6 Comments

Indeed, a complete and total shambles. But deliberately so. Everyone has created so many smoke screens that it's no wonder no one knows what's going on. Moderately clever people having a whale of a time running rings around each other and running to the Bank. I can't remember if you created the concept of an Accountability Sink Richard but this is one -- an organisation creating processes and cultures that, deliberately or not, allow everyone to avoid accountability

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In a strange way this reminds me of Angela Patrick’s interchange with Brian Altman then QC. And recognised as “one of the greats of the Bar”:-

Altman makes the point, as he has done regularly today, that his instructions were limited and he was doing the job he was asked to do.

Patrick seems to know this answer was coming, and asks whether it was ever open to him to extend his instructions. She asks whether he was ever 'professionally curious' about other elements of the Horizon issue. He says it was technically open to him to ask to extend instructions but it would not have occurred to him to suggest it.

[Makes you think!]

This précis was from John Hyde of the Law Gazette.

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Horizon was and remains a billion pound plus programme of work "led" and "Managed" by people who had no idea, whatsoever, how compex an information system it is.

POL is also stuck with the bloody thing for some years to come because it is going to be time consuming and expensive to build a replacement.

Foat, nor any of the other key POL players should ever, ever have been employed on something like Horizon.

With this exercise being perhaps THE case study of what happens when people get involved in things that renders them out of their depth with the end result being that when, inevitably, things go belly up, "not me guv" becomes the SOP response from all of them.

Nor is Horizon unique, Solarwinds, Crowdstrike, TSB and more illustrate many of the same operating failures. With an MBA being one of the more questionnable qualifications after a law degree when working in a complex technological operating environment.

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I appreciate my comment isn't helpful. But I sit here with my head in my hands, thinking that their are some very intelligent, talented people in this country, but not one of them work for the Post Office.

Everyone, I have encountered in this inquiry is out of their depth in their abilities. How has that happened? If I had to give advice to any Government "give up now You cant run it, they cant run it "

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I agree but, and this is not excuse them, I doubt that many organisations would come out well after being scrutinised by Jason Beer for several years. I also wonder if there's a class thing going on. Even today I'm guessing that most Directors have made effortless journeys from private school to Oxford College and up the greasy pole boosted by old boys/girls and a posh voice. Is being a Director just a giant middle class con trick and their incompetence is usually masked by the hard work and talent of their working class staff

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There's something in what you say (and I was Oxbridge-educated) bur 'promoted from within' Directors do not necessarily have a better record.

It's not a very helpful observation, but I can only conclude that the Post Office has managed to combine all the worst aspects of a traditional limited company with those of a nationalised industry, with some more failures just of its own.

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