Computer Trouble On The Horizon: Post Office Scandal
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Many folk have been following the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry and many more have watched the Mister Bates vs The Post Office drama screened on TV. It is an emotive set of circumstances and an injustice on a grand scale. It, also, presages future issues with AI taking over the lives of workers and people, more generally. Computer trouble on the Horizon: Post Office scandal. It rang true for me and captured my interest as soon as it was brought to my attention. Possibly because I grew up in a small family business with a sub branch of the Post Office contained within it.
Post Office Duties No Trouble At The Newsagency
My experience was in Australia and the Horizon IT Post Office scandal is in the UK but much of Australia’s old institutions are modelled on Britain. Dad had bought a newsagency and it came with Commonwealth Bank and Australia Post facilities and duties. I was 11 years old and my first job was behind the counter working out postage rates for old ladies and their parcels at Christmas time. Weighing things, affixing stamps, issuing bank orders, adding up cheques, and the whole gamut of administrative and retail services provided. I loved it. Newsagencies are chock full of endless tasks and details, which must be got right or things don’t add up at the end of the day.
Horizon IT Not Adding Up At Post Office Sub-Branches
This was the problem for the sub-postmasters in their sub-branches of the Post Office in the UK. Things just wouldn’t add up at the end of the day. The Fujitsu Horizon computer system installed across the vast PO network throughout Britain had problems and nobody was owning up to this fact. The sub-postmaster’s contracts with the PO stated that any short falls in money were to be made up by them and was their responsibility. This was fairly routine when it was just human beings adding up transactions and cash at the end of the day. However, a new whizz bang computer system had entered the fray and things were different now.
A Generation In Fear Of Computers
Again, I remember my mother working in the shop when it was computerised. My older brother had overseen the digitalisation of the operating system governing the business. Mum was terrified of the computer and of making mistakes. She would literally shake with fear at the possibility of pressing the wrong button or key. Their generation, mum was born in the 1920s, found this technology terribly foreign and could not come to grips with it. In retail, when you are dealing with a customer it is tough to serve two masters. The imperative computer screen demands adherence to its rules, whilst the flesh and blood punter wants your full attention. More agile minds come to terms with this in time but my mum never quite managed it. I could empathise with the sub-postmasters portrayed in Mister Bates vs the Post Office and their trials with the Horizon IT system imposed upon them by their corporate bosses.
Human Powerlessness Caused By Computer Trouble
It is a classic depiction of powerlessness made possible by a technology empowered over human beings. Computer trouble on the Horizon: Post Office scandal reveals perennial problem. It is a continual issue facing humanity this imposition of digitalisation upon our way of life. AI is about to make this even more far reaching in terms of how we work and go about our businesses. A section of our society let’s call them the investor class are calling the shots to the detriment of everyone else. Nobody is asking us whether we want machines to be making decisions about who gets hired and fired. We are being sold a story about all the good things about AI, as is usual in this PR rich environment in which we now operate. Corporations fund these campaigns but nobody funds narratives about the downside of AI – and there is a downside. Everything has a downside.
The world is not a democracy, it is an oligarchy. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and their ilk are driving the bus and we are just along for the ride. There is an AI arms race happening and no CEO or board wants to be left behind.
Serving Your Community
The sub-postmaster was left holding the bag and it was short thousands of pounds, according to the Horizon computer system. The power imbalance between the little person running the sub-branch and two huge corporations was extreme. The Post Office and Fujitsu were behemoths in their own right in comparison to these ordinary folk, who were just trying to make a living and serve their communities. You see, unless you have worked in a sub-post office in a family business you don’t know what that really means. You are representing the national government in providing these administrative duties for your fellow and sister citizens. You do passports, which involves taking photos and citing identity papers. You are indirectly involved in the lives of your customers via this work. You know each year that Mrs So and So will be sending her Xmas parcels to places around the world. I did the banking for older folk who could not fill out the necessary forms properly. There are endless duties to perform for the members of your village or town.
You stake your reputation on your trustworthiness in these matters.
Therefore, when a computer screen tells you that your takings don’t add up at the end of the day it causes major headaches. The fact that this was a computer system f*** up must have been incredibly galling. The majority of effected sub-postmasters were not computer literate and felt diminished by this new technology. Many paid back thousands of pounds they did not actually owe because they felt they had no other option. Under the onerous contractual obligations they didn’t – they were responsible for any and every short fall. Even the term ‘sub-postmaster’ signals that they are less than. Circumstances proved that they were, indeed, not masters of their own destiny. Computers telling human beings that they can’t add up properly. A computer system determining that these middle aged, senior members of the citizenry were wrong, inadequate to the task, and must make reparations in the thousands.
