UK’s Royal Mail has over 500 years of history. It began as a service exclusively for the King and his Court. It was privatized between 2013 and 2015 by the Conservative Party. Beginning before privatization, Britain’s post office has been enmeshed in a series of events that sent innocent people to jail and ruined countless lives.
Britain’s Post Office Horizon Scandal involves the wrongful prosecutions and convictions of more than 900 subpostmasters on charges of theft and false accounting. More than 2,000 other subpostmasters were threatened and pressured to pay money to cure claimed shortages.
As independent operators, these people managed privately owned postal outlets. They were required to use Horizon, a centralized computer system for accounting and administration supplied by Japanese IT giant Fujitsu.
Horizon had several bugs. These flaws caused the system to generate false reports that money due Royal Mail was missing from branch accounts. Actions taken after these reports resulted in painful consequences for subpostmasters, their families and employees. Affected people numbered in the thousands. This is commonly called the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.
Fujitsu and Britain’s Post Office always knew about software errors that led to the wrongful conviction of hundreds of people for theft and false accounting, the company’s European head told a public inquiry.
Fujitsu says Post Office knew about Horizon bugs from the start
“Right from the very start of deployment of the system, there were bugs and errors and defects which were very well known to all parties.”
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I have spent hours listening to testimony at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Led by retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams, it is investigating the human and computer failings that allowed injustices to continue for many years.
On display have been some of the worst of human behaviours. Executives concealed information that would have exonerated the accused. People in positions of authority obfuscated or lied when the Post Office was questioned or defendants sought disclosure of all relevant information.
Horizon defects were known but aggressive prosecutions continued. Post Office investigators were handed cash bonuses for every conviction of a branch manager during the Horizon IT scandal.
When computer faults were proven to have resulted in hundreds of wrongful convictions, Conservative Ministers claimed that a plan for mass exoneration would mean that subpostmasters who did commit crimes were wrongly cleared. They just couldn’t stop blaming people who were victimized by an evil corporate culture.
Directors, executives, and lawyers refuse to take responsibility for their misdeeds. Responses heard when these officials were questioned:
- I don’t recall.
- I’m unsure.
- I was not informed.
- I did not read the correspondence.
- It was not my job.
- I didn’t know how these things worked.
- The system was too complex to understand.
- I was told the Horizon system was completely robust.
- I’ve already made a statement. I won’t be making any further comment.
The situation in the UK is unique, but I fear that it is an example of failures common in government and corporate management. Large enterprises often fail to respond effectively when facing challenges. Professional people find it difficult to say that they may have been wrong. Passing the buck is a primary defence for responsible persons. Protecting the enterprise and its managers is more important than dealing fairly and truthfully with the public. Any innocent party damaged by wrongful acts is acceptable collateral damage.
It took a very long time and extraordinary public outrage before the UK government decided to allow a competent examination of the post office scandal. If transparency in business and financial affairs were an absolute principle, fewer scandals would arise.
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Categories: Justice
in-sights.ca 
One has to look no further than TransLink and the continued planning for proprietary light metro used on the Expo and Millennium Lines.
The proprietary light metro system has had four owners:
The UTDC, an Ontario Crown Corporation.
Lavalin
Bombardier
Alstom
Only seven systems have been sold: Since it was first marketed in the late 1970’s:
Detroit (a 5.5 km single track demonstration line)
Toronto, forced upon the TTC by the Ontario government because of the lack of sales of the system. This system has now been abandoned.
Vancouver, forced on the GVRD by the then Social Credit government in a private deal with the Ontario government.
Korea, in a deal mired in scandal and legal action over “success fees” paid to senior bureaucrats and politicians.
Malaysia, in a deal which was ground zero for the SNC Lavalin scandal over “success fees” paid to senior bureaucrats and the Prime Minister.
New York Port Authority, funded by the Canadian Overseas development Bank because the system was denied federal funding after being peer reviewed by experts, with system system deemed too expensive and poorly designed.
Beijing, an airport connecting line built to acquire technology.
The system has been marketed under six names:
Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS)
Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT)
Advanced Light Metro (ALM)
Advanced Rapid Transit (ART)
Innovia Light metro (with Linear Induction Motors a free add on)
Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM)
No sales for the past 20 years.
Alstom acquired MALM with their purchase of Bombardier’s Rail division.
After legal ills with Korea, bombardier stated that ART/Innovia Light metro was not recommended on transit routes with traffic flows less than 8,000 pphpd.
Current maximum capacity of the Millennium Line (Broadway subway) 4,000, after Thales $1.47 billion resignalling program, 7,500 pphpd.
North American recommended capacity for subway construction, for a line with traffic flows exceeding 15,000 pphpd.
The Canada line is a conventional railway and is not compatible to operate with the trains on the Expo and Millennium Lines and is a separate railway altogether. The Canada line remains the only heavy rail metro in the world, built as a light metro, having less capacity than a modern tram of streetcar costing a fraction to build.
Questions:
Why do we keep building with a system which is obsolete and has such a checkered past?
Were success fees paid in BC for the continued development of ALRT/ART, even though the system has been deemed unsalable?
Why has not the mainstream media ever reported the real story of SkyTrain?
Why do BC/TransLink Business Cases continue to support SkyTrain expansion when the proprietary railway has been deemed obsolete and unsalable?
Why did Translink, the Mayor’s Council and the premier OK the flip-flop from light rail to SkyTrain light metro?
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An excellent mini-series on this topic is available through PBS. Get Ready for Mr Bates vs The Post Office | Masterpiece | PBS provides lots of information. Well worth watching.
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Never rely on a beaurocracys own numbers .
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When Norm says he fears this UK Post Office debacle is an example of failures common in government and corporate management, I can’t help but recall the Health Ministry firings outrage here in BC.
B.C. government misled public after 2012 Health Ministry firings: report – The Globe and Mail
The response from government officials here, whether elected or appointed, was similar to those you list for the UK. Not to mention outright lies and intransigence until public pressure grew too great to be ignored.
Here, in addition to the professional and financial ruin experienced by the unjustly fired researchers after a despicable witch hunt, Roderick MacIsaac took his own life amid the stress caused by the improper government actions.
I also can’t help noting that the Minister and Deputy Minister of Health in office during this witch hunt were the same individuals who previously held office as Attorney General and Deputy Finance Minister, and oversaw and authorized the secret and illegal plea deal to improperly end the infamous BC Rail criminal trial. Neither has yet to be held to account.
And so I ask, had the Premier and his Cabinet of the day acted in the public interest to hold the engineers of that plea deal to account instead of shirking their obvious duty, would a life have been saved?
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A very good presentation Norm.
There could be 2 forces in motion then and now older humans are not well equipped to handle. The first would be the rapid transition from a non-digital world/economy to a digital one. Not many older adults have made the transition to a world of everything being like a computer game. This has been noticed after the examinations of the two Boeing 737 maxi events where solely treating the evidence from the cockpit instruments , rather than evidence from outside the cockpit. produced disaster.
The second force comes with everything being contracted out. This process of diffusing accountability/responsibility, allows the ignorant to claim and get jobs they are simply unqualified for.
The motivation for this second force is the drive to get ever larger profit margins or maybe just to financially survive.
If one uses the measure of gold versus any currency, then the drive to remain profitable results in actions like this second force.
As Toffler tried to capture in his “3rd wave” book from 1985, the change away from the Industrial Society is going to be messy.
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