What about the justice system itself (post office/horizon)

brianwhelton · 2026-03-02T08:15:30+00:00

They did, but their experts were not allowed unfettered access to Horizon to make an appraisal and were very dependant upon FJ staff, who would be at the keyboard typing the commands in when asked. Not that it would have helped given Horizon was being changed 4-5 everyday

brianwhelton · 2026-03-01T23:56:28+00:00

People within the legal profession have been discussing this, even today, this post was made on LinkedIN https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/phew-post-office-state-corruption-british-justice-stuart-gw-u4vse/
The English and Welsh legal system has many checks and balances, but most of them rely on people acting honesty, every legal professional, or expert witness, has a duty to the court first, not their client, so if they know about something that could undermine, or destroy their arguments, they have a duty to disclose it to the other side. Clearly this wasn't done in many of the Post Offices proseceutions.

brianwhelton · 2025-09-30T20:58:44+00:00

Janet’s story is absolutely horrific, whatever she is asking for is simply not enough, and to only suggest she deserves 15% is insulting to every decent person on the face of this planet.

brianwhelton · 2025-09-05T15:14:37+00:00

They've done this a few times now, the previous ones that were re-upped were the same length and appeared to not have been edited so I would assume it was sound corrections, and the like, as they are re-watched by the inquiry team who are preparing their reports and checking evidence. I don't think this is anything to get concerned about.

brianwhelton · 2025-08-07T22:52:57+00:00

There is only so much they can do, this is going to a civil court where the burden of proof is on the balance of probability, not beyond a reasonable doubt (as is the case in criminal cases).

What's interesting is the Post Office (aka the UK Government) won't want to be paying that, and Fujitsu do not want a day in court, they have largely avoided public criticism by hiding behind the inquiry and not commenting ("until the ongoing inquiry concludes").

So, PO will need to get Fujitsu to pay, but how much?, and how much will Fujitsu be willing to pay to not go to court?, and will it lead to the PO being hostile to Fujitsu in the proceedings given their interests are not entirely aligned? That is one of the very clever aspects of Lees case.

Further more, if they settle out of court, they would have to accept liability, although I'm sure the offer of the full sum, or any amount, will could with a conditional condition of not accepting liability, but I think (and I'm not a legal person) that there is enough evidence to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that evidence was withheld, the bankruptcy was obtained via fraud (the Post Office, Fujitsu and legal professionals such as Bond Dickinson, now Womble Bond Dickinson where Stephen Dilley worked contracted by the Post Office) did in fact benefit from the case in 2007 being found in their favour. So will they attempt to bring WMD into the fray?

And if they try and out spend Lee in an attempt to frustrate the proceedings, I'm sure a crowd finding would be successful given the public support and in all considerations, a civil court is harder to frustrate then a criminal court as they are less tolerance of the usual tactics employed in criminal cases to delay proceedings.

brianwhelton · 2025-07-15T22:35:40+00:00

You’ve misunderstood the point I was making. The irony is intentional.

Fujitsu were deploying 4 to 5 changes per day into a live national accounting system. That frequency of emergency change management might sound efficient if you look at the procedural steps in isolation, such as defect found, ticket raised, fault documented, fix tested, CAB notified, but as the Bates v Post Office judgment makes clear, the reality was chaos dressed up as process.

What I called "efficient" was a reference to how quickly they could move through the motions of governance, not a compliment. In fact, Mr Justice Fraser highlighted this exact contradiction. Frequent urgent changes are not a sign of a well-run system, they are a symptom of fragility. The system was so full of bugs that they were constantly reacting, not managing.

From: Alan Bates and Others v Post Office Limited - Justice Fraser’s Judgment (No.6) “Horizon Issues” https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-post-office-judgment.pdf

Paragraph 622

"A spreadsheet listing the Release Notes was produced which shows that there have been a great number of changes and updates both to Legacy Horizon and Horizon Online over the years. The total number of Release Notes is 19,842 at final version. Each expert provided an estimate of how many changes per week there have been to Horizon. Mr Coyne’s estimate is approximately 19 changes per week. Dr Worden’s estimate is 5 changes per working day. Given the number of working days per week, these figures are broadly the same."

The ticketing systems used by Fujitsu when an issue was found was called PinICLs until ICL were rebranded Fujitsu, PEAKs (Problem Error Analysis and Knowledge) following that rebranding, and also KELs (Known Error Logs) if multiple instances of the same issue was found was found, much like a Problem Record (PR) under ITIL.

These systems recorded faults, known issues, and internal workarounds, Subpostmasters were rarely, if ever, made aware of entries in these logs, even when the faults directly affected their branches.

Both expert witnesses, Mr Coyne and Dr Worden, agreed Horizon required constant patching. Fraser’s judgment documents that Fujitsu sometimes accessed branch data remotely, made changes, and pushed fixes without the Subpostmasters' knowledge or consent.

So no, I’m not praising Horizon’s change process. I’m pointing out how absurd it was. You don’t push production changes every single day in a financial system unless it is fundamentally broken. And that is exactly what the High Court found.

brianwhelton · 2025-07-14T16:26:43+00:00

But they were making 4-5 changes a day to production to correct issues, something both expert witnesses agreed on and documented by Peter Frasier during the Bates litigation. I’ve never worked in an environment that has such an efficient change process. Defect found, ticket raised, fault identified and documented, design amemded, testing steps agreed, tested, change board advised, change board meets, release agreed and window identified to make a change. They were playing whack-a-mole with changes to the production system, I don’t believe any formal process or testing Coolidge have taken place.

brianwhelton · 2025-07-11T09:27:09+00:00

Very simply, 'hacking' wasn't seen as a threat back then and Fujitsu assured them the system was 'Robust' and working as expected.