Some of them took their own lives in despair. Quite a few when to gaol for defrauding the Post Office and theft.
The parallel in Australia is Robodebt, which impacted half a million Australians and cost the lives of some too. A government agency betrayal of the size never seen before in our history. It cost taxpayers well over $1.8 billion and counting. However, just like the Post Office Horizon IT scandal no one has been prosecuted or sent to gaol apart from the victims of it. Those on the white collar side of things, those senior bureaucrats and corporate lackeys, never face the judicial consequences of their actions and inactions -it seems. Faceless minions within these corporate juggernauts go about the business of the company immune to accountability. The moral of this story, if there is one, is do not go into business with entities much larger than yourself. The Post Office used its financial muscle to drag out this scandal for nearly two decades.
Many sub-postmasters and their loved ones died in the meantime. And it was a mean time for them. They were branded thieves, business failures, and people who had let their communities down. 3, 500 were accused by the Post Office of not meeting their financial obligations to the Post Office.
Each one of these were told when they rang the Horizon IT helpline that nobody else was experiencing these issues. They were blatantly lied to, as a company line – which must have been a scripted response or a learned one at the call centres. This had the effect of isolating each sub-postmaster in a world of their own special hell. Many of them re-mortgaged their homes to pay off the debts. They were immediately summarily dismissed and lost their business. Indeed, locked out by special squads who went around the country performing such executions. They were harshly treated and made to feel like criminals. This was a big company squashing a little person like a bug on the heel of their boot. The nub of this is that so many of us were willing to believe that these formerly upstanding members of the community were suddenly revealed as crooks and all on the say so of a machine. The infallible computer made so by corporate minions and boards of directors representing investors.
They bought the bloody Horizon IT system for millions of pounds, so they were going to back it over human decency any day of the week. This is the world we live in today.
The thing about the Post Office in the UK is that it has special legal powers due to its historical standing. It used to be called the GPO and the GPO in the old days was akin to MI5. Letters prior to more modern forms of communication, like the phone and computers, were things that needed to be monitored for treason and such like. The Post Office would open the letters of those it considered possible subversives to read what they had to say. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley early in the 19C was being watched by the GPO for this reason. I came across this when I was studying the poet for a play I was performing in.
“According to the Post Office website, Royal Mail solicitors are the earliest known formal investigators and prosecutors in the world, tracing their origins back to 1683. The Post Office continues to act as a private prosecutor, not under any specific power but exercising the general legal right to undertake prosecutions. Its investigators do have powers beyond those of the average private prosecutor including to access the Police National Computer, to undertake financial investigations to bring restraint and confiscation proceedings and to authorise surveillance to investigate crime. Leaving aside the question of the desirability of a single organisation occupying the roles of victim, investigator and prosecutor given the potential for a conflict of interest, there is no question that it should have had rigorous safeguards in place to ensure the highest possible standards of conduct in complying with its duties and responsibilities as a prosecutor. “
This is a case where technology has moved on and the law has not kept up, which is happening in jurisdictions around the globe. Investors have led us into the digital revolution where computer systems, algorithms, and social media are all leading us on a merry dance. Think about financial scams, where banks make everything so convenient that there are no fail safes in place to stop customers being scammed out of their savings via identity fraud. Hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars get transferred to bogus accounts. Meanwhile, the banks in Australia make billions of dollars profit every year because they have computer automated most of their services. Banks used to be synonymous with security and protecting your money. This has been traded away for speed and convenience. Yes, there are many positive aspects to modern banking, but some sort of security over large transactions seems pretty bloody obvious to me. It is all about making more money for shareholders, which means more human workers on the scrapheap and more automation.
https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk
20 odd years later and the sub-postmasters have still not got their money back in most instances. The falsely owed money, according to informed speculation by financial experts, went into Post Office profits. Once again, all those corporate minions who lied have not been held accountable. This is despite the trail of destruction, death, and deceit left in their wake. My mum and dad have been dead awhile and the newsagency with its sub-post office is just a fading memory. I cut my commercial teeth behind that counter, however, so some things will always stay with me. All those stamps in the stamp books and the hopes and fears of customers with their waiting letters and parcels. It was a different time in many ways.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Bite & Smile – his brand new book which has just been published. https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0DPM9WS6K
©Midas Word
