In my humble opinion as someone who suffered at the hands of the PO, this final submission just continues the tactic/lie that it wasn't me boss, I was not informed or was promoted beyond my capabilities or not good enough to understand. It was always someone elses fault not mine. They clearly want to use Andy parsons as a scape goat, but it begs the question of who approved using him in the first place! They are trashing his life much like they trashed mine.
They are, but to be fair, HIS life deserves to be trashed. Having watched his oral testimony "performance" at the Inquiry, I'd be more than happy to know this man is never allowed to practise law again. An utterly vile, callous man.
Interesting points Richard - for myself, I always come back to the conclusion that the POL leadership community and many senior employees were lacking in their understanding of right and wrong, and didn't work to ethical rules of conduct agreed upon by most of us. How much of this was incompetence, and how much was willful malevolance towards subpostmasters, is still difficult for me to fathom even after watching 100s of hours of evidence at the inquiry.
"wilful malevolence" also applies to the PO when it comes to its relationship with the communities it was meant to serve, in the goal of stopping running at a loss. Contraction, with all the concomitant disbenefits, is all it's ever been able to do. Well, except for taking on the transaction service in banking hubs.
Strange that POL relied on such junior solicitors throughout the GLO process yet went to the opposite extreme, instructing two peers of the realm, when things started to go wrong.
The POL submission reads as if the culture Nick Read said he has worked to change is still alive and well. Blame others, blame the technology, blame anyone except themselves and the despicable POL culture. Whilst this culture is allowed to continue - or is too deeply embedded that it cannot be changed - the future for the Post Office is bleak. Sir Alan Bates suggested it should be closed down and replaced by a new organisation with an open, pro-sub postmaster facing culture. Sounds like he had a point. dv
I used to work in computing for Isoft. I worked on similar technology used by the Post office . I know what can go wrong I know the management culture , I know that economic pressure comes to bear on both management and staff. They knew the system was wrong, you can't work on a system and not know that. Management and coders knew the system was wrong . Their are no excuses they acted criminally without regard to the consequences suffered by others. However from my experiences it doesn't surprise me..
In $54: First, for the reasons set out at §9 to 12 above, whilst it could in principle be suggested that POL as a corporate body should have informed LA about all or some of the 18 matters above, whether an individual who attended the 18 June 2012 meeting could reasonably and fairly be criticised for not having done so depends entirely on their own personal state of knowledge at the time.
This is EXTREMELY disingenuous given that the 'individuals' briefing Lord Arbuthnot were doing so explictly in relation to the topics in question and therefore had a clear duty either to disclose what they knew or to admit ignorance and agree to follow up if they did not know. To say clearly, when representing an organisation "A is not true" when it becomes clear that A is in fact true is misleading by any interpretation and 'ignorance' - if not accompanied by a very explicit disclaimer - is absolutely no excuse.
Yes, cognitive bias and illusionary truths are hard to avoid, which is one of the reasons businesses implement objective processes. For example, the management of IT in the business is helped by the presence of IT Service Management methodologies, just as the technology supply side is helped. Without these sorts of guide rails people deal with cognitive dissonance, which is the inevitable follow-on from cognitive bias, by neutralising awkward facts in a variety of different ways, depending on their personalities and the tools they typically use. I believe I saw a lot of neutralising going on during the Inquiry, but I can't say how conscious it was. I guess that's one of the things the Inquiry will want to determine. I also saw signs of what appeared to me to be a massive gap between the technical understanding and processes used by Fujitsu and the business understanding and processes of the PO. My guess is that was compounded by the project's methodology and by having the two separate service desks with different underpinning cultures and traditions which also reflected two different ways of thinking about Horizon and its users. That sort of gap in understanding was not an untypical situation for public/private sector IT projects during that period, but in the case of Horizon the parties seem only to have realised what was happening as the Inquiry has progressed and I think that is reflected in all their final submissions.
Great stuff Richard as always.I think POL deliberately only had Jarnail Singh as their Criminal Law Expert.They could then easily state they didnt have the expertise and relied on External Lawyers for advice.It seems WBD were instructing rather than advising.How many years can a Law Firm be described as external when carrying out the same work for the same department with no continual checks in place and why didnt POL seek a second pair of eyes on the ongoing saga?.For me Post Office knew it was wrong but Government had tipped a wink and they found a Law Firm who would vigorously pursue the strategy-For A Price!
If they want to demonstrate they have changed, there is a simple enough solution to the mess THEY'VE created... Put some experienced SPM's on each of the different Cmost trusted brand, was compensation schemes, with relevant pertinent experience of that Scheme. The most trusted brand, was earned by Community SPM's & involve them now and watch the work get done without expensive lawyer wranglings !
