NDPBs (e.g. Environment Agency and Highways England) are totally and absolutely *beyond democratic accountability of any sort*.They can - and do - ignore their notional oversight via "government departmental sponsors".
Ministers can't order them to do *anything*, senior mandarins neither - coz they're independent and the only way to control then - the *only* way - is to starve them of funds via their grants from HM Treasury ....
There is supposed accountability for wrongdoing via the ombudsman system - the ombudsman has sweeping investigative powers but f-all teeth and they are increasingly ignored by delinquent (or worse) officials at the sorts of public bodies that inhabit the swamp....
The Post Office is government bureaucrats flying a false flag. - which might as well be the skull and crossbones...