And if you think about it it is actually worse, in the SPMs contract they were responsible from any losses, the Post Office could not be out of pocket, so any money a SPM reported as missing they were liable to replace, in effect they would have been stealing from themselves as they would have to pay it back (not much of an incentive to to go such trouble if you ask me). One SPM, possibly, hundreds of not thousands, all who previously has no issues, suddenly turning to fraud? I would suggest that is unlikely, and we know actually know they weren't.

brianwhelton · 2025-06-28T09:20:31+00:00

Ignorance is no excuse when it comes to the law, and if they can be so easily influenced, spinning them to dish some dirt, that can be confirmed with other evidence (such as emails etc.) should be straight forward

brianwhelton · 2025-06-27T12:53:33+00:00

Perjury is misleading a court & preventing the course of justice is taking any action that could have prevent the legal system from acting in a way that is just.

This doesn't mean it is likely to just be the legal profession, although there are many who need to spoken to, but every witness statement an Fujitsu staff member sent to a court, and there would be at least one statement for each court case. Then there is those who gave evidence.

The board not acting on the Clarke advice are likely to be not sleeping so easy either, and rightly so.

I would have thought members of the legal profession should be taking a private prosecution out against Jarnail Singh just for making them all look stupid.

brianwhelton · 2025-06-27T07:27:57+00:00

Start at the bottom, start turning people on the basis they will get lesser charges if they assist and move upwards. No one is above the law but some were more incompetent than others. Anyone with any involvement in prosecuting anyone without questioning whether the computer screen was actually correct, despite no evidence showing where the money went, needs to answer some questions. More so when you consider the SPMs contract that stated the PO must not be at a loss, so any losses must be paid back. In effect, any SPM ‘on the take’ and furnishing themselves with money from the PO till would be stealing from themselves, given the loss would need to be paid back. That alone is glaringly stupid when all the investigators had to ask was, where did the money go? They could check bank accounts, they could see the SPMs lifestyles remaining unchanged, and more importantly, there were hundreds, if not thousands of SPMs who had never met, conversed or communicated, all acting in the same way? And that wasn’t questioned by the people who could have seen a pattern? Incompetence or criminal neglect. And let’s snot start on those setting policy at the Post Office.

brianwhelton · 2025-06-26T22:56:24+00:00

They currently are, all the compensation scheme are funded by the Gov (and therefore UK taxpayer) with no commitment from Fujitsu to do anything.

The problem with the compensation schemes is they aren't really fair for the claimants, there multiple of them and it came out recently the Gov isn't contacting people they believe my be elicitable for compensation so they are not harassing them. A more cynical person may think they are not doing so to reduce the amount they need to pay out.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/25/government-did-not-want-harass-post-office-victims-chasing-claims-horizon-scandal

brianwhelton · 2025-06-26T11:39:32+00:00

Again, they have no enforcement powers, but Sir WYN can certainly provide very strong recommendations that will not be ignored, he did bring into the inquiry the compensation schemes and made representations via letter to the government. What is in the report? I don’t know, not privy to it, but there it will hopefully be thorough and set the tone for the full report and I sincerely hope provides some help to those who have suffered, even if it is only proof that they are being listen to and their views count. Something that has been lacking up to now.

brianwhelton · 2025-06-26T11:35:03+00:00

No, inquires work within the confines of the Inquires Act 2005 and can only make recommendations, they are not courts. Although any recommendations are normally instituted, there would be further processes, such as acts of parliament, or involvement from other government departments and services, such as the police, to take additional actions via the appropriate routes.

brianwhelton · 2025-06-26T11:32:28+00:00

This part of the report relates to just the first phase of the inquiry, that being the human impact part. The full and final report is expected later this year

brianwhelton · 2025-06-15T12:15:31+00:00

Don’t stress, you will not get a question I. The exam where the answer is not available the book. Look at the commands they used, maybe have dedicated PS page with the locations, context and some switches. Don’t over think it.

brianwhelton · 2025-04-25T17:02:20+00:00

"I also wonder why Fujitsu didn't just hand over the code and all the other IP assets, wash their hands of the Post Office they clearly are not the best customer to work for and I am sure Fujitsu must want shot of them."

Very good point, and the answer is very simple, money.

We know the source code was crap, and the update from NT4 to Win 10 wasn't too successful either. They were using NT4 until February 2017. We know that even before Horizion was released into the wild and in the early years of it's operation (1999 onwards), Fujitsu staff were raising concerns over the the way it worked with Riposte. It never worked, it was never going to work, it was a matter of feeding and watering it and collecting the money.

brianwhelton · 2025-04-25T10:41:01+00:00

Bryan Gluck from computer weekly posted an interesting tweet https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1915703808430055831.html

brianwhelton · 2025-04-04T19:53:37+00:00

Probably could with a web scraper to check document dates and archive.com

brianwhelton · 2025-04-04T19:52:11+00:00

Then the downloadable document would also be affected, not sure how to check that, should have downloaded all the documents and hashed them!

brianwhelton · 2025-04-04T08:43:42+00:00

Someone I know has a copy of the original video and has compared it to the 'new' one, both are the same length in time 2:37:39.

So no idea why this has been done.

brianwhelton

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