In my humble opinion as someone who suffered at the hands of the PO, this final submission just continues the tactic/lie that it wasn't me boss, I was not informed or was promoted beyond my capabilities or not good enough to understand. It was always someone elses fault not mine. They clearly want to use Andy parsons as a scape goat, but it begs the question of who approved using him in the first place! They are trashing his life much like they trashed mine.
They are, but to be fair, HIS life deserves to be trashed. Having watched his oral testimony "performance" at the Inquiry, I'd be more than happy to know this man is never allowed to practise law again. An utterly vile, callous man.
Interesting points Richard - for myself, I always come back to the conclusion that the POL leadership community and many senior employees were lacking in their understanding of right and wrong, and didn't work to ethical rules of conduct agreed upon by most of us. How much of this was incompetence, and how much was willful malevolance towards subpostmasters, is still difficult for me to fathom even after watching 100s of hours of evidence at the inquiry.
"wilful malevolence" also applies to the PO when it comes to its relationship with the communities it was meant to serve, in the goal of stopping running at a loss. Contraction, with all the concomitant disbenefits, is all it's ever been able to do. Well, except for taking on the transaction service in banking hubs.
Strange that POL relied on such junior solicitors throughout the GLO process yet went to the opposite extreme, instructing two peers of the realm, when things started to go wrong.
The POL submission reads as if the culture Nick Read said he has worked to change is still alive and well. Blame others, blame the technology, blame anyone except themselves and the despicable POL culture. Whilst this culture is allowed to continue - or is too deeply embedded that it cannot be changed - the future for the Post Office is bleak. Sir Alan Bates suggested it should be closed down and replaced by a new organisation with an open, pro-sub postmaster facing culture. Sounds like he had a point. dv
I hope Sir wynn sees through all that hogwash. It was a clear attempt to pervert the course of justice from day one of the GLO
I used to work in computing for Isoft. I worked on similar technology used by the Post office . I know what can go wrong I know the management culture , I know that economic pressure comes to bear on both management and staff. They knew the system was wrong, you can't work on a system and not know that. Management and coders knew the system was wrong . Their are no excuses they acted criminally without regard to the consequences suffered by others. However from my experiences it doesn't surprise me..
In $54: First, for the reasons set out at §9 to 12 above, whilst it could in principle be suggested that POL as a corporate body should have informed LA about all or some of the 18 matters above, whether an individual who attended the 18 June 2012 meeting could reasonably and fairly be criticised for not having done so depends entirely on their own personal state of knowledge at the time.
This is EXTREMELY disingenuous given that the 'individuals' briefing Lord Arbuthnot were doing so explictly in relation to the topics in question and therefore had a clear duty either to disclose what they knew or to admit ignorance and agree to follow up if they did not know. To say clearly, when representing an organisation "A is not true" when it becomes clear that A is in fact true is misleading by any interpretation and 'ignorance' - if not accompanied by a very explicit disclaimer - is absolutely no excuse.
Yes, cognitive bias and illusionary truths are hard to avoid, which is one of the reasons businesses implement objective processes. For example, the management of IT in the business is helped by the presence of IT Service Management methodologies, just as the technology supply side is helped. Without these sorts of guide rails people deal with cognitive dissonance, which is the inevitable follow-on from cognitive bias, by neutralising awkward facts in a variety of different ways, depending on their personalities and the tools they typically use. I believe I saw a lot of neutralising going on during the Inquiry, but I can't say how conscious it was. I guess that's one of the things the Inquiry will want to determine. I also saw signs of what appeared to me to be a massive gap between the technical understanding and processes used by Fujitsu and the business understanding and processes of the PO. My guess is that was compounded by the project's methodology and by having the two separate service desks with different underpinning cultures and traditions which also reflected two different ways of thinking about Horizon and its users. That sort of gap in understanding was not an untypical situation for public/private sector IT projects during that period, but in the case of Horizon the parties seem only to have realised what was happening as the Inquiry has progressed and I think that is reflected in all their final submissions.
Great stuff Richard as always.I think POL deliberately only had Jarnail Singh as their Criminal Law Expert.They could then easily state they didnt have the expertise and relied on External Lawyers for advice.It seems WBD were instructing rather than advising.How many years can a Law Firm be described as external when carrying out the same work for the same department with no continual checks in place and why didnt POL seek a second pair of eyes on the ongoing saga?.For me Post Office knew it was wrong but Government had tipped a wink and they found a Law Firm who would vigorously pursue the strategy-For A Price!
If they want to demonstrate they have changed, there is a simple enough solution to the mess THEY'VE created... Put some experienced SPM's on each of the different Cmost trusted brand, was compensation schemes, with relevant pertinent experience of that Scheme. The most trusted brand, was earned by Community SPM's & involve them now and watch the work get done without expensive lawyer wranglings !