Cpcmcredit Blog

As someone who has followed the revolting Post Office/Horizon scandal since the first story first broke in Private Eye and has been extensively covered by the Times since, I am more than delighted that the apparently superb and certainly game changing ITV Drama Mr Bates versus the Post Office (which admittedly I haven’t watched yet), has jolted the establishment into action. However there is still a long way to go and questions to be asked

Firstly my feelings that the retribution for those responsible should be swift and brutal and if that sounds like something out of the Sopranos, then it is meant to.

The wider issue is that of the clear inaction by those who are supposed to be looking after the publics interests but are purely looking after their own. One of those involved was well known during his career in advertising (an industry I was worked in for many years) for being particularly self serving but its also clear that rather than “rock the boat”, there were plenty who were craving their salaries, honours and invitations to the right dinner parties more than preventing the biggest mis carriage of justice the UK has seen and one with horrendous personal consequences for many

You wonder how they slept at night. You wonder what how it would feel to be devoid of any conscious or morals at all?

Another point is that some have mistakenly attributed this scandal to a “privatised industry” mentality whilst ignoring the fact that the Post Office is state owned. Certainly private industry (notably banks of course ) have treated their clients with contempt on many occasions and those involved here were not exactly free wheeling entrepreneurs. They are the epitome of the “corporate creep”

Interestingly the coverage, aside from Private Eye, of the scandal was the most extensive, by quite a substantial margin, in the Times and least (also by quite a margin) in the Guardian. Make of that what you will

Another point is that we are probably becoming too reliant on IT without human input. A reasonable human would have quickly worked out that a very high percentage of Postmasters were not suddenly initiating a particular co ordinated fraud. This point is well made my Hugo Rifkind in the Times today where there have been similar scandals (although arguably a lot less serious) in Michigan and The Netherlands. In a world where the drive is towards worshipping at the alter of AI, this needs a rethink

This story has a long way to run and whilst vengeance isn’t always the most healthy of human impulses, its one that many will gladly see enacted here